News & Announcements 

Reviewer 4 of our veteran reviewer staff, Lucille Leonard, stopped reviewing about a year ago. She concluded a patient but spiritual--and spirited--battle with cancer on July 13. Lucille was widely liked by friends and co-workers, including many years at Tyndale House Publishers where she was the assistant to the top acquisitions editor, Wendell Hawley. It was her role to examine the hundreds of manuscripts submitted to Tyndale and see what might have potential for that growing company's list. She told me once that she thinks she may have rejected as many as 25,000 submissions!         

When she was no longer employed by Tyndale, Lucille began reviewing for The Writer's Edge and continued for a good 12 years. She was always generous in both accepting and declining submissions but, of all the reviewers, her acceptance percent was the highest. I told her once that any writer should hope she was the reviewer since she saw potential in more manuscripts than the other reviewers.

Lucille was a loyal alumna of North Park College, a faithful Anglican and Anglophile, and a life-long student. Her email address was "WellRead@" which fairly describes her literary appetite. It was a joy to know her and benefit from her Christian example.  --Steve Board, administrator

Lucille Leonard and Steve Board:

Each month's report is sent to publishers at the end of the month. The current month's report is in preparation or now mailed. Recently accepted writers should inform us if they have changed their email address since that will be our method of communicating with them before the report is issued. The next month's report will be mailed the last day of the month. See the flow chart for more information on this process.

Note on communication via email: We are aware that the spam filters on our email have filtered out some of our writers' messages. If you get no reply in a couple of days, make sure you send another email and use one of our other addresses:  info, admin, SteveBoard, or reports@writersedgeservice.com. Good practice requires putting a subject into your message on the subject line (spam filters suspect blank subjects to be trouble). Our spam filters also have filtered out messages with such harmless items as "$$" or "!!"   We even had a message from a writer in "Medicine Hat, Alberta" filtered out as spam--the software questions the word "medicine" in any message. Going your way, we notice your spam filters sometimes block our messages containing the Book Information Form attachment and other messages automated from The Writer's Edge. This is extra true of AOL and Earthlink. 

Back by popular demand: We are returning to the web availability of Adobe Acrobat PDF files of the monthly reports. Quite a number of writers wanted to see the reports, even though the chief location for anyone's book proposal is still Book Bank, our vast database of screened book proposals. On Book Bank you can make changes and updates, but the PDF files do not permit changes. They are simply replicas of the paper report we mail to our client publishers.

The Adobe Acrobat files will be emailed to writers who used our service in the past year or to qualified publishers on our list of publishers. Samples of the reports will be available for new writers who want to know what they look like. We do not make our reports available, either by mail or Internet, to subsidy publishers.

To better understand this service, see the "flowchart" page recently added to this site. It visually describes the process of submitting a potential book to The Writer's Edge Service. This should make clear the route a submission takes when a writer uses the service.

Our long-standing policy of a fee rebate for contracts has been discontinued. We still want to hear from you if you land a contract for your book, but we are no longer sending back a portion of your fee. Most writers will agree that the contract is reward enough.

New publishers or changes:  Examine the full list under Publisher List. Veteran Multnomah has been taken over by WaterBrook. Integrity [books] has been taken over by Nelson.  Both were mid-sized companies with ambitions to equal the largest of Christian publishers. Their distinctive mission will be missed.

Here are profiles of newest additions to our publisher list:

Capstone Fiction has been added in January 07. This will be a welcome program to publish novels with a Christian orientation. Their website has more information [www.Capstonefiction.com]. They are not a subsidy publisher but will concentrate on an economical print-on-demand approach to production of their list.

Christian Publications of Harrisburg, PA,  has been purchased by a new company called Zur, Ltd (Zur means "God is Our Rock"). Zur purchased most of Christian Publications book line and now owns the copyright to their books. The publishing division is called WingSpread Publishers. They say they will not consider queries for new books until 2007.

Polyventure Publications "is specifically interested in what we would designate 'Kingdom Living' publications. This would include books concerning the gospel of the kingdom and Christian walk with the Lord. Specifically, direct Bible teaching and discipleship. Also of interest are biblical lifestyle teachings that may not be socially or politically acceptable, e.g. Christian pacifism, patriotism etc. Doctrinally, all material must be Bible based and proofed. We have no denominational affiliation, but hold to the view that those who live by faith in Christ are the true Israel. We are not interested in novels, fiction, or poetry at this time." --as reported by Carl Mease, editor.

Writer Conferences: To keep up on the Writer's Conference calendar and find one convenient to you, check the ECPA listings (that's the publisher organization) at this their link for Writer Conferences. There may also be other news at their site that will interest you.

The Writer's Edge Service is not connected to other web entities called "Writers Edge" and should not be linked to subsidy publishers or ebook web sites which may turn up in your searches for our site with the term "Writers Edge" in the name. We're pleased that our site has become first or second in Google searches, indicating the excellent traffic that has built up to The Writer's Edge Service.

New feature: We now have a provision to repeat your entry in the monthly paper reports to the publishers. If you have made changes or feel your book proposal has good reason for a fresh consideration by the editors, you may wish to re-enter your submission into our monthly mailing. There is a modest fee and some limitations that are explained on the Repeat page.   

Credit Cards and Security:  We now have a number of services available for credit card charges. The Writer's Edge Service takes great care in protecting your information, particularly your credit card information. As part of our standard security policy, we have defined a secure area within which you can safely enter your credit card and billing information via the well-known third party, PayPal. You need not open or have a PayPal account to use their credit card charge service. No one at The Writer's Edge Service will know your credit card number. All activity is confined to PayPal's secure area.