Bookstores Editing and Proofreading Services

A customer picks up a novel because a handwritten card underneath it said something that made them want to. That card is about thirty words, it was written by somebody who read the book, and it outsells every algorithm, table display and publisher's poster in the shop. Most shelf talkers say "a gripping read you won't be able to put down".

We edit what bookshops produce — shelf talkers and staff recommendation cards, table and window display copy, newsletter and event listings, blog and social posts about stock, reading guides and subject lists, event and author visit information, and the emails sent to regular customers about a book they might want. Our editors work on thirty words written by hand.

The shelf talker is the most effective piece of writing in a bookshop, and its failure is a review with the specifics removed. A recommendation is only useful if it tells somebody whether it is for them. We work through these so the card names the specific pleasure of the book rather than praising it, since "gripping" and "unputdownable" appear under every third book in the country and identify nothing; so it says who the book is for and, where it helps, who it is not for, given that a card admitting a book is slow or difficult sells it to exactly the person who wants that; so a comparison is offered where one is genuinely apt, because "if you liked X" does more work than any adjective and is the question customers are actually asking; so one concrete detail from the book appears — an image, a scene, a voice — as this is what makes a stranger's recommendation feel like a person's; so the bookseller signs it with their name, since a named human recommendation is the shop's entire advantage over an algorithm; so nothing is claimed about prizes or sales that the book has not earned; so the card is legible from a metre away and short enough to read while holding a coffee; and so the same voice is not used on every card, because a wall of identical enthusiasm reads as marketing. Cards written this way sell books.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including stock and sales information and unpublished material from publishers. We are editors rather than booksellers or critics, and we offer no view on any book or its merits. What we can do is make thirty words say something only you could say.