The biggest challenge is trying to consider the size of the market. If the number of editors is roughly correct (80,000 in the USA) and most of them get hundreds of queries a week (hey editors - let me know what your current numbers are!) then the number of writers should be in the hundreds of thousands just in the US market. By the time you add in UK writers and go worldwide, the demand is probably in excess of whatever parameters you had in mind.

We expect it to be fairly standard stuff. According to our results from conversations with architects, we just need to put it together.

1) Word of mouth. We will emphasize the community aspect of Foreword.ink

2) Advertising online where writers and service providers are likely to hang out.

3) Marketing at writers’ conferences.

4) A strong self-publishing informational page that will be updated with courses, best practices, and hosted blogs.

5) A strong pre-publishing informational page.

The Self-Publishing and Pre-Traditional Publishing pages will not offer legal advice, but will be planned as a best practices for success resource, with articles and feedback from the rest of the community.

No. Foreword will help you find resources to put a higher polish on your manuscript, whether you’re planning to self-publish or pursue traditional publishing with an agent. You will be able to invite professional readers to provide carefully considered feedback. Foreword does not buy or sell or transfer any rights to any digital resource or manuscripts. While Foreword provides secure, encrypted chat for all members, neither Foreword nor any of our partners will transfer any rights to digital resource or manuscripts. There are many sites available for self-publishing. We are preparing a self-publishing section on Foreword that hopefully will further answer your question.

Charge whatever you feel your talents are worth. What Foreword cares about is full transparency, and to that end any offers for services should be in terms of (currency) per (how many) thousand words for services like reading or editing. For other digital resources the costs should be in terms of verifiable file size or dimensions, image quality, and so on. Fraud or suspected fraud will be fully investigated, and is not allowed in our Terms of Service.

Be very clear about what you provide. If necessary, you may add alias names much like writers can for alternative product specialties. The clearer you are on what you offer, and the more complete you are in your description of your services, the better your response may be.

Of course. That writer should post their availability, genre(s), word lengths, and provide samples or links to samples of their work.

Of course. In fact you can have up to five. Each alias can be tied to different genres and categories. So you can be Zargoz who writes Zombie fiction, and also Freemont, who loves romantic poetry.

Since Foreword desires to be free from the potential inhibitions of entanglements with publishers, we do not have a login function for “agent”. Foreword will help you boost your manuscript to the best it can be, but any kind of submission to publishing agents is out of scope for us at the moment. That being said, many readers and editors may also be, or have a link to a publishing company that may be helpful.

Sure. Many people in the publishing industry do many things. A writer of hard Sci-Fi could also be a poet, a voracious reader, and editor for romance or YA titles. Why should we limit you to just one thing? Okay we won’t. Anybody can have up to five (5) profiles for the same login, with only minimal increase in subscription rates.

Ratings will be on a modified 5-star system. One and two-star ratings will be calculated into the displayed score for that user/profile. The text of the complaint will not be displayed unless/until the owner has responded to the complaint. It’s hoped that this will cut down on trolls with nothing better to do.

By all means, visit the Contact page and let us know! We’re grateful for any ideas and suggestions for improvements.