Press & Publicity

'TLC's editorial advice was outstanding, as was their support through the traditional publishing environment,
out in to self-publishing which seemed the best place for my hybrid memoir/ inspirational business book 'All you Need is Love.' My story ended up being featured on Amazon's Gateway. One thing is very clear, I wouldn't have had this opportunity to make my book work without the advice and support of TLC'

Pete Smith, All you Need is Love

I guess like everyone else writing a book I experienced those mood swings from ‘this is hopeless’ to ‘I think this could be really interesting’. Most of that you simply have to deal with on your own; maybe get some help from a writer’s group along the way. However, there comes a point when you need to know how good your work is. That point will vary from writer to writer, but there is a moment when you know you need a professional insight: a proper, independent professional assessment. That was how I first came across TLC. It was late on in the writing process. I knew I was walking a tightrope between different types of book, and that it fell between various genre stools. The initial support and advice I got from TLC was outstanding. Firstly, the TLC reader Karl French, immediately grasped the problem I had been struggling with and articulated it far better than I could. He explained that the publishing industry tends to think in terms of genres, and doesn’t really have a way of looking at books that don't fall neatly in to one or another. He said that this attitude to genre applied in general to agents as much as to publishers. He then gave a huge amount of advice about the content and structure of the book, but was also incredibly supportive as to its underlying merit.

Karl and Rebecca Swift, Director of TLC, made it clear that although they couldn’t see a clear road to publication for what was an unusual book, they were nonetheless willing to help and advise me in the process as they liked the work. Rebecca offered excellent advice on how to target particular agents and the sort of cover letter that might work, but before long I think we both knew that Karl’s original assessment was spot-on: agents were looking for specific types of book and this didn’t fit. So self-publishing loomed as an option, and as soon as you look at that road the Amazon products Createspace and Kindle Direct Publishing stand out. Rebecca pushed me hard to get the book professionally copy-edited; something I was initially reluctant to do – partly because of the cost, but more due to the emotional side. It felt as if I was drifting towards vanity publishing and I wanted to be published. It was difficult because self-publishing was not my original goal. In the end I took Rebecca’s advice on getting it copy-edited and proofread, and was stunned at the result. My basic English is fairly good, but there was hardly a paragraph that wasn’t marked up by the copy-editor. Ouch!

My relationship with Amazon developed and I found myself being featured in their homepage Gateway. I am delighted. One think is clear I wouldn't have had this opportunity without the advice and support of TLC. You can work out what you think for yourself here.

Key note speaker at this year's Literary Conference, Audrey Niffenegger, shares her latest projects, ideas and ingenious management of her own novels into ebooks in an interview with Free Word.

Only a few weeks before she kick starts our conference in June, Audrey's latest project, a ballet adaptation of her story The Raven Girl, opens at the Royal Opera House on the 24th May.  Click here to read the full interview with Audrey. 

TLC is looking forward to hearing more from here at our conference on the 7-8th June. Click here to find out more about the conference.

 

 

Elen Lewis of writers' group and creative organisation 26 interviews TLC Director Rebecca Swift about the role of TLC, client success stories, tips for new writers, common writing mistakes, and why editorial assessment shouldn't be viewed as a luxury, but as an essential first step in preparing writing before sending it off, or out into the world.

An extract from the interview with Rebecca Swift:

What’s your favourite advice for better writing?

'I’m not a fan of shorthand advice for writers, as I think everyone must learn the hard way by trial and error if they are to really find their own way and style and that can take years. However, if I had to choose a single piece of advice, I suppose I’d say unless you know exactly why you aren’t doing, then push for economic prose. I say this as most people tend to overwrite, by which I mean they use excessive adjectives and include too much unnecessary information – almost trying too hard. Strip back to the essentials of what you are saying, think about what that is and keep hold of it; then say it as economically as you can – but without your prose being dull.'

Read the full interview here.

On September 14 TLC Director Rebecca Swift appeared at the Porlock Arts Festival to talk about TLC, and all things Emily Dickinson.

Of her appearance, the festival blog stated: 

'On stage in the evening we had Rebecca Swift and Tom Hodgkinson.  Rebecca spoke passionately and with great warmth about American poet Emily Dickinson.  She seems to have been an unusual lady but the extracts of her poetry that Rebecca read revealed a wonderful and extraordinary language of expression and description.  I know of several people who have been inspired to seek out more of her poetry.  Rebecca also spoke briefly about her role as co-founder of The Literary Consultancy, the UK's leading manuscript advisory service - a must for anyone wishing to publish their work!'

Read the official festival write-up in full here.

Rebecca's book on Dickinson, Poetic Lives: Dickinson, can be purchased here.

TLC's conference, Writing in a Digital Age proved to be a great success and we would like to thank all of our speakers and delegates who were part of making it a fascinating and productive event.  We will be collating more information about its highlights: podcasts, film clips and photographs, etc., so make sure to sign up for the TLC newsletter and follow us on twitter or Facebook.

Here are some of the latest articles about the conference from Bookbrunch, The Guardian, Gulf News, The Bookseller, The Times Literary Supplement, Intelligent Life, The Huffington Post, Publishing Perspectives and 1000heads.com.

Orange Prize-winning novelist Linda Grant

Linda Grant

That community had suddenly become relevant to her in an practical and personal way. From then on, she realised that if she treated Twitter right, it would treat her right too. And she didn’t even have to push sales messages out there for her readership to grow.

Molly Flatt comes out and says it like it is: Trying to establish yourself online once you have completed your manuscript, for the sole purpose of flogging said manuscript, will feel like bashing your head against a brick wall.

http://1000heads.com/2012/06/social-media-are-a-terrible-marketing-tool/

TL Conference Delegate Laxmi Hariharan's recent blog post about TLC's Writing in a Digital Age conference was picked up by the Huffington Post this morning.  As a self-published author herself, Laxmi's article focuses in particular on the session with bestselling self-published author Robert Kroese.  Laxmi writes, "Rob @robkroese is funny, genuine and as one of my fellow delegates commented, "he is one of us". He likens the league of published authors to an elite night club, with gatekeepers, who decide who gets in and who does not. It struck a chord with me, and I suspect with many of the other 'waiting to be discovered' wannabes."

Laxmi has put together her own quiz with ten points inspired by Robert Kroese's self-publishing masterclass.

1. Do you want to be discovered or somewhere along the way have you discovered yourself?

2. Do you write to be published or do you write to be read?

3. Are you an entrepreneur, at heart? Do you normally jump in and think of the consequences later. Are you pragmatic about failure--enough to pick yourself up and move on swiftly to the next?

4.Do you like to experiment, and cannot resist a challenge? Do you thrive under pressure, and when the odds are stacked against you?

5.Are you impatient, probably a control freak? In fact, you want to control your own destiny, so keep checking in with the stars to find out what's going to happen in your life, so you can steer it the way you want.

Click here to finish the quiz and read Laxmi's full article in the Huffington Post.

Publishing Perspectives, the online journal of international publishing news and opinion, wrote about TLC's Literary Conference on the 17th January.  Publishing Perspectives investigates cutting edge publishing stories from all around the world.   

Writing about the Canon Tales event, which is a key part of the conference, Publishing Perpectives writes, "The Japanese practice of “Pecha Kucha” (literally “chit chat”) in which architects rapidly present their work in 20 images for 20 seconds each, will be adopted at a new digital conference in London this summer. And  that won’t be the only aspect of this conference that is different. Unlike so many previous events, Writing in a the Digital Age is aimed at authors, both those hoping to find a publisher and those writers who are already published but who need advice about the new digital landscape."

Click here to read the full article.

Karolina Sutton, literary agent at Curtis Brown, will join TLC's Canon Tales event at the June Literary Conference: Writing in a Digital Age.

The Canon Tales event will include ten of the most exciting publishers and agents in the UK, who will present their love of literature and what excites them, and the stories behind some of their favourite discoveries, through a series of rapid-fire visual images. A unique and hugely entertaining experience that will get you up close to the key people behind the slush pile. Click here to read about a previous Canon Tales event.

May 2011 the Karolina held a live webchat session with Guardian readers. Click here to read her frank and concise answers about what goes into literary agenting.

Melville House is an independent publisher located in Brooklyn, New York.  Just before Christmas 2011, MobyLives (the Melville House blog) featured an interview with TLC director Rebecca Swift, about TLC, writing and editorial values, and the various ways a writer might land themselves a publishing deal today.  Click here to read the interview.

18th January, Mobylives also posted an article about TLC's upcoming Literary Conference in June.  Ellie Robins, who blogs for Mobylives,  writes "There’s a world of opportunity for authors now, but there’s also very little guidance and rather a lot of unscrupulous souls. Any event that seeks to redress that balance gets our vote." Click here to read the article.

The Literary Platform, which is dedicated to showcasing projects experimenting with literature and technology, has joined TLC's 2012 Literary Conference.  They are just one of TLC's exciting associate partners including Arvon Foundation, Commonwealth Writers, and the Free Word Centre, whose combined expertise, broad reach and understanding of the issues is set to culminate in a first-rate series of discussions, case studies and debates at TLC's Literary Conference: Writing in a Digital Age 8th-9th June 2012.

Recently The Literary Platform wrote about TLC's Literary Conference in an article that reviewed all the highlights of the conference.

Click here to read the full article.

TLC's Big Publishing Debate created quite a stir back in September and continued interest from overseas writer's magazines shows that these are prevalent issues for the non-English speaking publishing world alike.

Swedish Literary Adventurer, Katarina Trodden, who writes for the Swedish Authors' Union, published an article about our debate and highlighted the important issues for writers that were raised by the panel and the audience that evening. For more information about the original debate or to read Robert McCrum's articles in the Guardian, click here. The Author, published by the Swedish Authors' Union six times a year, publishes articles that deal with authors' and translators' rights, freedom of speech and the publishing industry in Sweden and also includes information about scholarships, events and global publishing news. The website is in both Swedish and English.

Click here to read a summarised version of Katarina's article in English or here for the Swedish version.

Rebecca Swift hosted an up-front Q and A with WriteWords about the role of literary consultancies. WriteWords is an online resource for writers which offers an interesting community for writers, jobs and news.

Below is an excerpt from the Q and A where Rebecca Swift answers a question about TLC readers.

"We stipulate that a reader must have either worked in commercial publishing as an editor, taught creative writing to MA level, and/or be a professionally published writer themselves. We will occasionally make exceptions for readers that come highly recommended and may have had slightly different trajectories (as reviewers, for example, or teachers in literary settings but not on MAs) but usually these qualifications would be those we would require. I always think 'who would I want to read my work?' and think in terms of employing people I myself would trust. Also of course we need to inspire confidence in our clients that we are offering help that has been tried and tested over time.

I should also say that having the qualifications in themselves are not the only important thing, because we do not use readers who don't have sufficient empathy and diplomacy, as well as powers of articulation when writing back to people at any level of ability. This can be a tricky job as you can imagine, to say the least and I admire our readers hugely for what they take on. In addition, readers have to understand commercial markets to some degree, although the in-house team are the market experts. They have to be good talent spotters on top of everything else ... In short, it's a tall order letting a reader loose on the public and we try to protect that public as far as we can although of course no consultancy can be perfect, we do try! We could not understand better how precious people's written work is, and how hope and fear will be bound up in that."

Click here to read the rest of the interview.

Answer one simple question and you could be on your way to a literary adventure in Spain.

The Guardian has teamed up with The Literary Consultancy to offer one lucky winner a place on one of TLC's springtime writing courses. Held at Casa Ana in the heart of the Alpujarras mountain range in beautiful Andalucia, the course is led by expert tutor Rebecca Abrams and allows plenty of time for rest and relaxation alongside a unique writing programme designed by The Literary Consultancy. There will also be visits from guest speakers, Chris Stewart and Michael Jacobs, to inspire you further. The holiday is for one week and runs from 26th March to 1st April, 2011.

The prize includes a place for one person on a room-share basis, at ¾ board and is exclusive of flights. Single supplements may be available on a first-come, first-served basis at an extra cost of £120 per week per person. Click here to enter the competition. For more information about the holiday, please see TLC Literary Adventures.

The closing date for this competition is Monday 29th November 2010.

Start your novel this March!

Orion imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson has signed a two-book deal with a debut writer, after winning the rights at an auction.

Publishing director Kirsty Dunseath bought UK and Commonwealth rights to two books by Shelley Harris from Jo Unwin at Conville & Walsh for an undisclosed sum. Weidenfeld & Nicolson plan to publish the first book, Jubilee, in 2012 to coincide with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

Dunseath said: "Shelley is a real find. The voice in the novel is delightful, instantly engaging and full of warmth. Jubilee appeals to a certain nostalgia for the days when Abba vied with punk, when Jammie Dodgers were the biscuit of choice, and mothers across the country were busy icing buns red, white and blue... we will of course be asking booksellers to dig out their own memories and photographs."

Set on the day of the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, the book looks at "race, identity, community and childhood", focusing around a picture of a street party with a small Asian boy staring intensely at the camera.

Article by Catherine Neilan from The Bookseller

I sent my first draft to The Literary Consultancy for a critique and was really impressed with the insightful report . . . read more

Shelley Harris, Jubilee, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Orion)

Robert McCrum writes "People often talk about the future of the book; strangely, no one in the UK has recently thought to examine the prospects for the book industry in public. So the Free Word Centre's debate on the future of publishing was a first, and very interesting it was, too."

TLC's September 28th Big Publishing Debate was reported in the Guardian by McCrum, who hosted the panel discussion for our event.  The panel included Faber's Stephen Page and Canongate's Dan Franklin), a self-styled techno-geek from the BBC (Bill Thompson), and a very senior Google person (Santiago de la Mora).

Click here for McCrum's full article in the Guardian and find out more about how writers and publishers are adjusting to the new electronic age.

The Literary Consultancy hosted a cutting-edge publishing debate last night, with Google, Canongate, Faber, Robert McCrum and digital expert Bill Thompson. In the audience were key agents such as Claire Alexander and Caroline Dawnay, journalists and writers of different kinds. Click here to read the Bookseller review of the event. Check out TLC events for more, as we believe in keeping people writing informed about how the publishing industry works, and finding out what is in it for them.

Free tickets up for grabs for the FLOW festival!

Rebecca Swift is co-founder of The Literary Consultancy (TLC), which offers help to writers in the form of manuscript assessment, mentoring and agent placement. She’s offering you the chance to win a free ticket to an evening event at the FLOW literary festival!

The Literary Consultancy is now firmly established at the Free Word centre, a hub which celebrated its first birthday on 15 September. To mark the occasion, Free Word is launching its second annual literary festival, and this year the main theme and title is FLOW.

We are offering Writers’ & Artists’ website users a chance of winning two free tickets to TLC’s evening events on 22 and 28 September (worth £10 each) open to those who ring first. Call 020 7324 2563 and leave your details quoting ‘Free Word Flow/W&A’.

http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/2010/09/tlc-free-word-and-the-flow-festival/

These days, the task of first sifter generally goes to agents - but even they are feeling overwhelmed. Curtis Brown proclaims on its website, as a point of difference: "We are one of the few agencies who do accept unsolicited manuscripts." Anyone who begins to feel this publishing business is a closed shop has good reason.

But there are other ways to get a hearing. There is The Literary Consultancy, for example, established by Hannah Griffiths and Rebecca Swift in 1996, at a time when many independent publishers were being gobbled up by conglomerates. They began to see, as Swift puts it, that "bottom lines had become all-important, meaning that writers who were perhaps too literary or too experimental are judged with extreme caution by anyone interested in profits first."

In the slush pile Swift saw not guilt-inducing dross, but "a great big neglected pile of people's efforts. Everybody needed and deserved attention." But at the same time, "what they needed to understand was that that was very highly skilled attention, and that to get a really good response should cost money." They charge £75 to read stories of up to 3,000 words; £250 for a one-or two-page synopsis up to 100 double-spaced pages; £1.50 per double-spaced page for the first 300 pages of a longer manuscript, and £1 per page thereafter, providing for that a detailed, thoughtful critique of the entire submission. If they consider a work exceptional, they will recommend it to an agent. They are doing well.

During the weeks of 14th Sept – 5th Oct, the Free Word Centre in Farringdon presents their second annual festival.  The Free Word Centre is England’s first centre for literature, literary and free expression. Shreela Ghosh, the director of Free Word, outlines ten snazzy points about the growing need and desire for literary festivals in the UK. Click here to read the entire article in the Bookseller.

TLC also made an appearance at the London Book Fair on April 19-21st.

The New Self-Publishing

09 Sep 2010 | Liz Bury

Journalist Liz Bury investigates the growing popularity of self-publishing

Did you know that Apple has just made it easier to self-publish to the iBook store? The August 2010 upgrade of Pages, Apple’s answer to Microsoft Word, makes it possible to export an ordinary text document to ePub format. Create an ePub file, upload to the iBook store and bingo, you just self-published your novel.

http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/page.cfm/action=Archive/ArchiveID=13/EntryID=37

Journalist Liz Bury investigates the growing popularity of self-publishing

The London Book Fair

Did you know that Apple has just made it easier to self-publish to the iBook store? The August 2010 upgrade of Pages, Apple’s answer to Microsoft Word, makes it possible to export an ordinary text document to ePub format. Create an ePub file, upload to the iBook store and bingo, you just self-published your novel.

It’s a simple piece of development by Apple, and a great example of one of the many small technological advances that are fueling a boom in self-publishing.

The Literary Consultancy(TLC), an ms assessment service for writers, now considers self-publishing a legitimate option for many of its clients.

Rebecca Swift, TLC founder, says: “It used to be that an author either made the grade or they didn’t. One would tell people not to spend their money on vanity publishing. That was the moral position. It’s a much more complex world now – and much more exciting for writers.”

Just click on the London Book Fair to read the entire article.

A new year, a new you. Time Out's news editor Rebecca Taylor decided to put her new year's resolutions to the test by finally brushing up her 80 page manuscript and sending it to TLC.  Find out what happened by clicking on her article here.

The Freelance is the bulletin of London Freelance Branch of the National Union of Journalists.

Rebecca Swift of The Literary Consultancy gave advice for an article titled "Get that book published" alongside Matthew Hamilton of literary agent Aitken Alexander.

Here is a quote from the article:

"Both our experts noted book publishing is a much tougher world than even five years ago, and your book proposal has to show you're passionate enough - and have enough stamina - to pull it off. You need to convince an agent that you have the enthusiasm to carry out a labour of love, and only then look at the pragmatic, market-oriented aspects of the project."

Follow this link to The Freelance website to read the full article.

The Literary Consultancy has worked with the Arts Council in helping to raise the voice of culturally diverse arts in Britain. TLC has worked with writers on the Decibel scheme and will also be critiquing the work of runners up in the Penguin Books/Decibel writing competition. Click here to learn more about Decibel.

"The slush pile is the great awkward albatross of the publishing industry", writes Aida Edemariam, when she thinks about her five-month internship at a magazine in New York.  In her Guardian article titled, "File it in the bin", Aida explains how most publishers no longer read unsolicited manuscripts - but that that doesn't stop writers sending them in. Find out why it might be worth your while to properly have your manuscript assessed before submitting it to agents. Aida features TLC prominently in her recent article re slush piles and the publishing industry in the Guardian's G2.

The spring 2008, Staple magazine secured funding for two further years and began their next series with Staple 69/70: The Publishing Issue, a 285pp anthology guest-edited by Rebecca Swift of the UK’s leading manuscript appraisal and writers’ mentoring programme, The Literary Consultancy. The next issues  continue as single themed issues, with Staple 71: The Art Issue and Staple 72: The Music Issue both available, and more to come.

The Publishing Issue, guest edited by Rebecca Swift of The Literary Consultancy, lifts the curtain on the writing industry, from unpublished first draft to final place in posterity. Agents, editors and best-selling authors join forces with fresh talents to dig behind the writing courses and How To Get Published guides and reflect on why we write, and what impact writing can make on the wider world.

Write Words interviews Caroline McCarthy, Manager of The Literary Consultancy, about their new mentoring scheme for writers.

Tell us about the mentoring scheme

In short, the TLC mentoring scheme gives writers the chance to develop their work over the course of a year. It will include 6 one to one “tutorials” (conducted by email or post) by a carefully chosen mentor, who will be an experienced published author. At the end of the course writers will receive a manuscript assessment from a TLC and be invited to spend a day in London meeting with members of the publishing industry, such as literary agents and editors from leading houses. We are offering a discount of over £700 to the first 20 writers who enroll, so it’s a good time to join up! We are immensely grateful to The Arts Council England for supporting this scheme.

Why did you decide to launch a mentoring scheme for writers?

We see many writers who’ve had their manuscript assessed by us return with redrafts time after time, so offering ongoing tuition feels very much like a natural progression for TLC. Both myself, and TLC’s Director, Rebecca Swift, share a passion for working with new writers. We believe in nurturing the creative processes involved in writing, but also encourage people to think realistically about their work. The mentoring scheme – with its TLC read and an ‘industry day’ - fits in perfectly with our ethos: it’s great for people to develop their work but one needs a strong awareness of the realities of getting published.

Click here to read the entire interview and learn more about the mentoring scheme.

TLC first attended the Port Eliot Literature festival in July 2005. Developing authors had the opportunity to have their writing critiqued by our team of expert readers and benefit from a one-to-one tutorial. The festival was also covered in The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and several other publications.

Rebecca Swift was short-listed for the prestigious Kim Scott Walwyn Memorial Prize and attended a prize-giving ceremony and dinner at Oxford University Press in December 2004, where Kym worked as an editor. The winner was Rights Manager Lynette Owen. Trustees for the prize included Dame Gillian Beer, Francine Stock and Hermione Lee among others. The prize honours an outstanding achievement by a woman in publishing or related fields.

In the article in the Independent on Sunday, Rebecca explains that the idea for the consultancy came while working at Virago.  She realised that writers who had had their submission rejected had no where to turn.  Rebecca writes, " it became clear that a company that took it upon itself to try to perform acts of translation between the world of the writer and the industry should, as Carmen Callil later put it in in a ‘quote’ for us, ‘bridge the gap between agent, publisher and author and be of help to all three.’"

Click here to learn more about the prize and this year's winner.

Rebecca Swift was interviewed on Australian radio channel ABC, when TLC attended the Melbourne Literary Festival in 1999.

In 1997, Rebecca Swift and Hannah Griffiths, co-founders of The Literary Consultancy, published the article, “Style Gurus”,  in The Author. The article examined the situation for new writers in the UK and explained why and how The Literary Consultancy was set up.

"The chances are you will be familiar with being approached by friends or family and asked to read their jottings, autobiography, novel, whatever they have written and about which they want and an opinion – usually good. If you have ever agreed to do this, you will acknowledge the amount of energy required and also the difficulty in formulating an objective response. If it is really poor, both grammatically and structurally, how does one tell the writer? If it has some promise, but needs serious work, have you the time or experience to give detailed help?" Click here to read the entire article.