Events

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.

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.

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.