Fees and Submissions
On this page you will find a full breakdown of our manuscript assessment service, including our fees, submission guidelines and terms and conditions. If anything is unclear or if you have a question about any part of the process, please do get in touch.
From time to time we will be making special offers in connection with our manuscript appraisals, so do keep checking the website or sign up to our newsletter for details.
Those of you familiar with our services will notice that we have raised the fees. We are of course sorry about this, but TLC has not raised its prices for over six years and the forthcoming rise in VAT to 20% has meant that we feel this is the time to realign our pricing. We remain competitive if not cheaper than other similar services, we do not charge extra for any of the linking services we make to agents on your behalf, and also offer a range of cut-price or free events at various festivals and the Free Word Centre to keep TLC at the cutting-edge of thinking with writers about their work and the publishing industry.
In addition, our services are recommended by Arts Council England, and we are delighted to be able to offer a quota of free reads for low-income, high quality users, please see ACE Bursaries for more information. The Guardian also recognise our commitment to quality and honesty, and in 2011 will formally recommend TLC as their consultancy of choice.
How to Submit
- Please fill in our Application Form.
- Post your work to us. (The text must be printed out in 12 point font, double spaced, on one side of A4, preferably in loose sheets, with each page numbered. This does not apply to poetry, which can be presented in its original form.) Click here to see our formatting video and download our example PDF.
- OR email your work to us at(we charge a 10p per page printing fee).
- Send a cheque for the appropriate fee with the manuscript OR pay by online bank transfer (contact us for our bank details).
- Include an SAE if you would like your work returned OR state that you’re happy for us to recycle the pages. We will then email you the assessment.
- Include a short covering letter with some brief information about what sort of manuscript it is you’re submitting (thriller, literary, fantasy, romance etc), a bit about yourself, if you have attended any writing courses and any history of previous submissions to publishers or agents. Include any specific anxiety you may have about the text itself, and if there is anything you would particularly like your reader to address or advise you on.
- Include a synopsis.
What to expect
Once a manuscript arrives with us at The Literary Consultancy, we will treat it with the utmost care. We will acknowledge received work via post or email. Your work will be matched to its most suitable reader from our team. As the most firmly established literary consultancy in the UK, we have over the years built up an extensive team of readers – writers who use our services can feel confident that their work will be allocated to the reader who will best meet their needs.
Readers will read your manuscript thoroughly and write a detailed and constructive critique of your work, which will be sent to you within 4-6 weeks. We also offer a ‘quick turnaround’ service, where you will receive feedback within 7-10 working days. Please see Quick Turnaround below for more details.
We believe that each writer should be treated as an individual in relation to their own background and needs. Thus our readers’ critiques are not written to fit a fixed generic formula, they are written in the most constructive manner for the writer. The average length of a TLC critique of a full-length manuscript is between 5 and 10 pages (this is a guideline only).
We expect writers to be able to manage and accept editorial intervention in the belief that this is an important capacity for writers at any level. If you have a genuine query concerning your report please write to your reader c/o TLC administration atand we will forward queries to your reader on your behalf.
No initial letter or phone call is required. However, if you do wish to contact us with any queries we are available to discuss any questions or concerns you may have at any stage.
Fee structure
Due to our successful company turnover, we are obliged to include VAT costs within our fees. All the below fees are inclusive of VAT.
Payment can be made via cheque payable to The Literary Consultancy Limited or via a bank transfer. Once we have received your manuscript we will email you our bank details.
If you have any questions, please contact us
| Fiction/children’s/non-fiction | Prices (vat inc.) |
|---|---|
| Up to 50 double-spaced pages (opening extract) | £180 |
| Up to 100 double-spaced pages (opening extract) | £300 |
| Full manuscripts of 101-205 double-spaced pages | £360 |
| Manuscripts longer than 205 pages @ £1.75 per double-spaced page for the first 300 pages and £1.20 per page thereafter. | £1.75/page+ £1.20/page |
| Illustrated children’s books (up to 4000 words) | £120 |
| Short Stories | Prices (vat inc.) |
|---|---|
| Up to 3000 words | £90 |
| Each additional 2000 words (over 3000) | £12 |
Please note: Stories are charged individually
| Poetry | Prices (vat inc.) |
|---|---|
| Up to 300 lines | £145 |
| Each additional 100 lines (over 300 lines) | £45 |
Re-reads for returning clients are charged at 5% off the prices as outlined above. This only applies if the re-written work is sent back within a year from your first submission and if you are submitting an equal number of pages from the same work.
Fees for film/theatre/radio/TV scripts are on the Scriptwriting page.
Quick turnaround
We can provide feedback within 7-10 working days for an additional third of the standard fee added onto the overall cost. If you require this service, please contact us first so we can check editor availability.
Overseas clients
We prefer overseas payment by bank transfer. An additional bank charge of £8 is required for all clients within the E.C. Please contact us for bank details. We do not accept cheques in a foreign currency. While we understand that overseas clients who live outside the E.C. are exempt from V.A.T., we have kept the prices the same to cover additional bank and administrative costs.
Terms & conditions
- For the fee we undertake to provide a one-off independent critique. If a report is deemed unclear both in the view of the client and TLC, we will seek clarification from the reader and advise accordingly. Whilst we will endeavour to be as helpful as we reasonably can in-house, the fee covers the read only as described.
- We will decide in-house who the most suitable editor for the job is, and aim to make a good match each time. TLC’s decision is final in the choice of editor.
- We reserve the right to return your work and payment to you should we fail to find a suitable editor.
- We aim to provide an assessment within 4-6 weeks but cannot guarantee this.
- If you have paid for a speed read, you can expect to receive your report within 7-10 working days.
- TLC is unable to read submissions without the correct fee attached.
- Manuscripts must be double-spaced, in 12 point font and printed on single sides of A4, unbound and numbered.
- We cannot return your manuscript without a SAE with sufficient postage to cover the weight of your work. If no SAE is included, your manuscript will be confidentially recycled.
- Folders and plastic wallets will not be returned.
- We cannot take responsibility for work lost in the post, so please ensure you have a back-up at home.
- Your work will be treated in the strictest confidence.
- The copyright of your work is automatically yours and remains yours at all times.
- The copyright of the report remains with TLC. Permission should be sought from TLC before quoting a report, for example to agents or on personal websites.
- Recommendations to agents or publishers will only be made after an assessment if both the reader and TLC in-house team deem your work to be potentially marketable.
- In the event that we wish to forward your work to agent or publishers on your behalf, we will never do so without seeking your permission first.
- TLC has linking agreements with a number of literary agencies. This is not to the financial detriment of the author. We will disclose all information pertaining to this upon request.
- TLC will make no false promises or mislead the writer in any way.
- Once you have received an assessment, TLC will keep you informed of future offers and events via our Newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time.