Posts Tagged ‘publishing industry’
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.
TLC hosted a fabulous event last night on 22nd September, in which Fiona Mountain, historical novelist and author of Rebel Heiress, (previously published under the title Lady of the Butterflies) and Chair Paul Blezard, writer and presenter of One Word digital radio station, discussed her route to publication, and how two TLC reports helped her as part of a long journey into print. Paul Blezard teased out her story, from struggling writer to one who has just made it onto the bookshelves of Sainsbury’s.
During the second half of the event, Fiona and Paul were joined by literary agent Broo Doherty, creative writing tutor Greg Mosse, Professor Brenda Cooper and TLC’s Director Rebecca Swift. The panel discussed how to attract the attention of literary agents and the inner workings of the publishing industry. The Q & As went on into the night, focusing on very real questions such as whether writers can write what they really want to write anymore. After the interval, we had an energetic rapid-fire round of practice pitches of novels from members of the audience and the panel responded. It was inspiring, albeit rather terrifying, no doubt.
“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.
In her article published in Pretext magazine, “When creativity meets commerce or the relationship between the publishing industry and the individual writers through the eyes of an interested observer”, Rebecca Swift examines the increasing commercial pressures on the publishing industry. The article is currently part of the University of East Anglia curriculum for the MA in Creative Writing.
“I remember the day when modern publishing in the UK ‘changed’. I was twenty-five and proud to be working as an editorial assistant at an independent publishing house that had helped bring about a revolution in the way the public viewed work by women writers.
Enter, one ordinary London afternoon circa 1991: a man in a suit. The kind of man that we dd not often see inside our offices. The ‘buzz’ was this was ‘the money-man’. We in the then large editorial department gathered round to listen to what he had to say. Editors at our company had, the gentleman informed us, hitherto been publishing by following ‘our tummy waters.’
‘Tummy waters’ , the money-man said, as if to a group of primary school children, which included the companies editorial directors, women who had been buying books with flare and commitment for many years, ‘ had to stop.’ He went on to explain the brilliance of his principle thus: ‘If for example, you get in two books and one shows promise but needs editing, and one is in a perfectly finished condition, you would take the one in the finished condition, wouldn’t you? Time after all is money. Editing is after all time. You follow?’ He scanned the room to see if through the fog of our basic, feminine, aquatic instincts we could sufficiently access his logic – as if publishing were some kind of Sophie’s Choice”.
Click here to read the entire article from Pretext Magazine, Vol. 10 (2004).