Write it, publish it, sell it
Reading Time: 4 minutes Don’t get too carried away with excitement and gratitude when an agent offers to represent you. Put on your business hat and look out for these common pitfalls with agency agreements.
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Reading Time: 7 minutes How does a literary agency sell its authors? Bestselling agent Andrew Lownie says there are three elements to selling books to publishers: 1) an agency needs to have saleable books in the first place; 2) the proposals need to be the best they can be; and 3) one needs to know the right editors to approach and not give up too easily.
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Reading Time: 2 minutes What can you do to maximise your chances of having your submission read and being taken on by a literary agent? We asked bestselling agent Andrew Lownie of the Andrew Lownie Literary Agency to share his top 7 tips.
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Reading Time: 3 minutes Choosing the right publisher is vital to the process of getting published, and with such a wide variety of markets and publishing options available, it’s critical that authors research those options. International speaker, author and thought leadership strategist Mindy Gibbins-Klein shares her top tips for making the right choice.
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Reading Time: 4 minutes Serialized novels were popularised by Victorian novelists such as Charles Dickens. Today, free online tools enable anyone to do it – and reach an audience. But would you do it for free? What if it lead to a million hits and a two-book deal with HarperCollins? Emily Benet tells us how she used Wattpad as a launchpad, and shares her top tips for success.
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Reading Time: 5 minutes Twitter: Huge distraction? Waste of time? Like shouting into an empty field? That’s what Saul Wordsworth used to think. But now his Twitter comedy character Alan Stoob has become a bestselling book, and may become a Hollywood movie. He reveals how he did it – and how you can create your own Twitter character.
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Reading Time: 4 minutes Kirsty McLachlan of DGA Ltd answers one of your most commonly-asked questions: “How do I get an agent?” She reveals ways to get noticed – and avoid languishing in the slush pile.
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Reading Time: 5 minutes How to write a book proposal and what exactly it needs to include are two of the questions I am asked most frequently as a literary agent – and not just by new writers. Even seasoned authors and experienced journalists may not have written a book proposal previously. In any book submission process the competition will be immense and the turndown rate high, so it is worth taking the time to get a proposal right. But what does that mean?
Read moreReading Time: 6 minutes When science fiction novel The Red Men was first written, ebooks and video sharing were futuristic tools. Now, as reality
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Reading Time: 2 minutes We’re all familiar with blog-to-book success stories. But what about blog-to-sitcom? Regular readers will remember Emily Benet. She won the 2010 Author Blog Award in the Published Author category, which was announced at the Publishing Talk tweetup at the London Book Fair. Her début book, Shop Girl Diaries, began as a weekly blog about working in her mum’s unusual chandelier shop.
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