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Insider tip
Ensure that no key elements of your work, particularly your signature, will be concealed by a frame or mount. Paintings should be signed at least 15mm into the canvas/paper.
Artist's Guide to Selling Work-
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Your covering letter: just do it
Filed under: Getting Published, Writing Advice
I’ve just come back from a week away in the Green Green Grass of Home. And very nice it was too – warm and sunny (but then the sun always shines in Wales). But now I’m back in London, with its different kind of heat, a humid heat that’s making me feel a bit lethargic… but is it the heat?
I’m back at my desk and looking at a list entitled ‘things to do’. Read more
Authors and artists: be strategic!
The web and digitisation have made possible the rapid publication of anything by anyone with access to the Internet. As a side effect this has also created a vast swathe of content that creates much more noise than signal.
Any creative that attempts to engage an audience online is doing so amid a multitude of voices offering similar content, all hoping to engage with an audience too. Without a plan an online effort could easily flounder.
So what can an author or an artist do?
The best recommendation is to adopt a strategy based on three questions: Read more
Writer-in-residence: book giveaway!
Filed under: Authors and Books, Competitions and Offers
John Simmons
There’s been a flurry of media interest in ‘writers in residence’, sparked by Alain de Botton’s stint at Heathrow. My Guardian letter explained that there are other ways to be a writer-in-residence. In fact, I took on that rather intriguing role at King’s Cross tube station for a year.
There are different ways to interpret the role. Alain de Botton was commissioned by BAA to be at Terminal 5 for a week, to set up a desk and be visible, to meet members of the public, explore stories of how T5 works, and then to write a book that BAA will give out to customers. Clearly, given the media coverage, the role was seen as a good PR opportunity for BAA.
My stint at King’s Cross was quite different. I was there for a whole year (half a day a week) and my focus was on the staff not the public. As King’s Cross is London Underground’s busiest station, managers were concerned that I should not interfere with the running of the railway. So I spent most of my time meeting Read more
It won’t write itself
Filed under: Authors and Books, Writing Advice
The minute I finish the fifth and final revision of my novel, I get up, stretch the kinks out of my shoulders, and feel a rush that is close to indescribable.
This has been a lengthy journey after all. I started in 2006 at a summer writing school when one of my characters came into focus so sharply he demanded to be written. Over the course of the week his antagonist, also his first love, came into view. They were talking to each other about why their relationship had failed. Before I knew it, I had a story – the anatomy of a break-up – and two characters as real and vivid as anything I would want to read.
Completing my novel has been a long road – three years in the making, with seven months of putting the entire thing to one side. I was doing all the right things, sharing chapters with other writers in my local writers’ group, and yet didn’t seem to be Read more
A waste of time
Filed under: Getting Published, Marketing Yourself
Aspiring authors often do something which is very kind of them, improves my day, but has no positive effect on their chances of publication whatsoever.
When you send in a submission and you enclose folders, document wallets, nice paper clips and sometimes even pretty ribbon, and then ask for your small SAE to be returned – I am the unworthy recipient of your lovely stationery. It’s very kind, but it’s not necessary! So, at the risk of depleting my stocks of these items (what am I saying?!), you only need Read more
How to get your foot in the literary agent’s door
Filed under: Getting Published, Literary Agents
A guest post from literary agent Judy Chilcote:
Hello Everyone … Thanks for asking me in for a chat. I hope I can help guide you to a better understanding of the publishing process from an agent’s point of view. There is a great myth that agents and editors spend our days sitting quietly in our rooms, reading the voluminous numbers of query letters, proposals and manuscripts we receive daily. In this fairy tale, the phone never rings, bills never need paying and authors never need hand-holding. Nothing to do but read wonderful writing all day. Lovely.
In fact, we almost never read submissions during office hours. We read at home in the evenings, on the train or on weekends. Our time is Read more
How to get the most from our site
Since launching our new-look Writers’ & Artists’ website, thousands of you have dropped in to see us online, which is what we’d only dared to hope back when we were tweaking designs and sorting out coding.
But are you getting the very most from the site? There are a few simple things you can do to boost your experience, other than Read more
What does The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain do?
Filed under: Authors and Books
Chances are you’ll be aware that the pursuit of writing can, at times, leave an author not knowing which way to turn. But help is at hand in the shape of The Society of Authors and The Writers’ Guild, both of which offer writers support and advice when terms get tough as well act as a collective voice for writers everywhere. Read more
The trickle-down editorial effect
Filed under: Getting Published, Literary Agents
I have seen a few comments on here from aspiring authors who have been advised to use an editorial consultant before an agent will take them on. This is a relatively new phenomenon in the world of publishing, and it has come about for economic reasons.
In the ‘good old days’ when publishing was often run as a hobby – and balance sheets were unknown – editors were happy to take on promising new authors and put the work into polishing their submissions. As times grew tougher (and publishing realised it needed to work like other businesses), the editorial work transferred from editors to literary agents. And as times grew tougher still, agents became Read more
How author Will Davis started out
Filed under: Authors and Books, Digital publishing, Getting Published
Back when I first started sending my work out, after the initial telephone-book-sized pile of rejection letters, I stumbled across a web company called Nooza who offered to review segments of novels and give reports on their appeal, market and saleability – for a small fee of course.
The idea being that you would then be able to attach the report to your covering letter (or begging letter as I used to think of them) to literary agents and publishers in the hope this would Read more
Buy the 2011 Yearbook
The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook is available at a discount from our online bookshop. Get all the information, contacts and advice you could need.On camera: Jon McGregor
"Being longlisted for the Booker Prize changed everything - it was the launchpad for my writing career." Click to view our video with novelist Jon McGregor »
On camera: Justin Cartwright
"Just write... If you're any good you may not know it, but certainly someone else will." Click to view our video with novelist Justin Cartwright »
On camera: Julie Myerson
The novelist and journalist Julie Myerson on how she got that all-important first publishing deal. Click here to view our video exclusive »