Fall is Festival season in the publishing community. Writers, book lovers, publishers and agents come out in droves to attend events, workshops and parties in celebration of the book. We encourage aspiring and emerging writers to attend writer’s festivals and conferences as a part of their learning and networking process while they’re developing their writing careers.
The benefits of having a literary agent are significant: they explain the publishing world to you, shape your book ideas and proposals, negotiate your deals and parse your contracts, and open doors to publishers that you might not be able to access yourself, among other things.
Since self-publishing became a common practice, we’ve begun to see authors routinely referred to as entrepreneurs, and the act of publishing described as an entrepreneurial endeavour. We wholeheartedly agree with these comparisons, but we feel they’re not new.
Last year Canadian poet and spoken word artist Shane Koyczan aimed to raise $15,000 on Kickstarter to fund his next poetry book. He ended up raising over $90,000. When it works, as it did for him, crowdfunding is a great way to cover the costs of editing, design, website development, and other costs associated with self-publishing.
This week marks the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the storm that devastated the historic city of New Orleans and surrounding areas of the Gulf Coast. In the midst of many retrospective books, articles, and opinion pieces that are appearing in news media around the world, an elegant book of essays and photographs is being released, which captures some of the most moving accounts of the storm’s aftermath we’ve seen so far.
We’ve noticed newer authors often don’t quite understand the role of a literary agent. So we asked some of our colleagues at Transatlantic Agency to debunk some of the myths they’ve noticed writers have of literary agents.
We sometimes feel the term “self-publishing” is a misnomer. It implies that you have to do it all yourself, which makes some writers feel overwhelmed. The good news is, you don’t have to go it alone!
We’ve all heard stories of writers who self-published a book and went on to sign a big deal with a major publisher. One of the most famous examples is Amanda Hocking, a thirty-something paranormal romance writer who self-published nine books that sold over a million copies.
In today’s publishing world – where so much happens digitally and virtually – a book launch party might seem like a quaint and outdated idea. Why go to the trouble of hosting an event when you can promote the book online?
Page Two’s summer intern recently asked us how she could stay up-to-date with the latest news in publishing. After all, commercial publishing is filled with just as many buzzwords, hot topics, complexities, and developments as any other major industry and can be confusing and intimidating to people on the outside.
In the book trade, some of the most coveted supporters a book can have are “big mouth booksellers” – booksellers who can hand-sell the book to customers and generate interest through word of mouth.
When we first became literary agents through Transatlantic Agency after years on the publishing side of the business, we diligently responded to every query we received from writers.
