Today I attended the first day of The Literary Consultancy's annual conference: Writing in a Digital Age. It's my second year, the Conference's third, and there was a strong turnout, which is always good to see. I personally opted for the best seat in the house - halfway up the raised seating at the back, right in the corner so I have a great view and a sturdy wall for some good right-angled leanage, while remaining reasonably inconspicuous, which is generally a good way to be in my opinion when you find yourself the only non-writer and member of 'traditional publishing' in a sea of authors. I just typed out my reasons and decided that as it took up two beefy paras that I best delete and move on to the conference itself...
For those of you who don't know who The Literary Consultancy are, I've put their very helpful website at the bottom but, in short, they provide professional and in-depth editorial and proofreading services for authors. Beyond that, and what the conference is really all about, they are an excellent source of advice for authors on traditional publishing, but also all the other options available to new writers in the changing publishing landscape.
The conference is a three-day extravaganza and I'm not about to go into loads of detail now. Why not? Not because I'm lazy but because TLC cleverly slipped in little writing spies, including myself as it happens, to write up each session in detail and you can have a read (and listen) of those HERE. I really recommend you taking a look as there's so much interesting information to be taken, be you a writer, a reader, a publisher, an agent, a bookseller or anyone else with an interest in whether books are going to die or not (spoiler: they're not by the way, we're gonna save 'the book' by doing lots of cool digi-shit).
But let me give you my highlights of Day 1
The first session with keynote speaker, sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow, was pretty mind-blowing. I don't think I've ever heard quite so eloquent a speaker - not a single 'umm'. And Cory sure knows his stuff, and he has a whole lot of passion to go with his knowledge. But the whole talk left me slightly sweaty with anxiety if I'm completely honest. I thought I knew what DRM meant but it turns out I really don't know anything at all about anything and basically Amazon is trying to eat our souls and really I shouldn't call myself a publishing-person (not that that's how I introduce myself at dinner parties...) because I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. *breathe* Conveniently for me and for the writer-up of the session, it was all recorded - thank the lord - and you can have a listen HERE. Phew.
The next two sessions were brilliant. In content, yes, but what I loved most was the juxtaposition of the two panels. The first of the two was the Industry Snapshot with an all-male panel which, after a very informative talk from Steve Bohme at Neilsen Bookscan, discussed the doom and gloom of publishing. Having come from an agency myself, I am certainly no stranger to the view of panelist and agent James Gill talking of a 'narrowing' of the industry, but it's still so depressing to hear that even the proverbial gatekeepers are struggling to summon up a bit of hope. After an hour and a half of talking about publishing 'service providers' and 'processes', the next session with an all-female panel (including author Rebecca Abrams, publisher Alexandra Pringle, and writer and Kingston's Publishing MA course leader Alison Baverstock) had a slightly different approach... 'service providers' had suddenly morphed into a discussion about editors, authors and agents forming a publishing 'family'...
A talk on funding for writers followed but the prize for the most cheering talk of the day goes to the wonderfully positive sounding 'The Age of Possibility'. Last year, this session was probably my least favourite... on a completely subjective level I guess I'm just not that interested about creating an app with situation-specific stories for the reader to enjoy on their commute. Clever, yes, but inspiring - I'm afraid not for me. That said, this year was fun. John Mitchinson of Unbound, Canongate's Frances Bickmore, and David Varela all discussed the digital opportunities available out there for novelists. Not KDP, no, far more exciting than that and enviously creative (particularly loved hearing about the evolution of the Letters of Note blog tie-in book and Letters Live). Discussions ranged from zombies computer games, to setting up pirate radio stations, to crowd-funded literary projects. Have a read of the write-up for more info, and have a browse of the Unbound website yourself, and feel inspiiiireeed.
TLC Conference 2013
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