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Industry Insiders

Published 4 months ago

For many writing is a solitary practice: sitting at a desk (or often enclosing oneself off in a crowded café) with only your thoughts and creativity as a guide. This is most certainly true, but literary pursuits need not always be lonely. In fact, much of the writing world involves interactions with others. Agents, publishers, press officers, publicists, literary event coordinators, journalists, short story websites all work in the field of literature and writing, but where the author is alone these individuals are surrounded by others.

Some of these professions involve a life time of career cultivation, while others have started literary organisations or events as a hobby. But no matter what these people do, or if they are paid or volunteer, their insight into the literary industry is invaluable to any writer.

The majority of unpublished authors hope to become published authors, and when this happens they will (hopefully) come into contact with agents, publicists, festival coordinators and journalists. Or perhaps, while the unpublished plug away at home, you/they/we are also going to writing circles and literary festivals, pushing their writing at conferences and querying agents. Therefore, knowing how the industry works can help the unpublished author (an even the published) manoeuvre through the literary world. It helps to know what it’s like to be an Industry Insider.

Over the next few months we will be introducing a series of articles entitled ‘Industry Insiders’. While we have a crack line-up scheduled for upcoming ‘Industry Insider’ articles, we’d love to hear from you. Let us know what part of the literary industry you’d like to know more about, and we’ll try and find out more information.

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