A writer's look at the writing industry and the Internet.

Some time ago I came to the realisation that attending events in the writing community would be a fun and educational way to spend time, would spur me on to do more writing, all while potentially generating friendships and contacts. A local literature festival was to be my first attempt at this last year, but two events clashing made that a non-starter.

To make up for that, I’ve decided to go for one of the big events of the publishing calendar: the London Book Fair. It takes place 19-21 April 2010 at Earls Court, and its website describes it as follows:

The London Book Fair is the global marketplace for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels.

Taking place every spring in the world’s premier publishing and cultural capital, it is a unique opportunity to explore, understand and capitalise on the innovations shaping the publishing world. The London Book Fair brings you direct access to customers, content and emerging markets.

Makes me wish I had something notably pitch-worthy, providing me the dilemma of negotiating rights, sale and distribution…

So to be clear, it is not a literary festival where people leisurely read books and chat with authors and like-minded bibliophiles in between said authors giving talks about their new books, worlds or styles of writing. It is definitely an industry fair that helps determine the course of the publishing industry over the coming year, with wheeling and dealing happening all over the place.

In addition to the main Fair taking place from Monday to Wednesday, the weekend beforehand (17-18th) is when a number of seminars take place. And most of them are free.

It’s this combination of a ‘look inside the industry’ and seminars is precisely why I want to attend and have paid the £25 entry fee. I must confess it’s quite embarrassing looking at the attendee badge with its Matt Bruce – Author taking up most of the front, and I’m dreading the second shoe-drop at the Fair when I expect someone will ask, ‘Oh, so what have you written…?’ Still, this gets me access to all 3 days and any of the free seminars, though there is one paid-for  seminar I’m considering attending: How to Write For Screen: Film & TV Masterclass. It’s just a shame this 2½ hour class costs more than 3 days entry to the Fair itself…

I expect to attend more fairs and festivals during the year, so I’ll post about it here.

So who else is planning on attending these kinds of events in 2010, and where and when are they?

Early last year I realised that in order to maximise my chances of getting my work published I’d need to determine who published what, how to contact them and what to send them, i.e. publishers and submission guidelines.

You may assume that because it’s the 21st century (minus the jetpacks and moon base), to find such things you simply need to visit your favourite search engine, type a search string like…

SomePopularMagazine submission guidelines

…and up would pop that magazine’s submission guidelines page, and you could go about formulating your query, send it off and champagne would fall from the sky. Likewise, perhaps you don’t know what publications may print what you have written, so you find a markets website that provides you a list of publishers, what they accept and, in some cases, provides contact details and other critical information.

The problem is that most major publications do not put their submissions guidelines on their website and many markets websites are either light on the contents, out of date, or charge you a monthly or annual fee.

If you are in the UK or the USA there are two particularly good market websites: Writer’s Market and Writer’s Market UK (there are other large sites, but my understanding is that these two are typically the first port of call for most writers). However, this convenience comes at a cost: comparing like-for-like, the US website charges $39.99 per year and the UK website charges £25 per year. And if you publish around this globally-interconnected world, you may need to subscribe to a number of such sites.

But there is a cheaper, less technologically-advanced option. Believe it or not, these markets sites sell excellent printed copies of their directories. What’s more, they’re packed with the directory content for their own country and selected international publishers and markets, but also contain articles, guides, and information very helpful to people who are trying to break into a market or the industry as a whole. (As a site note, the Deluxe edition of Writer’s Market includes a year’s free membership to the website).

Yesterday I managed to buy myself a copy of both the 2010 editions of Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook (probably the oldest and best-respected UK directory) and Writer’s Market (US version) for less than what a subscription to one of the market websites would have cost me, delivered to my door.

If you’re in the position to be able to write such website subscriptions off on your tax return — or you’re prepared to make such an investment in your current position — then you have a powerful search tool at your disposal. Personally, I like to be able to flick through the book while I have my feet up on the sofa during writing downtime. It lets me note down a few good possibilities without taking up my keyboard time, which I prefer to reserve for writing where possible.