Thanks for this, Rebecca - really interesting replies.

And thanks to Anna for setting it up. I enjoyed reading this.

Dear Issy,

To answer your question about how practical consultancies are in respect of aiding publication, I can answer that as and when we think we have something special, well written (or potentially well written) as well as marketable, we will help make links on your behalf to appropriate literary agents or in the case of niche work, publishers.
We don't take any further cut for this, although some agents give us a percentage of a deal they may make. We have helped many people like this - for their quotes etc. see our website www.literaryconsultancy.co.uk.

However - and this is a big however - it would be highly irresponsible for us to advertise that we are capable of helping everybody produce a publishable piece of work! To be honest (and no body likes to hear this) it is only around 1% of people who write that will get commercially published. These days many people enjoy writing, and TLC's job is to help them work out if what they have produced will find a commercial market, or not. We set up as much to explain why a a piece of work was not being accepted by publishers, as being a link to publishers - if you see what I mean.

If you are a good writer, we hope you will be challenged by our readers's responses, to be as good as you can be (if you aren't there yet). We do believe that a combination of talent and perseverance will usually lead to commercial publication if the writer is in it for the long haul. We see ourselves as part of a process, not always as an end point, although for some people of course we have been an end point as far as their finding markets is concerned.


Hope this is clear! Thanks to all - best, Rebecca

Thanks ladybird - I think writewords are brill. Rebecca

Hi Rebecca,

Thanks for taking the trouble to respond to our points. People on this site often ask questions about manuscript agencies, so it's good you're responding in such detail.

I'm glad you don't use templates. However, I do feel that the system of charging by number of words/pages is a kind of template, in that this is not the only way to offer feed-back; although it is usually the most expensive for the writer.

I understand your point that personal contact can be detrimental to a writer's interest - because the reader is less likely maintain distance (although you must have to deal with this in your mentoring scheme). However, I'd say that at a certain point in a writer's development, it's not possible to improve without closing the distance and finding good one-to-one feedback.

I'm glad you said (to Issy) that you think it would be highly irresponsible to advertise that you are capable of getting a writer's book published (unlike another agency whose home page claims it's "Your Path to Literary Agents"). This is something of a bugbear of mine where manuscript agencies are concerned. Clearly, their function is to help writers improve their books. If they do so, and the book is capable of interesting an agent, there is no reason the writer needs an intermediary to send it to one. But then the agencies are in competition with each other, and it must be very tempting to offer the carrot that most if not all potential clients most desire.

It's also good that you vet your readers with regard to their ability to offer useful and professional feed-back (which wasn't really the case with the agency I used to work for). In the bigger picture, the more I learn about coaching, teaching and mentoring (mainly in the business worlds) the more I see just how poor the writing world is in general in training people to undertake these tasks.

Terry

Hi again Terry,

I do take your point that if writers are good then in a way they should not need the intermediary of a consultancy, and often we will suggest that writers don't use us but send out direct to agents if it becomes clear on the phone or by mail that they don't need an opinion, as it were but are just looking for an easy link-through.

Really, we did set up to inform people, in detail, why publishers or agents weren't taking them on as I have experienced the profound frustration of people unable to engage a professional opinion, let alone get published! It seemed that there was a gulf of information between the industry and people writing and I wanted TLC to address this which to some extent it does. People have to pay, but we also have an Arts Council grant for high quality low income writers which is a godsend. This said, I also think that writers have undervalued editorial work in the past, so charging is not necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway, really I am against anything that suggests there are markets when there aren't (commercial I mean, and of course the picture for writers gets more complicated every day vis a vis options for writers online ...). I suppose my prejudice against coaching would be that the underlying expectation of the writer would be that with coaching, with enough effort, it will all turn out all right in the end. And that must be expensive? We are more of a short, sharp shock which I suppose can jolt people a bit but often in a good way. I suppose I am too hard boiled to think it turns out all right in the end for most people vis a vis commercial publication, because having worked in a publisher I know how many people write who won't 'make it.' I also think that 'making it' is often not what people think it will be, but that's another story.

All this said, I know that what matters in life is timing and the individuals involved so if you are offering good work for writers in your own model, then the people that will value that will find you. That is sounding all a bit hocus pocus, but another way of putting it is that the writer/client will know if they are being helped or not by you or any other individual. It sounds like you offer good, committed work in your own style which is great. We do what we can in a model that makes sense to me. As for other consultancies and how they market themselves ... NO COMMENT.

All luck, Best, Rebecca

Rebecca,

Thanks again for answering my awkward questions! I'm sure it's clear to everyone here from your responses that you take your work very seriously, and want to make sure writers receive a good service with honest and realistic expectations. I'd heard good things about TLC from a friend, Jane McNulty (one of your mentors), and what you've said confirms what she told me.

I completely agree on the difficulties writers face in getting professional feed-back, when publishers and agents can't or won't supply it. I wasn't saying it's bad to charge, however; just that there are different ways of charging that the agencies don't tend to explore (perhaps understandably given the need to cover overheads and staff costs).

We could discuss coaching another day! It's a big subject. I do agree that bad coaching can falsely raise a writer's expectations. Good coaching, by contrast, would I think only work on expectations in terms of analysing their effect on the writer's development.

Also agree on the problems of 'making it' in today's instant-everything culture. Too often, writers get that first contract, that they think is their salvation, only to discover it's actually a future millstone when the publisher drops them because of low sales.

You're right: writers do tend to find me. I think it's because I offer an approach that's different and more personally tailored (though it's not for everyone). I much prefer working this way to what I had to do with the agency I was with. But then, they are two very different processes. I have the freedom to tailor what I offer more to suit individual needs and often in fact to help writers work out what those needs are in the first place!

Best wishes,

Terry

Thanks for these replies, very interesting to read!

Cheers Terry ... and all. Thanks for comments, and yes, coaching discussions another time! All best - Becky

Dear Rebecca,

Thank you for your detailed and direct replies, am impressed.