On the 22nd of March, author and University of Winchester alumnus Harry Gallon read some excerpts from his debut novel, The Shapes of Dogs’ Eyes. He brought with him a representative from his publisher, Nathan Connolly from Dead Ink, who also talked to us about the world of crowdfunded publishing. Dead Ink is slightly unorthodox in that they prefer authors to approach them directly with submissions rather than going through an agent. The company is funded by the Arts Council and publishes approximately six new titles per year.
After the reading, the MA students participated in a workshop. We paired off into groups where one person was the ‘author’ and the other was the ‘agent’. The authors were given about ten minutes to give the agents as much information about their works in progress as they could, and then the agents pitched the work back to Harry and Nathan, who decided whether they’d accept the manuscript. This exercise was meant to get us used to talking about our own work in a way that would help sell it to a publisher.
The final instalment of the Winchester Reading Series was a nice note to end on, and showed us that there’s a separate world to that of traditional publishing. Seeing the publishing paths our visiting alumni took was interesting, and I’m sure many of us are hoping to achieve the same success some of our fellow MA graduates have.
View Harry’s reading here:
And his talk with Nathan Connolly here:
post by Mel Elledge
Litmus 2016 