Bernadette Foley has worked as an editor and publisher in the Australian publishing industry for over 25 years. Her career had also taken her to New York to work with the Penguin Putnam publishing company. She has spoken at writers’ festivals and conducted editing and writing workshops around the country.
Last week, Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest was shortlisted as a finalist in the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, adding to the long list of accolades already this year for this debut novel. We thought it would be a good opportunity to share some gems from our podcast interview with
Earlier this year, in episode 4 of our top-rating podcast, So you want to be a writer, we spoke with internationally published author Allison Rushby.
Now, many writers begin self-publishing and end up with a traditional publishing book deal. However, Allison has done it the other way round – choosing after 14 years as an author to self-publish for the first time this year when the rights to four of her earlier books reverted to her. Then, on a roll, she chose to self-publish her new young adult novel, Being Hartley, at the same time.
Allison provided some valuable insights into the relative strengths of both of these two publishing methods, and writing in general – which we have summarised here.
If you think that manuscripts are judged solely on the merit of the story alone, we think you should be sitting down for this next paragraph.
It doesn’t matter how many on-trend zeitgeist-welding hipsters your story possesses, if a manuscript offends in some other way, it may never be read. We’re talking about things that distract a reader from delving any further.
You see, for editors, it’s hard work wading through countless manuscripts each week. And your goal as a writer is to not make that job any harder!
Kylie Mason is a Sydney-based freelance editor with a long history of working with Australian publishers, both on staff and on a freelance basis.
Despite having a master’s degree in creative writing, it’s the editing that gets her up in the morning. “I love getting involved with stories, I love getting involved with writers, and I love the way writers think,” she says.
We had a chat with Kylie about being a paid pair of eyes in episode 7 of our top-rated podcast So you want to be a writer. And here’s what we discovered.
Blaise van Hecke is the publisher and co-owner of Busybird Publishing. She is also the author of The Book Book: 12 Steps to Successful Publishing and a contributing author to Self-Made: Real Australian Business Stories. For more information visit www.busybird.com.au or contact [email protected]
It wasn’t long ago that if you wanted to be published, there was only one route: submitting to what’s known as a commercial (aka ‘traditional’) publisher. Of course, this was during an age where you banged out your work on a typewriter and had to mail out submissions. After all, this was before computers became as common to households as toasters.
Then vanity publishing (now known as self-publishing) came into vogue, but it was an expensive endeavour and lacked credibility. If the book couldn’t make it with a real publisher, then it couldn’t be any good, could it?
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