Hello everyone 
Sorry to say, but the bad news is that summer appears to be over. Here in London, we’ve recently had a few really gorgeous late-summer days – blue skies, (fairly) fresh air, and a certain calm crispness that is really quite beguiling. But today, it’s back to the grey skies and general dankness that heralds a long and fairly unspectacular British autumn. Back to work, then.
Traditionally, summer has been a fairly quiet time in publishing. Soho empties out and Tuscany flourishes. For me though, and I think increasingly for others, it’s been business as usual. The publishing year is not as seasonal as it was – these days, it’s mostly full-on, all the time.
If there’s been any spare time recently (and there hasn’t been much) it’s come in handy for general maintenance, keeping systems up to date, and having lunches that are still an important part of the social fabric that binds our strange industry together.
Anyway, I do hope that your summer (if you’re in the northern hemisphere!) has been both pleasant and re-creational.
This seems a good moment to float an idea I’ve been developing ever since Submissions Surgery was discontinued.
I’d like to propose a group “meet-up” once a month.
As with Submissions Surgery, this would be exclusively for Litopians. Unlike SS, though, the agenda would not be purely focused on one person’s manuscript submission. It would actually be… well, anything you’d care to bring along.
So we might discuss one member’s submission, another’s issue with plot structure, another’s with self pub vs trad pub, and so on.
I know this sounds quite unstructured, but I think by broadening it out a bit we can make the process more valuable to more Litopians.
The practicalities…
I use a system call GoToMeeting to have regular client conference calls. Its’ very easy to use – if you can figure out Skype, you can use GoToMeeting. It will easily work on your desktop, your laptop, your mobile phone or your tablet. And there’s a phone number, too, if you just want to take part by phone.
One of the nice things about it is that it easily allows us to share documents if we want to, without any prior preparation. I have a 12-person license, which means we could handle up to 11 participants.
Let me know if this interests you. If it does, please give me a name or two (I’m calling it, for the moment, the Huddle… but you may well come up with a better name… after all, you’re writers )
There’s a poll at the top of this post for you to choose the best day of the week for you. I’m assuming we’d do it some time in the 5pm – 7pm range, UK. Sundays not possible due to Pop-Ups.
Sorry to say, but the bad news is that summer appears to be over. Here in London, we’ve recently had a few really gorgeous late-summer days – blue skies, (fairly) fresh air, and a certain calm crispness that is really quite beguiling. But today, it’s back to the grey skies and general dankness that heralds a long and fairly unspectacular British autumn. Back to work, then.Traditionally, summer has been a fairly quiet time in publishing. Soho empties out and Tuscany flourishes. For me though, and I think increasingly for others, it’s been business as usual. The publishing year is not as seasonal as it was – these days, it’s mostly full-on, all the time.
If there’s been any spare time recently (and there hasn’t been much) it’s come in handy for general maintenance, keeping systems up to date, and having lunches that are still an important part of the social fabric that binds our strange industry together.
Anyway, I do hope that your summer (if you’re in the northern hemisphere!) has been both pleasant and re-creational.
This seems a good moment to float an idea I’ve been developing ever since Submissions Surgery was discontinued.
I’d like to propose a group “meet-up” once a month.
As with Submissions Surgery, this would be exclusively for Litopians. Unlike SS, though, the agenda would not be purely focused on one person’s manuscript submission. It would actually be… well, anything you’d care to bring along.
So we might discuss one member’s submission, another’s issue with plot structure, another’s with self pub vs trad pub, and so on.
I know this sounds quite unstructured, but I think by broadening it out a bit we can make the process more valuable to more Litopians.
The practicalities…
I use a system call GoToMeeting to have regular client conference calls. Its’ very easy to use – if you can figure out Skype, you can use GoToMeeting. It will easily work on your desktop, your laptop, your mobile phone or your tablet. And there’s a phone number, too, if you just want to take part by phone.
One of the nice things about it is that it easily allows us to share documents if we want to, without any prior preparation. I have a 12-person license, which means we could handle up to 11 participants.
Let me know if this interests you. If it does, please give me a name or two (I’m calling it, for the moment, the Huddle… but you may well come up with a better name… after all, you’re writers
)There’s a poll at the top of this post for you to choose the best day of the week for you. I’m assuming we’d do it some time in the 5pm – 7pm range, UK. Sundays not possible due to Pop-Ups.
