Articles

Andrew Lownie uses his expert knowledge in the publishing field to maximise the potential of his clients and build up their careers. Here Andrew Lownie, and some of his clients and guest columnists, share advice on a variety of topics to writers.

Elsewhere on the site you can find a Frequently Asked Questions list on literary agents, as well as advice for submitting work to agents.

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  • Jack and Jill Knew the Score: Coaching for Writers Mar 05 2010 | leave a comment
    Jack-and-jill-knew-the-score-coaching-for-writers Writing coach Kurt Opprecht describes how coaching can help writers. Sometimes writing feels like tossing pebbles into a well. You stare at your reflection in the darkness and wait for the sound to come. When it does, the echo is so forlorn you want to cry. For an art form that aims to speak to the depths of human interaction, writing can be an incredibly solitary endeavor. In how many art forms does the artist work for years at a time on a single piece without interacting with a soul? We humans weren’t built to work like that. Writers are a species hungry for coaching. Of cours...
  • Creating the Life and Music of a Fictional Classical Composer Mar 05 2010 | leave a comment
    Creating-the-life-and-music-of-a-fictional-classical-composer Writer and composer Frederick Stocken discusses his historical noveI with music which he argues could breathe fresh life into the genre. I have been living with my fictional nineteenth-century composer, complete with his music, like a guilty secret for years, so it is strange to talk about him publicly for the first time. Where this project will go, the reaction to this article might determine. At the very least it raises some interesting questions about how the genres of historical fiction and biography might be stretched. It is hard indeed to find an existing parallel for the ...
  • Confessions of a Book Publicist Feb 01 2010 | 1 comment
    Confessions-of-a-book-publicist Najma Finlay, Publicity Director of Icon Books describes the publicity campaign behind Darren Moore's The Soldier. Book publicity is primarily about preparation – it’s not an exact science and you don’t have to be a genius to do it well. The skills of a valuable publicist are defined by preparation, doggedness and sometimes, sheer bloody-mindedness - and (although I might be doing myself out of a job here) just a little bit of luck shining at just the right time. It might be too much of a metaphorical stretch to say that publicists are the Cassandras of the industry – predicting...
  • All Things Come to Those Who Wait:Even your ITIN from the IRS! Jan 22 2010 | 1 comment
    All-things-come-to-those-who-wait-even-your-itin-from-the-irs Celia and John Lee explain the intricacies of applying for an ITIN to avoid paying US tax on US contracts. In December 2008 Andrew secured for us a contract with Palgrave Macmillan New York to publish our new book, The Churchills: A Family Portrait, based on our exclusive access to a large tranche of family papers that had not been in the public domain before. By bringing Winston’s brother, Jack, back into the family story we were able to revise many popular misconceptions about the great Churchill family. Andrew warned us that contracts with American publishers were slightly c...
  • How to Attract New Readers with Ezine Articles Jan 21 2010 | leave a comment
    David-craig Agency author David Craig, shows how ezines can be used to sell and promote books. Three weeks ago, I stumbled into the wonderful world of ezine articles. I was doing some Googling research for my next book Would You Buy That? when I found out that a lot of the most up-to-date and useful information on the Internet came from ezine articles. I then started placing my articles on an ezine and discovered that whether you are a published writer or aspiring to be published, an ezine is the place to be. An ezine is an electronic magazine available on the Internet. There are ezines covering ...
  • Placing Never Say Die Dec 14 2009 | 1 comment
    Placing-never-say-die The publishing process can often seem confusing. Here the ghost writer, Lynne Barrett-Lee, and agent, Andrew Lownie, for Melanie Davies’s Never Say Die explain their respective involvements in taking on and selling the book. Lynne Barrett-Lee August 2007 I am approached, via my husband, by Melanie Davies, who, as well as being one of his breast cancer patients, is a paraplegic who has lived a remarkable life. She reads my novels and also my weekly newspaper column, and wants a biographer who’ll bring humour to her story. Would I consider writing her life? I am reticent – I am a f...