Write Cons
I have been recently reading about Writing Events and Meetings and there are a lot of them. I have been to two, never staying overnight for fear of being outed as a rubbish writer. London Book Fair last year was held in Earls Court and a lot of people tried selling me things. I sat down to have a rest at one particular place and found Will Self after a while being interviewed. The man doesn’t know how to talk without using words of at least four syllables. It is an experience listening to him speaking English in such a way and not understanding a vast amount of what he had to say. It was an advertisement not so much for his books, but to a rather large dictionary which tells you what the man is getting at.
It was only at the end, just at the time things were starting to close down that I found the right stall to sit and be preached to, which was a shame. There was no magic lamp there to find agents or publishers helpful in the extent that just going there can get your book seen. To be expected though I suppose or they would have to raise the price, make it thirty times as big and buy a lot of paper for all the extra books they’d have to print.
I have also been to the Guildford Book Festival, where they had a woman sitting at the front, just reading out parts of the Writers and Artists Yearbook and selling it afterward. She did stay afterward to answer questions though which was good, but my question was just answered by a finger pointing to the aforementioned book.
Most people’s reviews of them are that they are great and help since there are many like-minded people present, and while they are great fun, I am not too sure they will get u published.