Industry & Advocacy News
December 13, 2018
Writers Can Attend Bootcamps at No Cost Partly Due to a NEA Award
New York (December 12, 2018) — The Authors Guild Foundation, the charitable and educational arm of the Authors Guild, announced a new series of day-long business bootcamps for writers in Cincinnati, the Atlanta metro region, New Orleans, Santa Fe, and Seattle that focus on educating authors about what it takes to create, publish, and market books in an intensely competitive climate. Working in collaboration with Penguin Random House as the exclusive publishing partner, the goal of the program is to reach a diverse group of authors in communities around the country that may not have access to a wealth of programs on the writing business or to publishing industry mentors. Participants can attend the Foundation’s bootcamps at no charge due in part to an award from the National Endowment of the Arts. The schedule for the next three bootcamps is as follows:
The dates for bootcamps in Santa Fe and Seattle will be announced shortly. Those interested in attending one of our business bootcamps for writers can register on the Authors Guild website.
“We carefully chose regions with diverse literary communities, but few free educational or networking opportunities for authors to learn about the industry, making it more challenging to secure needed support to ready their manuscripts for the marketplace,” said Mary Rasenberger, Executive Director of the Authors Guild. “American literature is at its best when it reflects all regions, cultures, and experiences of its citizenry; and that means enabling and supporting those people in underserved areas who are actively pursuing careers as writing and publishing professionals.”
Faculty for each event include Authors Guild legal and self-publishing experts, Penguin Random House representatives, and local published authors and agents, bringing a variety of experience and knowledge to the workshop. Corporate sponsor Leuchttrum1917 is providing free cloth-bound notebooks for each bootcamp participant. Each day-long session can accommodate up to 40 writers in person and will be supplemented by follow-up webinars (live and/or archived) and online Q&A sessions on related topics, allowing authors to refresh and extend their knowledge. These digital sessions will be open to all writers regardless of location or publishing history.
“Penguin Random House is delighted to partner with the Authors Guild Foundation on this important initiative and to participate by sending our executives to the bootcamps to share their publishing expertise and insights in the sales, publicity, and editorial specializations,” said Madeline McIntosh, CEO, Penguin Random House U.S. “This in-depth exploration of the business aspects of the writing world and exposure to some of the nation’s finest writers and publishing professionals supports the growth of an inclusive publishing community.”
The Foundation launched the bootcamp program on Friday, November 2, 2018 at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Yolanda Wisher, 2016 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, led a discussion about the challenges and thrills of publishing a poetry manuscript and shared her publishing journey from her earliest years through the present day. Wisher was joined by fellow panelists from the Authors Guild, Penguin Random House, literary agency The Book Group, and author Emma Eisenberg, co-director of Blue Stoop.
The program in Philadelphia gave the Foundation the chance to see what resonated most with bootcamp participants and make minor improvements to the eight-hour curriculum before hosting the rest of the writing bootcamps in 2019.
About the Authors Guild and Authors Guild Foundation The Authors Guild is the nation’s oldest and largest professional organization for writers. Its mission is to empower working writers by advocating for the rights of authors and journalists by supporting free speech, fair contracts, protecting author copyrights, fighting for a living wage, and creating an engaged and welcoming community. For more, visit www.authorsguild.org.
The Authors Guild Foundation is the charitable and educational arm of the Authors Guild. It educates, supports, and protects American writers to ensure that a rich, diverse body of literature can flourish. The Foundation believes that an abundance of free literary expression is essential to our democracy, and that can only be achieved by protecting authors’ constitutional and moral rights to benefit from their work.
About Penguin Random House Penguin Random House (www.penguinrandomhouse.com) is the world’s first truly global trade book publisher. It comprises the adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction print and digital trade book publishing businesses of Penguin and Random House in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India, Penguin’s trade publishing activity in Asia and South Africa; Dorling Kindersley worldwide; and Random House’s companies in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile. Penguin Random House employs more than 10,000 people globally across almost 250 editorially and creatively independent imprints and publishing houses that collectively publish more than 15,000 new titles annually. Its publishing lists include more than 70 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors.
About the National Endowment for the Arts This project is funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency that promotes and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation. To find out more about how NEA grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.
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