Pitching, Agents & The Business of Publishing with Alex Adsett
Workshop Overview
Have you ever wanted to spend some time with a literary agent and a publishing consultant who has more than 20 years’ experience and can discuss the ins and outs of contract and copyright law? Want to know how to pitch your story to an agent? Well, here's your chance! In this six-week workshop series, you'll meet Alex Adsett of Alex Adsett Publishing Services. Alex will cover topics such as representation, who needs an agent and who doesn't, what is a pitch and how to do it right, the tips and traps of traditional contracts and how to know who's genuinely going to publish your book and what the current scams look like.
Workshop Format
This workshop series will be held over six one-hour weekly sessions. These sessions will be conducted over Zoom, an online video conferencing platform. It can be downloaded for free here: https://zoom.us/. We strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with the platform prior to the workshops.
The sessions are as follows:
Week 1: Publishing overview & what the departments all do.
23rd of May, 9:30-10:30am.
Week 2: what does an agent do?
30th of May, 9:30-10:30am.
Week 3: Fun with Copyright.
6th of June, 9:30-10:30am.
Week 4: Sneaky Publishing Contracts things.
13th of June, 9:30-10:30am.
Week 5: How to get noticed: pitching Dos and Don'ts.
20th of June, 9:30-10:30am.
Week: 6 Live Pitching* and Critiques.
27th of June, 9:30-10:30am.
*Authors can put their name in a hat if they want to live pitch. This is not actually a pitch to the agent, but for the pitch to be structurally and commercially critiqued.
Please note:
Due to health and safety concerns over COVID-19, the ACT Writers Centre has adapted this event to a digital format. This is a pilot initiative, so your patience is appreciated. The Zoom meeting code will be sent out 48hr before the first session via Eventbrite. This meeting code will be for all sessions.
About the Expert
Alex Adsett is a literary agent and publishing consultant, who has been working in the publishing and bookselling industry for more than twenty years. She has managed Alex Adsett Publishing Services since 2008. As a consultant, Alex provides commercial and strategic advice to authors and independent publishers, particularly regarding publishing contracts. She has worked with many publishers including Editia, Sleepers, University of Queensland Press, Australian Society of Authors, and the Copyright Agency, and hundreds of authors including Melissa Lucashenko, Graeme Simsion, Isobelle Carmody, Barry Humphries, and Kylie Chan. As a literary agent, Alex is always seeking amazing manuscripts, with a focus on fiction and narrative non-fiction, especially SFF, crime and romance, for all ages from picture books to adults. She regularly delivers seminars on copyright and publishing contracts around Australia, and has served on various NFP literary boards including Small Press Network and Queensland Writers Centre.
Having started her bookselling career at Pulp Fiction Bookshop in Brisbane, Australia, Alex moved to Murder One bookstore in London, UK, followed by more than two years working for Simon and Schuster UK. On returning to Australia, she spent three years in her dream job as part of the Rights and Contracts Department of Penguin Books in Melbourne, before moving to the Contracts Department of John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. She is often to be found on twitter at @alexadsett or skulking around bookshops.