Thursday, April 15, 2010

The View From Here makes an agreement with top houses

In what's got to be an incredible first, online literary magazine The View From Here has signed an agreement with 14 highly regarded publishing houses including Random House Bloomsbury and Penguin Books.

Under the Publishers' View Agreement The View From Here will work with key people in the industry from around the world to help publishers identify fresh new talent.

"We look forward to working more closely with The View from Here, a creative, forward-thinking magazine that will help us spot and promote new talent."
Alessandro Gallenzi – Publisher and Managing Director, Alma Books

Each publisher has entered into an agreement whereby they will appoint a key member of their staff to read the printed edition of The View From Here every month, with a view to looking for talent they'd be interested in working with. The Publisher's that have entered into the agreement are:

UK: Random House, Bloomsbury, Canongate, Penguin Books, Fourth Estate, Faber & Faber, Little Brown Book Group, Legend Press, Alma Books and Tindal Street Press
USA: Unbridled Books and Milkweed Editions
Australia: Text Publishing and Allen & Unwin

Mike French, the Senior Editor of the magazine, said, " We want to build on our reputation for championing and encouraging the best emerging writers and poets and the Publishers' View Agreement gives us the means to achieve that. Historically, literary magazines have been a way for talented writers to get their work out there and get noticed by Publishing Houses but we wanted to build on this and have a clear structured channel so this process wasn't left to chance."

In a climate where literary consultants advise writers to avoid the slush pile at all costs this is a new and exciting way to get noticed. And unlike many routes to bypass the slush pile, it doesn't involve hours of networking every day to get noticed and more importantly the process does not take a fee from authors at any stage of getting their work infront of the editors, and in some cases, directors of the publishing houses. In a climate where access to those with influence normally comes with a price tag ( literary consultancies will often take a cut from an author's advance if they represent them ) the Publishers' View Agreement means effective help for writers without seeing them as a source of income. And as the majority of writers earn comparatively little we believe this is a socially responsible scheme.

If you're a writer and are interested (and if you're a writer, you should be interested!) then visit The View From Here's submissions page:
http://www.viewfromheremagazine-submissions.com


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