andrew lownie literary agency

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.

  • Don't believe the 'shares outperform cash' story

    15 Sep 2012

    David Craig, author of PILLAGED How they’re looting £413 million a day from our savings and pensions shows how to avoid the five worst money mistakes writers can make. In article four he looks at shares. If it were the case that cash (money held in a bank) usually outperformed shares (either shares held directly by savers or held by unit trusts and pension funds) then most of us would be much better off leaving our savings in a bank rather than investing in stock markets, unit trusts, bonds, ETFs, OEICs or whatever. But this would also mean that most of Britain's 28,000 supposedly ...Read more

  • Don’t trust a Unit Trust

    14 Sep 2012

    In his third investment article aimed at writers, David Craig gives advice on Unit Trusts. If you're looking for somewhere for your savings, you'll find a queue of people - banks, financial advisers and many others - all eager for you to put your cash into unit trusts. Why? Because they care about your wellbeing? Or because they make massive commissions from flogging unit trusts? In Britain we pay an astonishing £59m every working day to unit trust managers and to the people who sold us those unit trusts. That's £59m a day - £15bn a year - being taken from our savings and pocketed...Read more

  • Only bank with your bank

    13 Sep 2012

    In the second of his articles, David Craig, author of Pillaged: How they’re looting £413 million a day from our savings and pensions, continues with his financial tips for writers. The main high-street banks (HSBC, Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds etc) love to run our current accounts. They don’t make too much money from this. But it gives them the chance to do what they call ‘cross-selling’ – using their contacts with us and information about us to flog us all kinds of other financial products. These include deposit accounts, mortgages, insurance, pensions, investments and so on. But, ap...Read more

  • Money tips for Writers

    12 Sep 2012

    DON’T SAVE WHILE OWING MONEY. In the first of five articles, David Craig, author of Pillaged: How they’re looting £413 million a day from our savings and pensions shows how to avoid the five worst money mistakes writers can make. Many writers will not have a regular income and pension from a full-time job. In some years a writer might make a good living, in others money may be tight. So for writers, it’s critical that when they do receive money, they put it to the best use and don’t allow financial services insiders to trick them into placing their money in places which b...Read more

  • What PLR and ALCS can do for you

    04 Sep 2012

    David Craig, the author of GREED UNLIMITED How Cameron and Clegg protect the elites while squeezing the rest of us (Original Book Company £8.99), explains how registering for PLR and with the ALCS can bring into extra revenue. A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece here about how writers could earn extra money by joining Amazon Associates. Here I’d like to mention a couple of other extra sources of pocket money for writers – PLR and ALCS. Public Lending Right (PLR) is the right for authors to receive payment under PLR legislation for the loans of their books by public libr...Read more

  • And how can an editor help me get published?

    17 Apr 2012

    Writer and ebook publisher Jonathan Veale makes the point that editors have a role to play before submissions are made . . . anywhere. Some of us have clairvoyant powers: we know what literary agents and publishers are looking for. That’s a fine start I would have thought. Add to that a painful knowledge of precisely what they are not seeking, and benefits abound. Most editors happen upon new writers and their work after interest has been expressed by the trade. In these cases their role is straightforward; gold is already apparent – through a veneer of lead – and they are tasked ...Read more