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Editors and publishers 'wait for writers to come to them with manuscripts that are fully formed'

25 July 2016

‘If you are an emerging writer now, there are more channels for you to get in front of the eyeballs of a publisher but you have to do a lot of the work yourself. There's less work done by editors and publishers - they wait for writers to come to them with manuscripts that are fully formed.

A writer will seek that support elsewhere - that's why writing groups have soared.

I've seen friends who I thought were going to be the next big thing in writing kind of drop off because of the money. They are stuck in universities or are arts workers or in advertising. In previous generations they would spent the majority of their time being a writer and doing a bits of arts work on the side.

A writers' group can only take you so far.'

Sam Cooney, publisher of the Melbourne-based literary journal The Lifted Brow