Speakers
Session 4 – breakout (running concurrently)
In this session we will be using a series of prompts to build a draft for your very first business plan. This session is for editors launching, or pivoting, their businesses. Identify your key areas of value, spot any tricky areas that need your further attention, and list the opportunities ready for you to grab hold of them. By the end of the session, you'll have a sense of your mission, vision, and key strategic objectives. Underpinned by Restorative Care Practice, this workshop places your wellbeing at its centre, tying this in to your business planning process.
For editors who want to stay the course in a competitive (and unregulated) editorial space, you need more than a brilliant ability to attend to words. You also need commercial savvy and a sense of where you sit in the wider market. What is it that you're offering? And how can you ensure you're not over-promising and skating too close to burnout? You'll come out of this session with a clear set of strategic objectives to help you establish or grow your offer, and building blocks for your first business plan. And, it will be realistic, and healthy – with you driving the plan, not it driving you.
Aki Schilz is the Director of The Literary Consultancy, the UK's longest-running consultancy for writers. She has twice featured in the Bookseller 150, a list of the most influential figures in UK publishing, for her work to improve representation and accessibility in the literature sector. In 2023 Aki was inducted as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature for services to literature. At TLC Aki oversees all writing service provision and public programming, and leads on TLC’s in-house training with corporate publishers, supporting them to establish more ethical editing frameworks. She is co-Director of TLC’s Being A Writer programme which focuses on how writers can cultivate creativity, resilience and wellbeing. Aki is particularly interested in holistic wellbeing, and brings her training in Restorative Care Practice (established by Gaylene Gould in partnership with Clore) into all of her work. As an editor and coach, Aki has worked with fiction writers, memoirists, poets, and a number of independent publishers. She is the current Vice Chair of the human rights charity English PEN.