Buckingham Literary Festival.

This ran from Fri 30 June to 2 July 2017. Venues were scattered around the town with most being at the University of Buckingham. I attended two events on the Sunday.
First impressions were not favourable. I arrived at the place identified by the postcode and had to ask where the Festival car park was. Then I had to ask (twice) for directions to the actual venue, which had been moved to a marquee. Signage was lacking. In the interval I had to ask twice for directions to the toilets, which were in a building in another street some way off.
How to Write Like a Pro with Judith Allnatt and AJ Mackenzie. This talk by an experienced author and a multi-book husband-wife team gave some useful guidance on how to go about creative writing, from start to finding an agent. I made various notes.
How to Publish Like a Pro with John Mitchinson and Sheila Crowley. The title of this talk was slightly misleading, as despite the write-up in the printed programme, self-publishing was not covered at all. John Michison runs Unbound, a crowd-funded publisher. This is an interesting concept – books are taken on subject to sufficient funds being raised via Unbound through crowd-funding. Figures mentioned were £4000 to launch an e-book and £11,000 to launch a hardcopy. (As an aside, one might comment that with figures like these, self-publishing authors should maybe just give up now.) Sheila Crowley is a successful agent, and her talk was mostly about best-sellers. The need for an author to find a good agent was stressed.