On Saturday, I had the chance to attend the Author’s Compass event, organised by the Society of Authors, held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester. The event was largely a discussion about how the publishing landscape was changing and how the changes were moving choice and power back into the hands of content creators (be they authors of fiction, non fiction or poetry).

John Rice doing the welcome speech

The keynote speech was given by the fabulous Kate Harrison – who talked about the joys of being a hybrid author, where you got the best of both worlds. She also made that point that it was totally okay to find it all very scary.

Kate Harrison kicks the event off with a fantastically inspiring talk 

A few keys points from Kate’s talk that stood out for me were:

Self publishing:

• is fast – allows you to seize the zeitgeist…