Introduction to the Publishing Process: A Workshop with Simon & Schuster's Sara-Jade Virtue

An interactive workshop aimed at unpublished debut authors looking to understand how the publishing process works from typing The End, to seeing your book on the shelf. Join Sara-Jade Virtue for a whirlwind whistle-stop tour through a Structural, Line and Copy Edit to typesetting, proof-reading and cover design, touching on the basics of marketing, publicity and sales, post publication, ‘What Can I Do To Help Sell My Book?, and finishing the journey with the all-important question on every authors lips right now, to tiktok or not to tiktok – that is the question!

About Sara-Jade:

Sara-Jade Virtue has worked in the book industry for 21 years, firstly at Waterstones Head Office in the Fiction Buying Team, before a brief stint as Book Buyer at Fopp. She joined Simon & Schuster UK in 2007 and spent 12 years as Special Sales Director and Brand Director for the S&S industry-first women’s fiction community Books and the City, which launched on Valentine’s Day 2011. She moved into Editorial in November 2019 as Brand Development Director, working across the commercial women’s fiction list identifying new talent and developing growth strategies for brand and emerging authors. She continues to run the Books and the City community with an active audience of  close to 70k, manages the #DigitalOriginals publishing programme and #OneDay open submission project, (which has launched the careers of, amongst others, Heidi Swain, Jennifer Bibby, Holly Hepburn, Laura Bambrey, Jackie Fraser, Claire Frost, Julie Haworth,  Florence Keeling, Caroline Scott and Christina Pishiris), leads the Jackie Collins reissue programme, and many collaborations and partnership projects with retailers, media, libraries and literary festivals. She’s also the founder of the #RespectRomFic movement, aiming to increase the profile of romantic novelists in the UK’