A superstar in your living room.

Folks, I told you last week that I had something big to tell you about this week. And I do, I do.

The story goes like this.

One day, probably in December last year, and in a city that lies far, far away, a nasty little piece of viral DNA jumped from a bat to a pangolin to a human. 

That human infected a couple more humans, and those two humans each infected two or three more humans, until …

The whole world pulled its duvet up to its ears and CANCELLED OUR FESTIVAL OF WRITING.

We are all ready to launch it, but with prospects for mass gatherings so utterly murky, we made the horrible decision to cancel it completely.

So. Boom. No Festival. Sorry about that.

You can blame those damn pangolins if you want to. A stupid sort of animal in my opinion. And bats? I’ve never liked them, not really.

Only …

What if …?

It struck us that we could take the whole damn Festival and plonk it online. That had some advantages anyway. Here are three:

1. Because we don’t have to provide food and accommodation, we could slash the price of tickets – to about 12-25% of normal levels.
2. Because the Festival would take place online, it would be open to everyone, not merely those able to travel to the lovely city of York, England.
3. Best of all, we wouldn’t need to be restricted by time. At York, you have to choose between multiple brilliant workshops, because so many are taking place at once. With the same Festival online, you can get to every single event if you so choose, either live or via replay.

So we decided that we wouldn’t simply take the York event and shift it online. We would take our existing Festival programme as the spine of our Summer Festival of Writing – and then expand it, massively. Make it better. Make it more global.

So we went crazy.

We invited some of the biggest names we could think of.

Hey, Neil Gaiman. Want to come to our Festival?
Yes, I surely would. And may I invite my friend Chris Riddell as well?

Hey, award-winning super-seller Clare Mackintosh and internationally renowned Sophie Hannah. Would you care to come to the Festival?
We’d love to. We feel honoured.

Hey, HarperCollins, you lovable great Big 5 publisher. Want to come to our Festival?
Most certainly. May we send our best and brightest?

Hey top literary agencies in London and New York, would you like to come to the Festival?
Yes, please, we would surely love that.

Hey, Bookouture and hey Amazon Publishing. You’re the two slickest digital-first publishers in the world. Would you like to come to our Festival?
You bet your cotton-pickin’ boots we would.

Oh, hi there Adam Croft, you ridiculously successful indie author, you. Do you want to come to our Festival?
Why, my dear sir, nothing would give me greater pleasure.

Because we’re not limited by time or space, we can go way broader than we’ve been able to go in the past. So a lot of you guys will have wondered about writing a screenplay one day. Or you’ve worried about your productivity – are you writing too slowly? Or you’ve thought about your mental health and the stress of writing during lockdown.

We can address all of those things, and much more.

We’ve got Cal Moriarty on screenplays. We’ve got Becca Syme, THE leading name in author productivity, talking about how to write better, faster. We’ve got Rachel Thompson (aka Bad Redhead Media) talking about social media for writers. We’ve got kids’ novelist, Aisha Bushby, on writing and mental health. We’ve got the queen of indie podcasting, Joanna Penn, talking about how to create multiple income streams as a writer. We’ve got international bestseller, Rachael Herron talking about self-editing and revising. We’ve got David Gaughran, the self-publishing god, on Author Platform. We have Patrick Knowles on book covers, Erin Somers on the US publishing landscape, and Jo Forshaw on audiobooks.

And so much more.

We haven’t stopped, either. Yesterday, I got an email from one of the team that’s built the Festival. She had just thought of a whole bunch more AMAZING people to invite. We were one day before launching the Festival and she wanted to throw out more invitations.

Dumb, right? A stupid, dumb, terrible way to do business.

But OK. So we’re dumb.

We’ll invite those people. All of them. And more. (Because I’ve got a few more ideas myself.)

Our only mission here is to build the most incredible writing festival ever created. We’ve got an awesome programme in place already, but we already have plans to add to it and make it better.

OK. That’s what we’ve been up to. But I know you have questions:

What does the Summer Festival of Writing cost?

If you’re a member of Jericho Writers, it will cost £75 / approx $92.50

If you’re not yet a member, it will cost £150 / approx $185

How do I actually attend?

You need a laptop (or similar). And you need a half-decent web connection. If you can watch video from your laptop, you’ll be fine. We’ll explain everything else in due course. But don’t worry. It’ll be almost painfully simple.

Will I be able to ask questions during the live sessions?

You betcha. Just type them in. Most sessions will have a moderator who will fish the best questions out to put to the speaker.

And if I miss a session?

Just watch it back on replay. We’ll have the replays available at least until the end of September.

You guys are British. I’m American / Aussie / Singaporean / Venusian. Is there anything for me?

We’ve gone global. We’re giving a platform to superstar authors from London to New York to California. We’re talking to the best agencies in the world, irrespective of location. When Amazon offered us access to their London office, we asked for Seattle too. (They said yes.)

In short: if you’re Venusian, we have nothing for you. Everyone else – you’re welcome.

What about agent 1-2-1s?

Yes, we’re currently signing up agents and building the schedule. We’ll have something to release on this shortly.

Just to be clear, though, the 1-2-1s are going to be totally separate from the Festival. So a Festival ticket won’t give you access to a 1-2-1 slot. Buying a 1-2-1 slot won’t give you access to the Festival.

We’ve made that separation partly for logistical reasons, but also to keep prices as ultra-low as possible – just buy the bits you need.

Did you just make it up about Neil Gaiman?

Nope. He and everyone else mentioned in this email are all signed up and raring to go. A load of other brilliant superstars too.

*** 

That’s it from me. I’m genuinely excited about this – like a schoolboy looking forward to his first funfair. Everyone else on the team too. It’s been kind of a passion project for all of us. Roughly: “Who in the world would you most like as a speaker / workshop leader? OK. So invite them.”

It’s been chaotic. Overwhelming. Brilliant. Rewarding.

If all that sounds like something you’d like to get stuck into, then …

Learn more about the Summer Festival of Writing

We’d absolutely love to see you there.

Literary agent 1-2-1s will be released to JW members and Festival ticket holders first, but we will do all we can to create as many 1-2-1 slots as we can.

Bustle over to Townhouse if you have questions on this. We’ll use the blog post version of this email as a sort of answer-hub for all your queries.

And blimey. It’s going to be amazing.

That’s it from me. What about you? Got questions? Are there people you’d love us to invite? Let us know in the comments below.