Intro to The Ultimate Resource for Aspiring Writers of Commercial Fiction and Non-Fiction in Scotland
One of my main dreams in life is to be part of a tightknit group of friends who write, like KJ, Jess and Sarina of the #AmWriting podcast. But finding other young writers who live in Scotland with hopes of writing commercial non-fiction – like I want to do – or commercial fiction, has proven difficult. There seems to be a lot of focus on literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, and poetry. For example, the categories of the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writer Awards are Fiction and Narrative Non-Fiction (combined), Poetry, and Children’s and YA. And if you look at the 2022 shortlist of the Scottish National Book Awards, there are almost no commercial books shortlisted, and most of the books appear to be about Scotland, or set in Scotland, which is fair enough but that’s not what I’m interested in reading or writing. Then there is Scottish Books International which has a Featured Authors page, but the list seems very short to me… Finally I came across Books from Scotland, which gave me more hope, but I realised its aim is to promote books published by Scottish publishing houses, as opposed to books written by Scottish authors or authors living in Scotland.
So I decided that I’m going to try to create The Ultimate Resource for Aspiring Writers of Commercial Fiction and Non-Fiction in Scotland. Ideally it will be a comprehensive list of writers of commercial fiction and non-fiction, who live in Scotland, like Sophie Gravia – whose success appears to be soaring at the moment - alongside who their publishers, editors and agents are. I’m also going to try to find indie authors and people who make a living from writing on here i.e. Substack, like Amber Eve. I’m thinking it will be a long and ongoing process but I am very pumped to take on the challenge, so stay posted.