I’m off to the Society of Authors AGM tomorrow in London. I don't usually go but I thought I'd make the effort this time because they are combining the AGM with what looks like a very interesting panel session.  Plus it gives me an excuse to visit London! 

I’ve been a member of the SOA for almost ten years and have used the Society’s extremely helpful and impartial service on publishing contracts and copyright issues. That alone has been worth the membership fee.  The SOA has (as its web site declares) been serving the interests of professional writers for more than a century, and has more than 8,500 members writing in all areas of the profession.  These include novelists, textbook writers, ghost writers, broadcasters, academics, illustrators and translators. Being a member helps me keep in touch with the current issues in the publishing world, and I also receive a very useful quarterly journal called, The Author. The Society maintains a database of writers and their specialism, so you never know if that might lead to a writing commission or speaking  engagement. Tomorrow, after the AGM, (as I mentioned above) there is book-trade question time with Jonny Geller, the Managing Director of the agency Curtis Brown; Alexandra Pringle, the Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury Publishing, (they of Harry Potter fame), and Graham Rand, Commercial Director of the book wholesalers, Bertrams/THE.  He is also President of the Booksellers Association.

It will be a good opportunity to network with other authors, and those in the trade, because there are usually some literary agents and publishers at the events, and in this life it's not always a case of what you know but who you know!  I am sure that I will also pick up one or two ideas and tips from the speakers. London here I come.