One hour to talk about anything you want with Thorne Ryan, Publishing Director of Avon, HarperCollins UK (#202)

A one-hour virtual meeting to talk about anything you want. This could be a discussion of the first three chapters and synopsis of your book (commercial adult fiction); a Q&A session addressing everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the industry; a session on how to give a commercial publisher what they want; how to generate the perfect novel idea; how to optimise your novel for your market; a mixture of all this; or anything at all!

Bio
I started my publishing career at Hachette UK as Contracts Assistant, before moving over to Fiction Editorial at Hodder & Stoughton. There I worked my way from Editorial Assistant to Senior Commissioning Editor, working on such authors as John Grisham, Sophie Hannah, Jodi Picoult and Anna Jacobs. I brought onto the list Claire Heywood, whose debut novel Daughters of Sparta went on to be picked up by Penguin US in Hodder’s biggest North American deal of the year and was a Barnes & Noble Fiction Book of the Month. I also published The Girl Behind the Gates by Brenda Davies, which now has over 10,000 reviews on Amazon and was the first Hodder Fiction title to get into the Kindle US Top Ten. I then moved to Head of Zeus to take up the position of Editorial Director of Aria and Aries, their commercial women’s fiction and crime, thriller & adventure imprints. I am now doing parental leave cover as Publishing Director of Avon, HarperCollins, where I am responsible for the publishing of such authors as C.L. Taylor, Helen Fields, Sue Moorcroft and Alice Hunter, as well as management of the team and strategic oversight of the division.