Writer Bursaries for works-in-progress

Literature Alliance Scotland [LAS] is a membership network bringing together publishers, librarians, literature organisations and national cultural bodies. We aim to offer a strong voice for the Scottish literature sector, undertaking advocacy and development programmes including direct support for writers and other practitioners. We understand that writers are at the heart of the literature ecology.

In 2024, Creative Scotland abruptly closed (and then later re-opened) its Open Fund for Individuals. This concerned Literature Alliance Scotland as we considered the impact on writers could be very serious. We secured Creative Scotland permission as our programme funder to prioritise this pilot programme. Even with the Open Fund for Individuals back up and running, we believe writer bursaries are required and the precarity of individuals working in the sector is significant. We want to help.

After a successful piloting of this scheme in 2025, we are delighted to be able to offer it again for 2026.

All applicants will be contacted with the result of their application in a timely manner.  We will be in touch with the five writers selected through the random lottery process first, and once they have all confirmed they still meet the eligibility criteria and wish to take up the bursary, we will inform unsuccessful applicants – we hope this process will be complete by November 2026.

All decisions are final and we do not have the resource to give any applicants feedback on their application.

After eligibility checking, all eligible applications will be assigned a number. All of these numbers will be entered into a lottery and five will be selected at random. The programme administrator and two other individuals will witness the draw to ensure this is carried out appropriately.

We trialled the random lottery selection in our pilot programme in order to learn more about what it could offer the members of our network as an approach and how it is received by writers in Scotland.

We have been assessing the impact of this approach upon the programme’s conclusion and will be returning with this method for our 2026 applications.

We welcome your feedback on the process at any time – please email it to [email protected].

No, each eligible writer can only apply once, for a single work-in-progress.

This programme is intended to fill a gap in specific support for writers. Comhairle nan Leabhraichean/The Gaelic Book Council operates a grant scheme offering support at broadly similar levels for work in Gaelic. Please visit www.gaelicbooks.org for more details.

Given the limited resources available, we have determined that we wish to prioritise new work.

Rates of remuneration for translators are generally established by clearer rationales than author advances and therefore more clearly reflect the need for remuneration up-front. For this reason we have not prioritised this work.

We know that £3,000 is not enough to support the creation of new work. Our reason for prioritising work under contract/created with a view to sale is that our contribution will help meet your costs in completing work, thereby helping you leverage income from other sources.

We recognise that the broader context for literature is complex, straddling publicly funded and industry contexts, and employing complex models of remuneration based in part on the license of rights to publishers and other third parties. In industry contexts, we are conscious that advances against royalty often do not meet the time cost of creating the work at Living Wage. In the classic model, the intention is that the value of the work is recouped through later royalties, but we recognise the challenge inherent in this for many, if not most, writers.

In the landscape of public and other funding, we know there is oversubscription and a lack of specific schemes for literature as an artform. Against this context we have repurposed part of a grant award, with the agreement of our funders, to provide five bursaries of £3,000 to help support established writers to complete extended work they are undertaking under contract OR for sale under the advice of an agent.

The pilot scheme was designed as a means of supporting in an area of specific deficit in writer conditions, i.e. advances that are insufficient to support time to write new, full-length work. The bursary is conceived as a contribution, and we recognise it is not, in itself, at a level sufficient to support the creation of work. Since it is effectively functioning as match funding, we ask that you have a pre-existing contract, agent relationship or relevant track record that evidences your ability, or likely ability, to place the work with a publisher in future, thereby securing further contributions towards your time.

By ‘resident in Scotland’ we mean that your primary residence is in a Scottish postcode. This is where you live, work, and are (usually) registered to vote and pay Council tax as your main home.

We understand that this is a model some writers adopt and these writers are within their rights to do so. Our scheme is intended to support authors who require support up-front.

We recognise eligible writers will work in a broad range of publishing contexts. This introduces tensions in designing support schemes such as this pilot. We have permitted a relatively broad range of advance levels in recognition of the fact that conditions vary significantly across the industry.

We have used Real Living Wage [RLW] to benchmark what our support might mean. We recognise that writers are skilled professionals and RLW is not a skilled rate; we also recognise, however, that writer conditions are such that RLW is an advance on many income models. We also note the anticipation (although without guarantee) that you will continue to benefit from the exploitation of the copyright work over a longer period.

If successful, a writer in receipt of the maximum advance permitted would receive £18,000 total, i.e. £15,000 in advance + £3,000 bursary. This is equivalent to 40 weeks of RLW payments (based on a 35 hour week).

If successful, a writer in receipt of the minimum advance permitted would receive £4,000 total, i.e. £1,000 in advance + £3,000 bursary. This is equivalent to 9 weeks of RLW payments (based on a 35 hour week).

From our own experience as practitioners (including publishers and published writers), we consider that 9 – 40 weeks sufficient for many types of work, although we recognise that some writers will require more time to complete work and therefore, even if successful, these writers will not achieve RLW.

In order to prioritise support where it is most needed, we will ask you to warrant that the advance you expect or have received + the bursary will not return more than RLW when set against the anticipated time you will spend creating the work. For example, if you have secured an advance of £5,000 for an Early Reader on which you anticipate working for the equivalent of 6 weeks full-time, you have achieved a rate over Real Living Wage and should not apply.

None of the foregoing should be read as endorsement of advances at these, or any other level. We will continue to campaign for improved conditions for writers.

These bursaries prioritise support for established writers in Scotland – if your first full-length book or collection has not yet been published then you are not eligible to apply for this round of the bursaries. Applications for the 2026 round of bursaries close on 30 August 2026 so your first book or collection must have been published before this date in order for you to apply.

In the application form we ask you to confirm eligibility against the criteria by telling us the ISBN of one of your previous full-length publications, published by a UK publisher in the same genre or market-category as your work-in-progress: if you are unable to provide this then your application will not be considered.

If you have a multi-book deal and your overall advance is higher than £15,000 then you are eligible to apply if an equal share of the advance per book falls within the £1,000 – £15,000 advance bracket.

For example, if you have an advance of £42,000 for a three-book deal then the advance for each book would be the equivalent of £14,000 and you are eligible to make an application.

If you have an advance of £1,500 for a two-book deal then the advance for each book would be the equivalent of £750 and you are not eligible to make an application.

If you make an application and are selected by lottery for one of the five bursaries, if your work-in-progress is under contract then we may ask you to provide a letter from your publisher or agent confirming the level of your advance meets the criteria: if you have a multi-book deal then this should be included in that letter.

For the purposes of these bursaries, the eligible advance levels indicate the face value of the total advance, and your agent’s commission is irrelevant, as are any splits in payment (usually signature / delivery /publication) or how you account for the advance in different tax years.

At the lowest eligible level, we understand this means that you may not receive the full sum and may worry you do not qualify, e.g. you have an advance of £1,000 and after agent commission you receive £850. This is not an issue; you may still apply as the face value of the total advance meets the criteria for this opportunity.

At the highest eligible level, we understand the sum you receive after commission on a higher advance may be under £15,000, e.g. on an advance of £16,000 with 15% agent commission, you would ultimately receive £13,600. This does not make you eligible to make an application as the face value of the total advance does not meet the criteria for this opportunity.

Yes. A split of this type reduces the face value of the total advance payable against your work by the publisher. Please ensure the work is otherwise eligible, paying particular attention to the notes on Real Living Wage in these FAQs.

One of the methods we use to evaluate our ongoing progress in promoting equality in our activities is to collect standard, anonymised data relating to The Equality Act 2010. If you choose not to share this data, you do not have to. This will not impact your application.

After the application deadline, the responses to the Equality Monitoring section will be stored separately and data shared will be used anonymously.

We know established writers are increasingly unable to make a living from their writing alone, and that this exacerbates the impacts of structural inequalities. Much of the developmental support available to writers in the UK either targets those at an earlier stage of their career, or requires a significant investment of both time and hope with a very low likelihood of success due to limited funds or spaces available. Feedback from our pilot round of writer bursaries highlighted that even small levels of support, such as these £3K bursaries, allowed the writers selected through the lottery process time to focus on their work and to consider the general trajectory of their writing career. It did this primarily by lifting some of the burden of both looking for and undertaking additional work, for a period of time. Having that money in the bank also allowed the writers to plan their writing time differently and to invest in new equipment.

The hope it that this will support their resilience as individuals and the sustainability of their careers: putting them in a better position to create more deeply considered work, and that this will be reflected in the advances they are offered by publishers in the future. We see this as an investment in the longer term development of their careers rather than something with immediate, one-size-fits-all results. That said, all the writers selected for our initial pilot round of bursaries reported that they saw immediate benefits in their writing life as a result.

For this programme we are focusing on supporting writers who have previously relied on income through a publisher-advance model to support their writing time. We have set our criteria at a level equivalent to an expectation of match-funding from publishers (between £500 – £20,000). 

We know that writers who do not usually receive an advance from a publisher for their work would also benefit from bursaries of this type, and we strongly encourage relevant organisations to look at how they might simplify applications processes for the types of support they offer, and we advocate for higher levels of public funds to support the literature sector — including no-strings-attached direct support for writers in all genres and forms to support their writing time, as well as tailored developmental support for different levels of experience and types of practice. 

If you are selected, we will ask you to confirm you still meet the eligibility criteria for the bursaries. If your work-in-progress is under contract, we may ask you to provide a letter from your publisher or agent to confirm your advance is within the limits of the eligibility criteria.

To release the payment, we will ask you to complete a short feedback form (typically a 1 page form, taking less than 30 mins to complete) about the application process and to sign a basic contract. The payment of £3,000 will be released as a single payment, for you to use flexibly as you determine best.

We will then be in touch in early spring 2027 to ask you to complete a second, short feedback form about what difference (if any) the bursary has made to you. This helps us to evaluate the writer bursaries.

We expect you to provide notice to LAS when publication of your work-in-progress is announced, and to credit the support of LAS and the funders, Creative Scotland, in the final publication.

You will hold copyright of your work-in progress, in the normal manner. No rights will accrue to LAS but you will be expected to credit LAS and Creative Scotland in the final publication – usually in the form of an acknowledgement of the bursary in the acknowledgements or frontmatter of your book.