About Gale & Co

Gale & Co was formed by Kathy Gale to provide authors with a uniquely helpful way to develop their writing.

During her experience in publishing, Kathy realised that writers flourished in response to a particular combination of circumstances: detailed, respectful interaction with their work; training and practice in skills and technique; and a generous and supportive environment.  These were not criteria that agents and publishers could meet for any but a tiny proportion of writers.

She also saw a considerable gap between publishers and emerging writers. Publishers found it almost impossible to communicate the complexities of their requirements to developing authors and new writers found it hard to understand how to write for and communicate with agents and publishers.

When Kathy retrained as a psychotherapist, she continued to work with a small number of authors as a writing coach, providing the support she now knew enabled writers to flourish. As her first authors completed their manuscripts, Kathy noticed that almost everyone who had been coached by her through to the end of the process was now becoming a published writer. In response to this extraordinary success and keen to offer this opportunity to a greater range of authors, she established Gale & Co so that she could train and supervise other writing coaches to work in the way that she does.

Our coaches work with writers in a wide range of genres and styles, in fiction and non-fiction. And we work with authors on an individual basis or as part of Gale & Co Writers’ Studio groups.

We give authors the opportunity to write the best books they can and provide the best-possible chance of success. And we aim to bridge the gap between authors, agents and publishers, increasing the range of successful writers and supporting a vibrant and creative literary scene.

About Kathy Gale

Across her thirty-year publishing career, Kathy was Senior Commissioning Editor of Pan Books, Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton; Editorial Director of Pan Macmillan; Marketing Director at Simon & Schuster; and Joint Managing Director of The Women’s Press. For seven years, she was Project Director of the Quick Reads charity, a collaborative venture between bestselling writers and celebrities, leading publishers, government, the BBC and others to encourage more widespread reading across the UK and Ireland.

Kathy is also an accredited and registered psychotherapist and an executive coach.

She co-founded and co-runs the executive coaching organization, Working Edge, with her colleague, Harriet Spicer. Working Edge offers executive coaching, mentoring and professional support to individuals, organizations and groups.

Other Gale & Co coaches

Janine Giovanni

Janine began her career in the book industry as a bookseller before making the leap into publishing. She has over thirty years marketing and senior management experience in adult and children’s publishing within the Penguin Random House Group, including over fifteen years as Marketing Director. Her role at this senior level included assessing manuscripts to report back on their commercial viability and marketing potential at the weekly acquisition meeting and she played a significant part in creating success for some of the leading authors of our time. She brings a highly experienced commercial eye to honing the pitch and proposal document required for submitting a manuscript to agents and publishers and during her career at Penguin Random House worked with and supported many bestselling and acclaimed authors.

Faiza Khan

Faiza was Editor-at-Large for Random House, India and Editor-in-Chief at Bloomsbury India, before becoming Consulting Publisher at Bloomsbury Publishing UK. There she commissioned a list of critically acclaimed titles, including Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism, Holly Whitaker’s Quit Like a Woman, Mohammed Hanif’s Red Birds, Angela Makholwa’s The Blessed Girl, and Wole Soyinka’s Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People On Earth.

Authors she has worked with include Women’s Prize winners, Booker nominees, and Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in literature, along with a plethora of emerging talent.

Prior to this Faiza scouted emerging writing talent from Pakistan and India.

She is currently a freelance editor and literary consultant working independently on projects with publishing houses including HarperCollins, Bloomsbury and Faber & Faber, and co-host of Browned Off, a critically acclaimed podcast which casts a critical eye on diversity and representation in books and films.

Alongside her experience in literary fiction and non-fiction, Faiza is an avid reader of commercial fiction.

As a culture writer and critic, her work has appeared in publications including the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Daily Beast.

Diane Spivey

Diane has over 40 years’ experience in book publishing with over 30 years at director level.  For 15 years she was a director of Little, Brown Book Company, before being promoted to become a director of the wider Hachette Group, the UK’s second-largest book publishing conglomerate and publisher of authors as diverse as J K Rowling, Candice Carty-Williams and Adam Kay. At Hachette and previous publishers, Diane was part of the acquisition team who assessed the commercial viability of manuscripts and worked closely with authors to create, adapt and polish presentation material. She has extensive experience of bestselling literary and commercial fiction and non-fiction, including popular science and self-help, narrative non-fiction and memoir.  She is on the Rights Directors Advisory Board of the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Kingston University Publishing Advisory Board and, in addition to her work with Gale & Co, she both delivers formal courses on publishing and rights, and mentors newcomers to the publishing business.

Tom Drake-Lee

Tom has nearly three decades of senior management experience in book publishing, including twenty-two years within the Penguin Random House Group where for twelve years he was the Sales Director at the highly respected literary list, Vintage. His role at this senior level included assessing manuscripts and giving feedback to editors about their commercial potential within the UK market. He also worked closely with authors, agents and colleagues in design, marketing, publicity as well as sales, to help create success for many prize-winning and commercially successful books. Tom has a great deal of experience in honing how a book is presented to the market and brings this skill to the shaping of manuscripts, pitches and proposal documents for submitting a manuscript to agents and publishers. Tom is also a literary agent.

Additional Gale & Co coaches are currently in training and their details will be added soon.

Coaching for individuals

Gale & Co's one-to-one coaching gives you the rare opportunity to have your writing read by a leading publishing professional and to work with them in detail and face-to-face with the aim of maximising your potential as a writer, and achieving representation and publication. more…

Coaching in groups

Gale & Co Writers' Studio groups provide coaching for four to six writers who would like to develop and flourish alongside other authors. more…

Train to be a writers' coach

Writing coaches support authors to flourish and grow, helping to create a whole new generation of creative writers. This can be an extraordinarily rewarding and successful career. 

Kathy is now offering training and supervision to others who would like to become writing coaches and associates of Gale & Co. more…

Testimonials

We are very proud of the work we have done to support writers and writing. Take a look at some of the great things people have said about us here…

Articles

You can read some articles Kathy has written on writing and publishing here:

5 Myths They Tell You About Writing
Striking A Balance
The 5 Secrets of Writing a Bestseller