What’s on your mind right now? What do you think deserves more discussion? What would you like to share with others? The Industry Meetup Barcamp is a conference where you help decide what gets discussed. There are no set topics—anything that more than two freelance literary professionals in attendance want to talk about can be a session.
schreiben & leben Posts
We are thrilled to finally announce the program for this year’s Industry Meetup: Literature. From May 7 to 9, Berlin’s independent literary scene will come together for the tenth time to engage in conversation through numerous workshops, panel discussions, informational events, maker spaces, and our tried-and-true Barcamp.
Our new project schreiben&lebenExTRA launched on February 1, and we are delighted to welcome many familiar faces as well as numerous new advisors to our pool of experts. Thanks to them, we can offer you some brand-new consultation services in addition to our tried-and-tested topics. In March, we will be holding a total of seven regular consultation days. We are also introducing a brand new monthly format of open group counseling, which we hope will enable us to support you even better. Here’s what’s on our program for the coming month:
Berlin, January 15th, 2026
Dear literary freelancers,
The schreiben&leben consultation programme was launched in autumn 2016. For almost ten years now, we have been offering you free individual consultations on all topics related to freelance literary work, and the Industry Meetup Literature will also be entering its tenth round in May. In addition, the Berlin Literature Calendar, the literaturstadt.berlin website, the joint ticketing system, occasional info-sessions, group consultations, and, last but not least, our newsletter are all part of our project as a source of information for freelance literary workers.
Not only are the calendar year and our 2025 consulting year coming to an end, but our project itself is also undergoing a period of change at the turn of the year. The schreiben&lebenPLUS project will end at the end of January, and our follow-up project, schreiben&lebenExTRA, will begin in February.
Our new project period begins in February 2026, and we are re-advertising the consultant positions for our 2026-2028 consultation program. We cordially invite anyone interested in working with us as a freelance consultant to attend our info session next Monday, November 24:
Have you experienced the ups and downs of self-employment in the literary industry yourself, and can you imagine exchanging ideas with colleagues, sharing your experiences, answering questions, and working together on solutions? Then the role of consultant at schreiben&lebenExTRA might be just right for you.
We are delighted to once again be able to offer a wide range of consulting days for solo self-employed individuals from Berlin’s literary scene in November. Whether you are looking for an agency or publisher, need help with grant applications, accounting, publishing contracts, or self-publishing, our experts are happy to assist you with their advice.
We have once again planned a wide range of consultation days for you in October. Over the next few weeks, you will have the opportunity to ask our experts your questions about self-publishing, cultural education, finding agencies and publishers, networking, accounting, literary translation, and podcasts on a total of seven consultation days.
schreiben&lebenPLUS will once again be represented with an information stand at BUCHBERLIN (ARENA BERLIN, Eichenstraße 4, 12435 Berlin) on September 27 and 28, 2025. We will be providing information about our project and offering free 20-minute mini-consultations on various topics.