Tag Archives: connections

Writers Making Connections

Posted on by under Indie Publishing

I belong to a local writing group that meets most months. We have lunch and talk about our writing, our books, and the publishing business at large (as well as other things). We get loud, we have fun and we share a lot of experience with each other. I’m convinced that our new world of publishing is distinguished by more cooperation between authors and a healthy exchange of information. So, I had an idea to extend the circle a bit – since everyone was excited about the idea, we did it.

Last Saturday, we hosted Writers Making Connections. The idea was to get a bigger group of writers together to network. We had lunch and talked – about our writing, our books and the publishing business at large. It turned out that most of us in attendance were indie-publishing at least part of our lists, or thinking about diving into that. We also invited freelance editors and brought promo materials from the service providers we use. We brought our own swag, too, and filled a table with the promo materials. We kept the cost low –  the $15 registration fee covered the buffet lunch and the use of the room. The idea was that we would break even, not make a profit.

The plan was to keep everything as low-maintenance as possible, because we’re all busy writers. We each took a job. I wrote an invitation and after we agreed on it, sent it out to industry people and listserves. Everyone spread the word through their own networks. Melanie Card was the contact person for registration and replied to each person with info about registering and paying. Jane Kent arranged for the venue and the lunch, and collected the money to pay the bill. Jessica E. Subject sent confirmation messages to registrants after their payment etc. was received, giving them the details of the event location. a.c. Mason made the signs, telling people how to find the room, and Susan Douglas did nametags on lanyards in advance of the event.

Saturday morning, we got up to fresh snow. Ugh! Even so, we had 24 attendees, including 3 freelance editors, 1 blogger and Christina Potter from KOBO Writing Life. Most of the authors write romance, erotica or young adult fiction – because that’s what most of us write, those were the people we knew. There were also fantasy and mystery writers. People came from all around Stratford, even from as far as Sarnia, Toronto and Ottawa. We drank all the coffee (twice) and ate most of the food on the buffet, and talked until we were hoarse.

The best part for me was that the exchange of information was very generous. The matchmaking was wonderful: “Oh, you’re writing such-and-such. You really need to look at this website, and I’ll email you contact info for a reviewer. You should also go introduce yourself to that person over there.” I LOVE that helpful aspect of our new publishing world. It’s great karma for all of us.

My one concern was that the room didn’t have the acoustics to graciously handle all our conversation – it became very, very loud in there! I came home exhausted, with a pocketful of new ideas and business cards.

That was when I remembered that my camera was in my purse. 😦

If you attended, thank you very much for doing so. I hope you had as good of a time as I did, and found it a useful (and fun) way to spend an afternoon. Thanks also to Melanie, Jessica, Susan, Mason and Jane for making the details run so smoothly.

We’re going to host this event again next fall. If you were one of the attendees on Saturday, you’ll be the first to know. If you weren’t one of the attendees on Saturday, you might want to join us next time. (The Nanaimo bars were particularly good.) We’ve also created a Facebook page for the event—it’s still pretty bare-bones but if you’d like to keep an eye on plans as they shape up (or if you just think it’s a good idea) please come on by and LIKE us. 🙂

Stand in the Place Where You Live

Posted on by under Wild West Thursday

You get two Wild West Thursday posts this week, because I need to give you the background story for tomorrow’s post. (Don’t you feel lucky?!)

In recent years, I’ve become convinced that authors making connections with other authors is the wave of the future. With the rise of indie-publishing, it’s far easier for authors to share tips and techniques for marketing our books. In the past, it was easiest to talk about the writing itself, because of the expectations of traditional publishing. With traditional publishing, there is a pervasive idea that all authors are in competition with each other, for publication slots and favor from the house. I’m not sure I believe this is true – much less that it needs to be true – but publishers do actively encourage that perspective. I have walked around my publisher’s booksigning at RWA National, for example, admiring all the different covers and familiarizing myself with who writes for the house (and what the house’s focus seems to be) only to be confronted by the publisher herself, who asked if I was “checking out the competition.” This kind of comment is quite common and is the reinforcement of the notion that we are all fighting each other for survival.

In reality, of course, publishing decisions are made on the basis of money – i.e. sales revenue for a title, author or sub-genre – the house’s view of the future, and their vision of how to best address that future.

With indie publishing, that rhetoric has no source. There’s no one feeding the idea that we’re all duking it out with each other, and in fact, indie authors are the most generous group of authors in terms of sharing information and observations. It’s a wonderful change to be in this environment!

One of the things that has fallen out of this change for me is a new interest in fostering those connections between authors. I meet with a local group of romance writers each month, for example, which started because we weren’t always making the trek into Toronto for the Toronto RWA meeting and we missed chatting with other authors. We eat and talk and dish, and drink way too much coffee. I’ve talked here already about the networking event that those authors and I are putting together this April, an event that I hope becomes a regular occurrence.

I’ve also joined forced with a local librarian to establish a blog focused on local authors, regardless of genre. This started from her observation that there were so many authors in town, and my comment that I didn’t know any. We launched the blog in September and feature an interview per week with a local author (or an author who has a local connection). We built on this in December, by having our first event, co-hosted by the library, called Meet the Authors. We had thirteen authors come out to talk about their work and sell their books. The mix was so eclectic and the experiences so different. It was great. In January, we began with monthly events, focused on the publishing business. In February, our town was the focus of Open Book Ontario and many of our authors got some exposure from that site. (Including me and my desk.) It’s been such a lot of fun and not that much work, considering the rewards. I’ve really enjoyed meeting so many different authors who write so many different kinds of work. The blog is called Stratford Authors, you can check it out right here.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you a bit about our most recent SA event.