Category Archives: Superstars Writing Seminars

Get on the Train

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Train3I have a few different fingers in the publishing pie. I wouldn’t be writing for the Fictorians if I wasn’t a writer, but that’s not the aspect of publishing that dominates my time. I’m also a professional editor, something I don’t often talk about in my Fictorian blog posts. In addition, I am a typesetter. Occasionally I’ve even served as a slush pile reader, though that torturous (and tortuous) experience hasn’t always been a high point.

Recently, while on an afternoon walk through my neighbourhood, I realized that I’m kind of unemployable in the “real world.” I’ve been a full-time, self-employed contract worker since the age of twenty-four, and all of my skills are in publishing. Sure, I could wait tables and wash dishes, but I am pointedly leaving those items off my resume. To say the least, I’m firmly enmeshed in the business of publishing.

This is a pretty surprising career development, at least from the perspective of ten-years-ago me, who didn’t set out a specific goal to get to where I am today.

However, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it accidental. Rather, I started making choices that allowed me to follow my publishing dream, and those choices led to opportunities, and those opportunities, when seized, led to my current reality. In short, I got on the train.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The watershed moment happened in Pasadena, California in the winter of 2010—the first annual Superstars Writing Seminar, which we’ve devoted a lot of digital ink to on this blog. Over the course of the next couple of years, I went from trying really hard to be a writer in a hostile world to being surrounded by writers all the time. The world doesn’t seem so hostile now. The proportion of my Facebook friends who are writers is truly out of control. I used to read my newsfeed for updates from old high school buddies. I can hardly do that anymore, because the newsfeed has gradually been swallowed up by publishing business.

I call it business, because that’s what it is. Every day, my friends are asking for advice, providing advice (because some of my friends are seasoned pros), posting articles from trade magazines and blogs, providing sneak peeks of cover art, hunting for beta readers, and on and on and on. This level of immersion, I think, is crucial in a writer’s life because it marks the point when education becomes continuous—and almost automatic. I live and breathe this stuff.

The first conventions and seminars I went to were all about learning new things. Attending Superstars in Pasadena was an overwhelming experience, because ninety-five percent of what I heard there was totally brand-new information. I came home with over forty pages of notes. The notes were important, but the forty friends I picked up were actually much more helpful, because they got the ball rolling. Instead of cramming years’ worth of learning into one weekend in a convention centre meeting room, I started getting it piecemeal every day of my life.

This last spring, I went back to Superstars for the first time in four years. In 2010, attending Superstars was like attending a computer programmer’s convention without any computing knowledge beyond how to boot up Windows. I could barely follow along half the time; I hung out at the fringes of conversations, snatching up scraps like a hungry dog beneath the family dinner table. I was hopelessly lost. This time, I was the guy talking contract terms, market trends, and business practices. It’s impossible to pinpoint where and when it happened, but I came to speak the language.

The information at Superstars 2013 had changed probably sixty percent from the first year—because that’s how quickly this industry is shifting under our very feet—but I went from forty pages of notes to four. Maybe fewer. It’s not that the information wasn’t timely and valuable, and yet I absorbed very little that I didn’t already know—well, that’s not true; there was plenty that I didn’t know, but I was so well primed for it this time around. The benefit was not all of the advice and new-fangled information. It was having so many of my business friends and contacts in the same place at the same time.

That’s what will happen once you start down this track. You don’t need to have a step-by-step plan for how you’re going to succeed. The industry changes too fast for step-by-step plans to be practical, anyway.

Think of the publishing industry as a train. One day, it motors past your station, so you hop aboard. At first, you don’t know any of your fellow passengers and you don’t have the context to understand their insider conversations. But there are only so many people on this moving train, so unless you hide in your cabin all day and refuse to talk to anyone, it’s only a matter of time before you’re caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily train life.

So just get on the train.

Conventions as Marketing, Part II, or Every Day is An Interview

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I wanted to follow-up on Quincy Allen’s great post of October 15, 2013 about the value of active convention attendance on your marketing plan. The post is particularly timely as I’m packing my bag for World Fantasy which will be held in Brighton, England from October 31 – November 2. Quincy shared how his career had been enhanced by his decision to attend conferences. Like Quincy my successes in writing can be traced back to my decision to attend a conference. But that’s only a part of the story. Showing the is the easiest part. What Quincy did, and I recommend you do, is he was an active participant in the conferences.

Taking a convention from being a fun event to being a professional marketing tool is hard work. We attend writers’ conferences or seminars, to market our writing, and to meet other writers, agents, publishers and editors. For ease of reference, I’ll refer to agents, publishers and editors collectively as “agents.” You cannot sit in the seminars and only interact with the group of people you came if you are marketing.  Every day of a convention is an interview. Every moment of every day is an opportunity for you to help or hurt your career. So how do you ramp up your marketing potential at a Con?

Before the Con: do your homework.

One of the things I love about World Fantasy is it posts a list of attendees or “members” so I can see if my dream editor or agent is going to attend. This year WFC also has a separate list of attending publishers so if you don’t know that Jane Doe is with XY Literary you can see that XY Literary is attending and investigate further. Conventions are often crowded. Decide in advance who you’d like to make a connection with, why, and how.

I wanted to talk to Peter Beagle because I love his stories and since he was a Guest of Honor that year . How was I going to meet to him? Because he was scheduled for a reading, an interview session, and to attend the banquet I knew where and when I could find him, but I also asked my friends if anyone knew him. One of the founding Fictorians did and she introduced me. Ask your friends and colleagues if they know the person you want to meet. Chances are that one of them does. A personal introduction will usually take you a lot further than cold calling on someone. If the person you want to speak with is not giving a lecture or otherwise booked to be in a specific place be prepared to check the Con Bar – regularly.

If you are planning to pitch a story make sure it’s finished. “Finished” does not mean the first draft is complete. It means you have done everything you can to make the story as compelling and as free from typos as you can. Prepare your pitches. Ace Jordyn attended last year’s WFC with a list of the people she wanted to meet, and pitches prepared for each work and each person. Amazing, really.

At the Con:  Be professional and bold.

I’ve written about this before so I’m not going to delve too deeply here. Appearances matter. If you want to be taken as a professional be dressed as one. Does that mean you have to wear a suit? No – unless that’s your brand. Look at just about any New York Times best-selling author’s website and you’ll see what I mean. Lisa Scottoline, a retired lawyer and writer of legal thrillers, wears suits. She wore one when she was instructing at the Seak, Legal Fiction for Lawyers convention where I met her. Because of who she is and what she writes the suit is part of her brand. Neil Gaiman and Brandon Sanderson don’t wear suits.  In fact, I would guess that the bulk of professional writers don’t wear suits. Still, they all look professional. You should too.

Act professional. Don’t interrupt, don’t be rude. Enough said about that.

Go boldly.  Follow-up on your plans. Go to the places the people you are looking for are likely to be. Talk to them when you find them. If you can’t find them, ask other people if they might know where Jane Doe is. You must approach strangers at a convention. You must ask friends to introduce you to people you don’t know, but want to. At least one agent has said that she only signs people she’s met at a convention, and the agent doesn’t wear a name tag. She, like every other agent, wants to see you’ve done your research and that you’re passionate about your work. After all, if you’re not excited about and willing to sell your work, why should she be? Sitting in a corner watching the con go by will not result in publication.

Strike while the iron is hot. If you are engaged in a genuine conversation and someone asks what you are working on. Tell them.

After the Con: Follow-up.

Oh lucky day! You spent three hours talking to your dream editor at the Con Bar. So, now what? Follow-up with that person just like you would do at any other networking event. Send her an e-mail saying you enjoyed meeting her at the Con. Make the e-mail specific so that if you drinking a purple girly drink remind the editor so she, who met hundreds of people at the Con, has the opportunity to place you. If you were asked to submit to the editor do so now. It not, just thank her for her time. At minimum, follow the editor’s twitter feed or friend her on Facebook. Comment honestly on posts. If she posts something you find interesting you should comment on it. If not, you shouldn’t. You are trying to maintain and forge a genuine connection with her.

Don’t forget your friends. Remember all those people who helped you research and introduced you around? Thank them as well.

Conventions are one of our most powerful marketing tools if used correctly. Meeting someone at a convention may make the difference between a polite “no, thank you” and a sale. Treat every convention like an extended job interview because that’s what it is. Your primary goal is to form honest and lasting connections with the people you meet. Succeeding at that goal leads to success.

 

Working the Convention Circuit

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This is one of those “you should” blogs that, if you know me, you know I generally hate. But I’m going to do it anyway because I’m willing to take the heat for being a hypocrite for a topic I believe is worth the sacrifice. So here goes, and it’s a bit of a daisy chain, so bear with me.

If you’re a new writer, with at least a handful of published short stories to your name or even a novel or two, then you should give serious consideration to working the convention circuit.

Back in July of 2009, I got laid off from an IT gig and decided to chase a writing career. The first thing I did was write some short stories and submit them. I also wrote a novel—the less-than-well-known Chemical Burn. Over the past four years, these efforts have borne fruit. However, if they were all I accomplished in that time, the odds are I wouldn’t be writing this blog right now for the simple reason that the folks at The Fictorians wouldn’t know who I am.

Let me explain.

In October of 2009, I attended MileHiCon, a local and well-established genre and writing convention with a strong author-track. As a result of my participation, a number of wheels were set in motion. MileHiCon is where I met Kronda Seibert and the “heart” of the local steampunk population. As a result of that meeting, I was able to write three episodes of a steampunk Internet radio show and laid the foundation for the Penny Dread Tales anthology series. I wouldn’t be writing steampunk if it weren’t for that convention.

At MileHiCon I also met Sara Megibow of the Nelson Literary Agency (which had benefits later) as well as David Boop who has introduced me to much of the Front Range writing community in one way or another. This also led to my involvement with the Broadway Book Mall.

At a convention in 2010 I met Peter J. Wacks, which opened the door to a contract for Steampelstiltskin with Fairy Punk Studios and laid the groundwork for a relationship with an international best-selling author (more on that later). I also started picking up a fan-base and found a home with the steampunk community. As a result of that, I established a recurring attendance invite with AnomalyCon and locked in “premiering” each new Penny Dread Tales (PDT) anthology at the convention. PDT has now become a staple at the con, with a growing list of “bigger-name” contributors as a result of its growing exposure. It was in this cycle of cons that I also met Guy De Marco for the first time, and that relationship opened up even more doors.

2011 was more of the same, and in 2012, I extended my reach a little and—thanks to Guy—hit OsFest in Omaha Nebraska. That’s where I met Travis Heermann. It was also in the 2012 con season that I met Angie Hodapp (also of the Nelson Literary Agency), and that opened doors to making a proposal to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Board of Directors  as well as teaching a seminar on writing action scenes (with Travis Heermann) at the Colorado Gold Conference this year.

2013 saw my reach deepen into the writing community. I’ve met writers, agents and publishers. I’ve got a growing list of contacts, fans, and even editors asking for my work. My relationship with Angie Hodapp and Sara Megibow over at the Nelson Agency opened the door for me to submit a query directly to Sara, and while she didn’t accept that manuscript, the door is open for me to submit directly to her when I finish my next manuscript.

On top of it all, at CoSine in Colorado Springs this year, I met for the first time Kevin J. Anderson. You may know that name. As a result, I now do book designs and eBook conversions for Word Fire Press, and as a result of that chain of events, I’ve been able to work on books by authors like Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson and, coming soon, Alan Drury. I even did a WordFire Press version of the eBook for Clockwork Angels. My work with Anderson also got me into Superstars, which led to me being invited to become a Fictorian.

The daisy chain goes on and on, so what’s the message here?

That if you’re planning a career in the writing biz, you should start meeting, greeting, and carousing with people in the writing biz. That’s how you make contacts. It’s how you open doors. That’s how you create opportunities for your writing projects.

Most people think the writing business is all about getting “picked up”… about writing  a manuscript in solitude, submitting a query, and finding out six months later that you’ve been offered a contract by an agent or even one of the “Big 5.” I won’t deny that this method works… but you’d have as much a chance trying to get struck by lightning in a thunderstorm.

The odds are against you, so how do you up the odds?

You hit the convention circuit, plain and simple.

 

Q

A Smile and a Handshake

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A guest post by Sam Knight.

Once upon a time, that was how people did business. A smile and a handshake was good enough for nearly any transaction. Why? Because people knew each other. They knew about each other, they knew where/what/when/how about each other. If someone was a stranger, they often got the benefit of the doubt, because everyone knew that if you weren’t as good as your word, you weren’t any good at all. And all it took was one time to ruin that.

Someone going back on their word was fuel for the gossip mongers like no other. Speculation would run rampant about why, about how everyone could have misjudged before, and about what must have happened to change a person.

Why doesn’t it work anymore? Why can’t you take out a loan from the local bank that way? No one knows each other nowadays. No one takes the time to stop and meet someone. We still meet people, but it’s because we were forced to work in the cubicle next to them, or after we’ve seen them by the coffee machine for the tenth time. Very few people go out of their way to meet a stranger anymore. Why? Because strangers recoil from being approached. In this day and age, everyone knows that someone wearing a smile is trying to sell us something, and we avoid them.

Fundamentally, we all want to be liked, so we go out of our way to do things that make people like us, or we avoid doing things that people will hold against us. And never forget—first impressions are everything.

There is nothing like a face to face connection with someone to make them like or dislike you. But if you can make them like you, it will take work to turn that into dislike in the future.

What is my point?

This month’s theme on the Fictorians is Marketing and Promotion and a ‘smile and a handshake’ is one of the strongest forms there is.

Why else would politicians still bother with it in this day and age? Everyone knows they are full of ‘it’. Everyone knows the promises are hollow. No one likes a politician. So why do they do it?

Because a smile and a handshake works. Human contact works.

A form of marketing and promotion that is often overlooked, by those not in the know, is attending social functions. Whether it is a Comic Con or a local book signing by an author you’ve never met, every social function is a great opportunity to market yourself in a real and effective way. And that includes when you are at the grocery store or your kid’s soccer game.

Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta are quick to teach their students (at places like their Superstars Writing Seminars) that you should always wear your ‘professional’ face because you never know who the person you are about to meet is (or even the person across the aisle listening quietly). And there is a good reason for that. That random person you just shook hands with, or who saw your infinite patience with someone desperately asking to be punched in the throat, could be anyone. They could be an agent, and editor, a publisher, a movie producer, or just a rich benefactor looking for someone worthy of spending their money on.

I’m not kidding.

I wouldn’t expect to ever meet a movie producer that way at the grocery store, but if you are at a convention or something similar it can be done that way, and from my experience it usually is.

Take the time to meet the people around you at a convention. After you meet them, let them introduce you to the people they know. You will be surprised at how small the world suddenly becomes when you play ‘Seven Degrees of George R.R. Martin’. You will also be surprised at who will remember what a great person you are when they decided they need an artist/writer/editor/chauffer for William Shatner.

And—this is important—don’t forget your ‘professional’ face. You never know who that person standing off to the side listening to your conversation is. You need to make a good impression. At the very least, they may be your next fan. A real, honest-to-goodness, love you for who they think you are fan who will tell everyone they ever meet what a great person you are and that everyone should buy your book.

Warning! This is not the fast way to build up your marketing and publicity! This is the slow burn that needs to never be forgotten while you do all of the other things. This is the foundation you need to stand upon.

If you make one fan like the one mentioned above at each social event you attend, you will have a better career than most. Your fan base will be stronger, and less fickle, than any you could acquire in any other way. If you impress that one right person, a year later, when they see you again, your career could change forever.

I speak from experience on that one. Trust me. ‘Professional’ face. Meet people.

Get out from behind your desk, and meet people in person. Press the flesh, so to speak. Show people you are witty, intelligent, personable, and affable. Exude confidence in your attitude and demeanor (without being an overbearing jerk!) Go out and meet people and convince them that they need to know more about you, about what you write, about what makes you special.

I know this is hard. It is a stressful thought for those of us who like to live in the dark with only the glow of a monitor to keep us company, but fundamentally, we humans are social creatures, and the more you go out into the world and meet people, the more they will accept you. The more they accept you, the more you will accept yourself. And the more you will feel confident enough to market and promote yourself in person. It’s a wonderful circle of positive feedback—and opportunity.

Never doubt the power of a smile and a handshake.

 

P.S. This can be done wrong. It can be done horribly wrong! I do mean meet people, not ‘try to sell them your book.’ There is a difference, and they can be done at the same time, but honestly, when was the last time you wanted to get to know a car salesman or someone who seemed like they were stalking you? The point of this is to sell yourself. And if that means ‘know when to walk away’, that’s what it means. Staying in someone’s face when they don’t want you there is bad juju and that reputation will precede you! (See earlier comment on gossip!)

Guest Writer Bio:

Sam Knight refuses to be pinned down into a genre. If the idea grabs him, he writes it. Once upon a time, he was known to quote books the way some people quote movies, but now he claims having a family has made him forgetful, as a survival adaptation. He can be found at his website and contacted at sam@samknight.com.