It’s been a really busy few months full of events for me and the rest of my Bibliocrunch team. We’ve done a lot of events, but these are some of our favorite.
In January we joined our friends at Kobo Writing Life for an event on the future of reading which got a nice writeup in ABA.
In February we hosted an event at ASJA to talk about the basics of online retailers and pricing strategies. The good folks at Publishers Weekly did a great writeup.
In March we hosted our event at Housing Works Bookstore. We had over a 120 people join us to talk about self-publishing. The ppt from our talk is here.
In April we went to down to Charleston, South Carolina to attend PubSmartCon. BiblioCrunch was part of a panel and also an exhibitor. If you missed the conference you can use code Sponsor14VT to get 20% off the video recordings.
PubSmartCon was the first conference that I attended in the South and I’m really glad I went. I got to reconnect with old friends and made new ones.
Some highlights and observations:
1) Jane Friedman, who gave the breakfast keynote, is really really nice in person. She’s super sharp and her presentation skills are on point (I love that!).
2) Hugh Howey really is every author’s best friend. Most keynotes don’t mingle and usually jet right after. But Hugh made a point to talk to as many authors as possible. Plus, he’s available for babysitting. My infant daughter loved him.
3) You can’t beat the hospitality of the South. No one was selling books or hustling authors. The conference was a reasonable $250 for three days (not one, but three).
4) Some (traditional) publishers presenting complained about the lack of focus on traditional publishing and how the conference might have seem slanted on indie publishing. But, hey, publishing is changing. It has been. Authors are now in control and the future and should be the center.
5) Some of the fab folks we met/re-networked with that we highly recommend you check out:
- Orna Ross from Alliance of Independent Authors. Check out their awesome book unveil (which we’re in) at BEA14!
- Amanda Barbara of Pubslush (a crowdfunding platform for books, and also a great way to get pre-sales).
- Amy Quale and Dara Beevas of WiseInk (great tips of self-pub)
- Tracey Atkins from Book Design Templates (templates for authors)
- Hope Clark from Funds for Writers (creative ways to fund your writing)
- Robin Cutler from Ingram Spark
- Christine Munroe from Kobo Writing Life
- BooksILove – a very cool app that let’s you share the books you love with your friends.
- Kathy Meis from Bublish (also co-host of PubSmartCon)
- Shari Stauch from Where Writers Win (also co-host of PubSmartCon)
We’ll be hosting #indiechat with some of the fab folks we met, so stay tuned!
Other events:
Last month we had our ASJA Panel and we’re off to Book Expo America next week for UpublishU and #AuthorHub! If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, we’ve got a 40% discount for you!
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