It was great. It really, really was. I feel like I learned a ton. Not about writing so much, but the about business of writing and about myself.
I met most of the other Romance Unleashed authors which was absolutely fabulous. It is amazing how close you can get to people over the Internet. My husband was really impressed with how wonderful they all are too.
I met my agent in person and chatted with my editor at Zebra for quite a while. I also, of course, met a lot of other romance writers–both pubbed and unpubbed.
I didn’t go to a lot of the general session panels, but I did attend Samatha Saxon’s panel on “What not to Write” based on Alfred Hitchcock’s work. I love that kind of stuff and really think at some point I will use some of the information. Once I dig out, I’ll share a bit of what I learned with you. I also went to Stephanie Bond’s presentation on “10 career mistakes and how to recover from them”. It was very timely as I think I will be using some of her advice in the very near future. I’ll post more on that later too.
There are separate sessions for Pan members and I went to most of those. The one on numbers once again pounded in how obsessed we writers are with them and how little the ones most of us have easy access to (Amazon, Ingrams and Bookscan) mean. For instance according to the numbers these women get from their publishers Bookscan only accounts for 25% or less of their sales–Wal-mart and grocery stores are that big! One NY Times author said Wal-mart sells more of her books than all of the major booksellers combined. Think about that for awhile.
There was also a panel by two women from Rodale press revealing the results of a survey they had done. It was interesting, but I think, like all surveys, the data could be twisted. For example they asked people what caused them to buy a book. The quality of the writing was number one, while book covers and titles were really low. Okay, that is what people SAY, but really, we know covers and titles are key. Let’s face it the quality of the writing doesn’t make you pick up the book–you don’t even know the quality of the writing until after you read the book. Assuming you aren’t buying because it is an author you know, or because of a review (neither of which was a top, top reason) the cover is what sucks you in. After that other factors become the deciding factor. There was also a question asking about their favorite romance subgenre that caused a bunch of comments. Historicals ranked very highly and when broken down further, American-set historicals were at the top of the smaller list. But what wasn’t clear was how the question was asked. It very well may have been worded in a way that the readers answered based on years of reading rather than say the last five books they purchased. This kind of thing can really change the results of a survey.
On more general terms, the hotel was nice, the food good and reasonably priced. My only complaint with the accomodations was the lack of seating in the bar. You had to be a little predatory about gathering chairs for your group–but that was a small thing and I would say the location was a grand success. Good job RWA!
Till later.
Lori
Edited to add. Here is a short version of Stephanie Bond’s presentation. :)
