Are Writers’ Conferences Worth It?

Today, we are pleased to welcome Martin Crosbie, a self-published author of the Amazon bestseller My Temporary Life and the follow up novel, My Name Is Hardly. He also has a collection of short stories entitled, Lies I Never Told. His next self-publishing workshop takes place in Vancouver, Canada in September 2013. Details can be found here Bestseller-Lists-Secrets-Weekend. We hope you enjoy his post.

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Maybe they are. Okay, I’ll give you more than that. Obviously I can’t speak for every writers’ conference or festival out there and I haven’t attended as many as some writers have…but, and I say this cautiously, I think they are worth attending. All the noise and commotion that we’ve been making as authors has been noticed. There’s a funny thing happening, and you actually have to get up and move away from your computer to give it some perspective. Wait until after you’ve read this article though, and then hopefully it will make sense. You see, we authors are here, online, in our forums and blogs, and most of us are connected with each other and we know either a little or a lot about what’s happening in self publishing. We talk in this new language about “Indies” and “also-boughts” and “freeloads” and sometimes I think we forget that not everybody knows what we’re talking about. Not everyone was here to see the rise of Hugh Howey and Colleen Hoover. Not everyone is familiar with the diminishing effectiveness of giving your book away for free or has been part of the discussion on whether Amazon buying Goodreads is a good thing. All the rest of the world knows is that self-published authors have found a new way to connect with readers. And yeah, it’s scaring the heck out of some of them.

The first writer’s conference I attended was several years ago. Self-publishing guru, Bob Mayer gave a couple of workshops on self publishing. At the time, even he was still talking about how to approach agents and write query letters. He’s the only speaker I remember who spoke about non-traditional ways to get your work out there. Unfortunately, the next year, Bob wasn’t present at the same conference. They did have an author who had published traditionally as well as Indie, and his workshops were full. However, I don’t remember any other mention of this world that many of us have become so familiar with.

Lately though, it feels as though the tide is turning.

In the past few months I’ve written a couple of articles for mainstream newspapers, I’ve given a talk at an online writing seminar and I’ve been included on a panel at a writer’s festival. I was actually invited to do these things! I didn’t have to force my way in the door. And, the conference organizers were all very nice to me. I wasn’t the black sheep of the written world and even when I spoke about the target that I have on my back as an Indie author, nobody called for security and asked that I be escorted from the building. Most of the questions at the festival were for me, the self-published guy. And, a very prominent traditionally published author sat in the audience listening, and nodding his head as I made points. Now, I realize these are only minor adjustments in the overall picture and I’m just one writer, here on the west coast…but it is promising and, after all, the tide had to change because as I mentioned, there are a whole lot of authors out there who don’t know what we’ve been doing. All they know is there are readers enjoying our work and they’re wondering how we’re reaching them. If we get invited to more of their conferences and festivals, we might just tell them.