Blog Archives
Networking at PNBA 2013
A couple of days ago, I wrote a bit about the PNBA (Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association) conference in Portland, Oregon. What an amazing event! I had an opportunity to meet dozens of other authors and pick up many new books for the bookstore. I also connected with some great publishers, editors, and other folks in the trade. I wasn’t the only one at the show wearing two hats, either. A number of the authors also worked as editors, consultants, or illustrators.
It would take more than one post to tell you about all of the wonderful people I met at the show, but I’d like to talk about a few of them just to emphasize the importance of networking at a show like this.
Author Marketing 101
The cover of Therese & Morgan’s new book.
This was one of the seminars in the author track, and it was put on by two engaging and enthusiastic ladies named C. Morgan Kennedy and Therese Patrick. Right from the beginning, they engaged the audience. After giving us a bit of background for each of them — and laying out their credentials — they split us up into groups and gave us collaborative assignments.
I’ve been writing professionally for a long time. My first paid magazine article appeared 30 years ago, and my first book came out 17 years ago. Why would I attend a seminar called “Author Marketing 101”? As a friend of mine once said, “If I learn one thing at a seminar, it was worth my time.” I did indeed learn something. More than one thing, in fact.
But the most important thing about events like this is networking. Meeting new friends like Morgan and Therese was great. We’ll be able to help each other in the future. Watch their blog for a guest post by yours truly, for starters (I’ll post an announcement here when it appears). I also met an author who will hopefully be visiting my store to do a talk, a bookstore owner who will hopefully be hosting me for a talk, and several other people that were just great to chat with.
Hey, I just noticed Therese mentioned me on her blog. How about that? Networking at work!
Keith McCafferty
Keith’s soon-to-be-released sequel to The Royal Wulff Murders.
Isn’t it great meeting someone and hitting it off instantly with them? Keith is a Montana author who writes small-town outdoor-oriented mysteries (which I love), yet somehow we’d never met and I’d never read his books. Even though he lives just a few hours from here, we ended up meeting each other in Portland, Oregon.
Keith and I and our wives ended up sitting together at the author luncheon on Tuesday and chatting afterward until we just had to leave. We exchanged stories about his day job at Field & Stream magazine, bookstores we’ve both visited, life as a writer, and our homes in Montana.
We don’t live in a place like Seattle or New York City where authors are as thick as flies on fresh wolf scat (sorry — I write poop books, so I can’t help phrases like that sometimes). In Montana, we’re spread out across the landscape. It’s a mighty big landscape, too. If you’re in the southeast corner of Montana, you’re closer to Texas than you are to the northwest corner of Montana.
Ask the Experts
I know. I’ve met with “experts” who knew a whole lot less than I did. Nonetheless, I have some rather complex contract issues with some of my new projects, I’m crossing genres (again), I’m having difficulty finding an agent, and I need some publisher contracts in other countries. So I went ahead and signed up for a one-on-one “ask the experts” session with a publishing consultant named Sharon Castlen. I got a lot of good advice in 15 short minutes, but there were a few questions she didn’t feel that she could answer properly.
Sharon set me up with another “ask the experts” volunteer, Cynthia Frank. Cynthia is the president of Cypress House, a publishing services company in California. She was able to answer some questions and also suggest some agents and illustrators for future projects.
It’s tempting to spend all of your time at a show like PNBA just wandering the exhibit floor, attending the cocktail parties, and trying to pick up as much free stuff as you can. In the long run, though, the contacts you make are far more important than swag or free books.
Book Signings at PNBA: Above and Beyond
My dual personality is in full bloom today. It’s the first day of the PNBA (Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association) conference in Portland, Oregon. I have been going to bookseller conferences for a decade or so now. Since my wife and I own a bookstore, I always attend these shows with a bookseller badge hanging around my neck, even when I’m dragging around copies of my own books to peddle. Today, I have that bookseller badge, but it’s tucked in behind an author badge in the holder, as I’m primarily here to promote my newest book, Who Pooped in the Cascades? Having the author badge doesn’t stop me from turning into a drooling fanboy, though. I had a chance to meet one of my favorite authors today (Ivan Doig!), and I was utterly starstruck.
My wife, Kathy, and I getting books signed by Ivan Doig. Yes, by the way, I’ve been right all these years. I asked him if he was offended that I suggest that people start with Dancing at the Rascal Fair when reading his McCaskill trilogy even though English Creek was written first. He said he agrees with me that it makes more sense to start with Rascal Fair because it’s first chronologically. I am vindicated!
Unlike most of the bookseller conferences, PNBA offered a whole track of seminar sessions designed for authors. This was a great idea, and the networking was worth every bit as much as the content of the sessions. There were authors, publishers, and editors in attendance, and I went through almost half of the business cards I brought to the show with me. Note to self: bring a bigger stack of cards next time.
My book signing is tomorrow afternoon, so at tonight’s “Nightcapper” author event I switched to the bookseller badge and collected signed books. About a score of authors ringed the room, sitting at tables with crisp white tablecloths and piles of their latest masterpiece. Most were in the mental zone authors tend to enter at a book signing. The process, while genuine, is routine: smile, make eye contact, chat for a moment, sign the book, move on. Some offered to personalize the books, while others waited to be asked. Autographs ranged from simple initials to elaborate signatures with little added comments.
In my post titled “7 book signing tips for children’s authors,” I talked about adding little extras to a signature. Tonight, Allie Brosh was going above and beyond the call of duty (wayyyy above), by offering to draw a picture of an animal on the title page of her book, Hyperbole and a Half, for anyone who asked. Any animal you asked for! I requested a Jackalope.
The jackalope that Allie Brosh drew for us.
Thanks, Allie. You have set the bar even higher. I once drew someone a picture of a wild boar and they thought it was a rhinoceros. How am I supposed to compete with what you’re doing?
My wife and I with Allie Brosh (she’s the one in the middle), as she finishes up the jackalope in our book.
Yes, by the way, those are wine glasses. I like this kind of book event. Wine and chocolate and books. I wasn’t going to have any wine, but right before visiting Allie, Mike Veseth signed a copy of Extreme Wine for me. How could I not have a glass of wine?
It’s been a good day. Technically, I was writing about today when I started this post, and now I’m writing about yesterday. We have an early morning start tomorrow (err … today), so I shall sign off and write more later.
I guess I’m one of the few…
In the bookstore today, a customer was looking at my big spinner rack of Who Pooped in the Park? books. He looked at the sign on the top, which shows a picture of me signing books in Yellowstone Park. Then he looked at me. Then back at the sign. Then at me. Then he raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s me. And, by the way, my 18th Who Pooped? book is coming out next month! It’s for the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, Washington, and California.”
He swiftly summoned his daughter. I’m very bad at judging ages, but I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say she was eight or nine years old.
“This man here is the author of the Who Pooped in the Park? book that you like,” he told her.
She eyed me suspiciously.
“The author?”
“That’s right,” her dad assured her. “He wrote these books.”
She looked at me more closely.
“He’s alive.”
“No, honey, not all authors are dead. Some are still alive.”
Oh, well. I’m still planning a book signing at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association conference in Portland, Oregon this fall. If I live that long.
