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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: VaBook Festival, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 5 of 5
1. What NOT to do at a Book Festival or Writers Conference

The spring book festival season is underway. As a public service, here is a list of bad behavior I've observed and/or had to contend with.

Panel Moderator: 

  1. Wait to contact panelists till two days before the event—or not at all. 
  2. Be unfamiliar with panelists’ work: Not read author’s book (at least the first few chapters and website); not know who the literary agent represents; not know titles the editor has worked on. 
  3. Have no agenda for the panel, or a vague one, e.g., “I will read brief introductions, and each of you should speak for 12-15 minutes. Then we will take a few questions.” 
  4. Let panelists talk for so long that there’s no time for audience Q&A. (This happened with the panel in #3.) 
  5. Talk a lot about yourself or read from your own book. Your job is to help the panelists shine. If they look brilliant, so will you. 

Panelist: 
  1. Cancel at the last minute because you just realized that the finances won’t work for you. Or cancel due to “family reasons”—but keep the plane ticket the organizers paid for. 
  2. Author: Leave book at home, or not have a reading figured out—and practiced!—beforehand. Agent/editor: Leave business cards at home. 
  3. Read for 15 minutes when you’re asked to read for five. 
  4. Monopolize the conversation and/or interrupt other panelists. 
  5. Belittle the moderator (“If you’d read my book…"), other panelists (“I can’t believe you’d say such a stupid thing!”) or audience members (“If you’d been listening, you wouldn’t need to ask that question.”) 
Audience:
  1. Leave your cellphone ringer on. 
  2. Give copies of your manuscript or self-published book to panelists. 
  3. Pitch your book during Q&A session. 
  4. Ask self-serving questions instead of general ones. (“Why didn’t you answer the query I sent you six months ago?” vs. “What should a writer do if an agent hasn’t responded to their query after six months?”) 
  5. Engage a panelist in lengthy conversation afterwards, when there’s a line of people waiting behind you. 
  I'll be at VaBook Festival next week. Now go forth and be good!

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2. VaBook Festival: The Business of Book Reviewing

Here are the Greatest Hits of what Washington Post Book World deputy editor Ron Charles said during the program I hosted last Friday, "The Business of Book Reviewing: Changes and Challenges." You can see and hear moderator Bethanne Kelly Patrick (at left) and author/reviewer Katharine Weber (at right), and hear one comment by me (explaining "trade magazines").



I'm too busy getting ready for my move to NY this week to write my own post about the festival, so read author & consulting client Clifford Garstang's comments here.

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3. Catch Me If You Can

After spending most of Oct-Dec in bed recovering from surgery for a herniated lumbar disc, I'm going to be zooming around again. Here's my events schedule (so far) thru May.

3:00-4:30pm ET (12:00-1:30 PT)
Includes Q&A, Marketing Plan Worksheet & private 15-minute follow-up consultation.


January 29 & 30 - Space Coast Writers Guild Conference
Cocoa Beach, FL
  • "Book Promotion 101"
  • "Polish Your Pitch"
  • individual 10-minute pitch coaching sessions


WriterHouse, Charlottesville, VA
9:00am-12:00pm
Guest speaker: Alison Larkin, author of The English American


March 18, 7:00pm - "Candy & Booze: Good for the Jews?"
Moderator; with Katharine Weber (True Confections) and Max Watman (Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine).
March 19, 4:00pm - "The Business of Book Reviewing: Changes & Challenges"
Host; with Ron Charles (Washington Post) and freelancers David Montgomery, Rebecca Skloot and

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4. Speaking of Book Trailers...

Consulting client Doreen Orion, author of QUEEN OF THE ROAD: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own (coming in June from Broadway Books/Random House) now has a trailer on her fantabulous web site, designed by the inventive folks at AuthorBytes.

BEAMING DOWN: Roswell, New Mexico is rated ET, for "Entirely Tasteless Mocking of Beliefs Not Our Own." And check out Doreen's podcast page, where the current offering is "How a shrink became a writer." More are coming soon; can't wait to hear "Mobile Martinis."

While I was at VaBook last week, Doreen emailed me:

Celestial Seasonings just picked QUEEN OF THE ROAD as their June book club pick. (Bet you didn't even know they had one, eh?) This came about b/c I ran out of tea in Modesto, went on their website to order, saw they had a partnership with Random House for a book club and asked the marketing person there to check it out for me.
I shared this anecdote during my "Promoting Like a Pro" panel as an example of how one has to be open to "outside the box" opportunities--and pounce on them as soon as they appear.

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5. Upside Down


by Roberta Baird

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