Doors Closed on WOTS First Conference

Our very first conference, "Taking the Indie World by Storm," was a smashing success! We had twenty-one attendees--not too shabby for a first time--along with five presenters, and spent every minute of our time in fellowship, fun, and learning. Special thanks to Anthea Kotlan for setting us up in St. Timothy's Anglican Church. The conference room and kitchen facilities were wonderful. It was perfect setting!

Here's what you missed if you weren't there:

Linda Kozar informed us of the differences between traditional and indie publishing, and provided some useful information about distributors and formats: ebooks, print, and audible. Her speech about ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) was worth the price of admission right there. Looking forward to learning more about that.

Kathrese McKee gave a super-informative overview about the kinds of resources writers need in their toolboxes. She covered everything from writing aids like Scrivener and Windows Office to the major digital retailers like Amazon, Apple iBook, and Kobo.

Crystal Barnes took us through some basics of book formatting and cover design, highlighting some of the more technical aspects of creating a book--both print and digital. She covered fonts, page set-up, quarter-cover design vs tri-design. Actually, I think she could've taught for the entire six hours without hitting the same topic twice.

Janice Thompson spurred our creative sides with great tips on how to market our books, reiterating the fact that successful marketing has more to do with creating and maintaining relationships with our readers than it does pushing our works all the time.

Linda Yezak explained why authors suffer from sticker-shock when they see the price of an edit and how to keep the price down a bit with the help of critique groups/partners, self-editing, and revisions. I gave some tips and tricks of how to find many of your own mistakes before sending your manuscript for an edit.

Add to the list devotionals from both Anthea and Janice, a wonderful breakfast provided by Linda Kozar and Janice, and a good lunch from a deli that knows what they're doing.

Even now, though, we're doing some analytics--what worked great, what could be improved, what we hope to do next year. Our 2017 mini-conference will be even better. If you did attend, be sure to let us know what you thought---the good and the bad. We would truly value your input.

I didn't make it in time for this pic, so they improvised. Such cut-ups!

Reminder:

The conference took the place of our October meeting, so for those we didn't get to see this past Saturday, we'll see you November 19th. Traci Hilton is joining us to discuss creating and marketing the audio book.