PNWA 2017 Was Awesome! -Part 1

I just got home from attending the Pacific Northwest Writers' Association Conference in SeaTac this weekend and man, I'm on information overload!
I took in way too much for the size and age of my brain. It may blow up. I'm staying outside just in case things get messy if I explode.

Web page for the Conference

I was not exactly attending the con every day but was helping authors with pitches Thursday night, doing the book fair Friday night, and was officially at the Con all day Saturday beginning with an 8 AM class with beautifully eloquent Laurie McLean of FUSE Literary.

Let's start there, shall we?

Laurie McLean must've been up since 4 AM because she was so awake and spot on, and informative, it made me feel like a front row sloth on NyQuil. I managed to take some strange notes and the following is from my chicken scratch...

- Print is not necessarily on the rise, ebooks rule and are still on the rise.
-Think about marketing towards the phone generation who are getting older and do everything on the phone.
-Audio are still subsidiary rights for authors
-Do something different like alternate endings or a YA version of your thriller, keep current of what can be done for an eBook.
-Do a Goodreads Giveaway for your ebook
-Podcasting is popular now! Get a youtube channel
-Book Baby is like KDP
-Book Scanner has something to do with checking ranking (cryptic notes)
-It is possible an agent will rep an audio book only-kind of a new idea that Laurie might have invented.
-ACX - you can do a royalty flip or one time fee to the narrator
-Do Facebook Live events everywhere you go that's interesting!
-Submit your book to agents who rep book to film deals
-Don't forget merchandising rights to all things connected to your book. eg) create a line of clothes or jams, or toy swords etc
-Word Press looks like a web site but is a blog and it's free
-Follow Bestselling authors who write better than you in your genre and comment on Twitter and FB
-Laurie McLean is a wealth of info, from a tech background as well as literary and says this publishing biz is a revolution that didn't change for decades and now changes drastically every week! Keep up with the changes, author.
Being repped by FUSE must be awesome!

Next, I went to Social Media Marketing with Lisa Dawn of The Wild Rose Press
She knows a ton of stuff and was really well-spoken!

-Social Media most effective Wednesdays and weekends
-Create a community who think you're great and want to be like you
-Have your brand and tag on EVERYTHING
-Have FB cover reveal parties, rafflecopter giveaways, invite co-host authors, give them 15 minutes at the party to talk, promote, ask them to invite 200 followers, Invite people from events you attended. Time your party with your preordering release day
-Twitter parties are frenetic, be ready, create a hashtag, 7-9 Eastern time is best to grab everyone.
-Give away Amazon gift cards, have co-hosts
-Pinterest is a place to find new people you'd never have access to otherwise.
-Make boards for your books
-Pin your covers directly from Amazon, not your jpeg
-Boosting FB ads works great when you customize who will see it
-Have key words in profile to link back to your books
-Posting tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Dilivrit.com is content management. Roundteam does auto posting so you can do all your posting one day a week.
-Twitter - Go to managefitter.com to clean out your twitter.
-Post bits of dialogue on Twitter.
-Make memes with Pic Monkey to sneak more info and words in first glance
-Thunderclap an event, launch or do headtalker.com -- one big tweet at once
-Search Engine Optimization- Use keywords for spiders to find your book
-All bios must use good keywords for the spiders to find you
-Change out your KDP 7 keywords every few weeks.

At this point I had lunch, talked a lot, needed to look at my notes about Surviving your First Year of being Published and then taught the class.
Tomorrow's blog will be about the talk I gave called How to Survive Your Virgin Year.
Stay tuned! Or sign up for my blog notification and you'll get an email when I upload blogs.

I heard such amazing stuff on all the talks and wish I'd had the opportunity to sit in more. Next year, I will. Never again will I hold off on registration for a highly recommended event just because it's in the middle of summer which is my most cherished and guarded time all year.

The conference next year is September!! Can't wait.

KIM HORNSBY is an Amazon #1 Bestselling novelist who lives in the Seattle area and writes books about women in dire circumstances rescuing themselves.
www.bit.ly/kimamzn
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