Whew! What an exhausting and wonderful weekend! There were so many great things I enjoyed about the SoCal RWA Conference. First, of course, is spending time with a bunch of other romance writers talking shop and sharing ideas. That always feels like a good use of time. 🙂
The surprising thing for me was that for the first time, I batted 1000 when it came to workshops. There was at least one thing in every workshop that I needed to take home and use right away. I almost wasn't able to say that because one workshop was definitely for newbies but it didn't say that in the description. I was bored but kept my friendly interested face in place out of respect for the speaker. Then the very last sentence this speaker uttered, I thought, oh my gosh, I completely needed that! The last sentence – LOL!!
Of course, the most exciting part for me was Sunday, my first public book signing! Woo-hooo! It was good that it was small-ish so I could see if I'd prepared properly. Some things were awesome – like my Square Reader on my iPhone for taking credit cards. Quick, easy, and the money was in my bank account the next day. Wow!
Other things I figured I'll have to make a change. I had the two anthologies on the table to show more books you could purchase with my stories in them, but I didn't have copies for sale. Plus I had a pile of four-color flyers showing covers for the three books available, the book cover for Unexpected Superhero that's coming out next month, and a coupon for buying an ebook of Little Miss Lovesick at a reduced conference price. But all of those things altogether took up a lot of table space.
For the next conference, I'm taking an idea from Barbara Vey with Publisher's Weekly who mentioned that Dianna Love created Keeper Kase Cards. She made 4×6 postcards with the book cover on one side, and on the other side a short blurb with a big blank space. Then people who buy digital books can get her autograph on the postcard and keep all their postcards in a kind of autograph book.
Even though this conference was trying to “go green” by having the least amount of paper products, readers were asking for a bookmark or postcard. So I'll create postcards for each book. That will save space on the table, and I can offer them to my readers who buy ebooks. I'll let you know when I have them ready. 🙂
Here's a look at the conference through pictures. Enjoy!
Thank you to the conference committee for putting on such an excellent conference! Thank you so much to all the readers who came to the book signing! And a special thank you to John for taking pictures all day. You all rock! 😉
