Conferences – and other ways to waste time!
A nicer part of Bristol!
Yesterday I went all the way up to Bristol to attend a conference with the Society of Authors, all about the weird and wonderful brave new world we inhabit. The main thing was, the Society wanted to brief we authors on how to sell our books more efficiently and achieve better sales. A praiseworthy ambition!
The Society is a great institution, dedicated to the well-being of authors and writers, and the whole day was run very efficiently (until someone elsewhere in Bristol’s M-Shed decided to hold a very loud rock concert).
I learned lots about marketing plans (never seen one), about getting good PR (at £10k per book, I don’t think I’ll see that either), and about personal marketing and using the internet. Some great speakers, especially the brilliant Michael Bhaskar talking about metadata. Not a subject I was expecting to enjoy, but Michael made it fascinating. I would say that he and Michael Bland were the two guys who gave the most during the day – for me, at any rate, and if either is speaking again soon, I’ll be going to listen again.
Another guy who was fascinating was not a “Michael”, oddly enough, which just goes to show that my name isn’t the only guarantee of perfection – which will come as a surprise, naturally. Ian Skillicorn was very interesting while talking about the reasons for blogging, how to identify an audience, and managing the blog from there. Lots of food for thought there, too.
And the nice thing was, it looks like I’m doing the right sort of thing with my blog (hence this), my newsletter, my (anti)social media, and, of course, my YouTube videos. Although I was not happy to have my name pulled out of the hat to be interviewed with Michael Bland and to be up first of three in front of the audience. That was a little daunting. However, I had three people afterwards say that they’d buy a copy of “FIELDS OF GLORY” as a result of the interview. That was good!
Lovely old cranes and derricks around the quay. You knew what their objectives were!
The main thing that most of the speakers were discussing was, keep to certain objectives. It doesn’t matter what they are, the important thing is to be clear in your own mind about the objectives of your blog, your newsletter, your media involvement, your speaking engagements and other work. So long as you stay focused and adhere to your objectives, with luck people will find you before long.
So: decide what it is you wish to achieve; keep to those objectives; tag and use metadata to allow other people to find you and your objectives. Easy.
My objectives with this blog are threefold: to post interesting anecdotes and stories of an author’s life, from travelling to the problems of writing generally; to give occasional hints and tips about writing so that others can improve their own writing; finally, occasionally to highlight really good books I’ve read and to review them.
That looks easy enough.
On YouTube I’ll be trying to provide more humorous stories from my publishing career, but also talking about all of my books so that there is a full commentary on all my novels (a long-term project) while also adding regular hints and tips on writing.
Which reminds me. There’s another one up today. If you go and look at this you’ll find a squeaky-clean, shiny new video, all about planning and correcting problems with books, essays or any other kind of writing. If you like it, please go to the youtube page and give it a thumb’s up and subscribe to future videos.
That’s all for now. Happy reading!
writerlywitterings 