Conference Day ONE

Going to a networking event can be daunting. Especially when no one else knows it’s a networking event. Everyone at the SCBWI Winter’s Conference was there to find a publisher or agent to publish their book. OK, so it was networking but not in the same way.  

The main ballroom was full of people who were still registering when the introduction on the first day started. Seating capacity was around 1200 people. And every seat was full. There was even people standing in the back. Seat stealing ran rampant, as I'm sure you understand.

The keynote speakers were very well chosen. Lois Lawdry spoke about what inspired her to write 9 different books and each one skillfully led into the last. No wonder she wrote such memorable books such as “the Giver” and “Number the Stars”. R.L Stein who spoke during lunch was hilariously funny and divulged that he never intended to go into horror stories when he first started out. Back then, he was known as Jovial Bob and to tell you the truth I think I’ll see him that way forever more. When he started writing teen horror, he said he stayed with it because he “liked killing teenagers. Probably because [he] had one.” As for the last speaker of the day, it was Jules Feiffer the illustrator of “The Phantom Tollbooth” one of my all time favorite stories (even though I’ve only seen the movie – I’m a bad fan). 

In between the keynote speakers, were the breakout sessions. Sitting in the breakout sessions were informative but if you were in the back, it was difficult to hear the questions from the front. There was a woman in my first breakout session who felt the need to comment with every question made up front about its low decibel level, making it difficult to hear them even more.  The editor in that breakout session as Lisa Sandell from Scholastic and she had some pretty fantastic advice:

• eBooks provide new opportunities to increase visibility.
• Everyone is looking for fresh material that feels exciting and new with a great story line.
• How to construct a pitch: 30 second pitch to Oprah at a Cocktail party

MINE: "The great war of magic which has spanned generations of time in Eden is coming to the end and the key to winning the final battle has lost her memory and been sent back to Earth.

• Writing is the MOST IMPORTANT job for writers. Marketing is secondary.
• First time authors should have agents.

In the second breakout session the senior editor spoke at length about the market. But when asked a question about the trend of publishers going towards direct marketing, she clearly had no idea what I was talking about; I had to explain the terminology to her and she gave me some condescending answer. On top of that, she degraded her own company stating “No one knows who we are”. Great employee.

The third breakout editor was Alexandra Cooper from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.  I’ll admit I didn’t stay for the entire hour with this one. It was getting pretty late in the day and I thought it’d be rude to involuntarily nap through the rest of it. But the main points I caught were these.  When writing novels (she had picture book advice as well but I don’t write those so whatevs!):

• Voice is important.
• Manuscript must have a new spin on an idea.
• It’s rare that series of works are picked up.
• Do your homework about the publishers and steer your pitches. Don’t send a publisher who doesn’t publish your type of books your query letter. He’s not going to read it.
• Read what you want to write.

Finally, all the editors had advice to give on the query letters:

• Don't compare books to best sellers.
• Don't send publishers things that aren't their taste.
• No gimmicks such as tea bags or flowers.
• High concept stuff but with great writing.
• Write from where your heart is but with the story telling to back it up.
• Try to give a first impression vibe; a peek at the story; the feel of a book.
• Rhetorical questions are a turn off.
• Professional and business like.
• Straightforward pitch. Feel/plot/character.
•  Some to a little personal info; maybe a sentence or two.

Privacy In An Online Age

The idea of online privacy is changing. As a consumer, there's simply some information I don't want to get out there. Phone applications like four square... Why do I want my stalkers to know where I am all the time?  I know they are out there just waiting for me to tell them how to find me. But seriously, I'm a private person and telling people where I am every second of the day feels like over share. I'm not that interesting and I don't usually find others to be either.

However as a business minded professional, I realize that kind of market research is invaluable... to someone. I haven't yet figures out to whom yet and I'm not sure what they would do with it; but to someone it’s gold.

Throughout my studies and even now, the topic of online privacy has come up. The most recent place is in an article I read about the five stages of publishing “The evolution of Book Publishing or, On the Trail to Stage Five” by Joseph J. Esposito found on www.ipda-online.org. I plan to give my thoughts on these stages in an upcoming post so stay tuned for that.

The part I will talk about here is this... the article states that small publishing companies are in a better position to go through the five stages of publishing. It’s in stage four that the issue of online privacy happens. Stage four is when publishers take a direct role in their sales and direct marketing begins. Direct marketing is collecting as much information about customers as possible, which is where online privacy comes into play; the more information given by the customers the better. But obviously, customers are afraid of giving out information like their zip codes, the number of people in a household, and the outstanding balance on a mortgage, with good reason. If the wrong people get this kind of information, there’s no telling what they would do with it (stalkers…)

But from a marketing perspective, all of this information helps publishers to sell products to their customers better. And in the end, all businesses are out to make money so…

A picture from the Google search of giant versus ant

What is needed is a standard practice for retaining and collecting information like this. There is nothing as of now because this problem has never come up before. So these small publishers have a chance to write the books, so to speak, in this area, because it takes a lot more for a giant to change directions over an ant. 

However, there is some big room for error here and in the words of Esposito, “it would be unfortunate if the organizations with the smallest regard for personal privacy set the standard”.

But publishing isn’t the only place where online security is changing. I mentioned a phone application above, soon power companies will also need a standard of information collection especially when the Smart Grid technologies come into play.  Will those policies be different? Do they need to be? Only time will tell right now. The only thing we know for sure is that as consumers we may need to understand that marketers find us the most interesting people in the world.   

Social Media Conduct

The nature vs nurture question is one for the ages. One I am truly not qualified to go into. But it comes up in this article: “The Talking Cure: Cleaning Up Online Conversation” from Harvard Business Review by Clay Shirky. It discusses the conversations held on social media that no longer show humans in their best light.  Everyone on social media is vying for the most attention, and unfortunately, on forums where everyone can comment, those with the rude and condescending opinions are the ones who get it. 

I’m ashamed to say I know this first hand, because I was that rude commenter not too long ago. What I said wasn’t particularly untrue, but the way I said it was rude and uncalled for. When called out on my misbehavior, I tried to explain my position a bit more calmly and diplomatically, but I’m sure my original comment made the owner of the book review less than receptive. 

She gave a very bad review on a book that she clearly didn’t read thoroughly. She missed some major story details and bashed it quite harshly. But what really got me emotional enough to comment on it was that there were many comments THANKING HER for saving them from reading the book. Well, I couldn’t stay quiet and told her if she can’t be bothered to read the book properly, she should be restricted from reviewing it. Or something to that effect. 

She called me “not a nice person”. 

I deserved that I guess. 

My point is that in a business setting I would have never written that as emotional as I was.  In a business setting, emotional responses are a big no no for me. When I get emotional, my vocabulary turns nasty – I think everyone can agree that’s normal. So I learned very early on that there are better ways to make a point. 

I made myself laugh once by re-reading what I wrote to a colleague with whom I had a disagreement  My vocabulary and demeanor in the email was overly polite. I said all I needed to and more and in the end it led to a very good discussion between us and we settled our differences. 

Why then is social media conduct any different?

Truth is, it shouldn’t be. But I’m not the only one who tends to be more than a little emotional in social media. This article discusses exactly that. Except they claim that humans aren’t naturally well behaved. So I’m sure the author adheres to the nurture side of the age old argument. Shirky also goes on to say that there are several ways to prevent emotional and non constructive comments. I’ll leave you to read the article if that interests you.  

http://www.usairwaysmag.com/articles/the_talking_cure_cleaning_up_online_conversation/

I’ll close this by saying I know that from now on, I’ll try to view all my online responses as business dealings. I don’t want to be called a “not a nice person” again. And honestly, behavior like that is just not called for. Not when I have the power to edit.

Happy New Year?

No, I did not get a publishing job and forget to tell you. In case you thought that was why I stopped writing. Fact is, I’m running out of ideas to write about. I mean, I have some… but they aren’t fleshed out enough. I have one planned about the library here in NYC, another on a generalized view of critique groups and their importance, and one about social media and reading. But the topics are really all I have here. And this was never meant to be a diary of my job search. Although if you’d like I can list the places I’ve applied to and how many applications I’ve placed in daily. But not even I want to read that. A review site wouldn’t be horrible, but there are so many other sites better suited for book reviews. Goodreads.com is one of them and I think it’s grand, now if only I found the time to enter in reviews!  

Still, two months is too long. 

Even if I were to count out how many resumes I put out there, December almost wouldn’t count. Everyone knows companies are waiting on the New Year to start new employees. It’s when they get their fancy new budgets and gleaming hope for bigger business. 

I’m happy to say that I share that hope. 

So I guess this my time now. Although, my year is starting out very much like last year. I’ve already paid for my ticket to this year’s SCBWI winter conference here in NYC. A hefty amount, but absolutely worth it. Now, I need to brush up on my elevator speech. 

Hi, I’m Lisa, I’m looking for a job in your company. And quite honestly, you couldn’t have a better employee. Here’s my list of references. Do make the paychecks out to my student loans company. Thank you so much!

Hmm. Not quite there yet. Maybe it’s a little too honest…

I’m also planning to return to the BEA this year but that’s not for several month yet and I hope to have a job by then so that I can strictly take advantage of the free books. I have my priorities straight, can’t you tell? 

I also have several more contacts in the business this year than I did last year,  so keeping up with them is another part of the plan. Other than that, I’m still hopeful that one of the MANY companies that I’ve sent resumes out to will reply this month.  And I’m going to keep at it. 

What is different about this year is that I’ve joined Figment.com, so the first chapter is up online for all to see if anyone is interested. I joined this site to see if my story could become popular, but it’s a tough site to deal with. Not user wise. It’s very user friendly. But followers wise. I have a very low number of followers and I want those who are following to actually read what I put up. I figure the best way, to not only practice my editing skills, but to also gain quality followers is to critique other writers’ stuff. A few other users have already come across my lengthy critiques and want some of their own. So things are looking up there. 

It not much in terms of new plans and of course I’m up for suggestions of any kind. I just know that this is the industry in which I belong and I’m 100% committed to being in it. I moved to New York in pursuit of this career for gosh sakes!

 Still, as a friend wrote on FaceBook recently “Hope springs eternal. But it does go into hibernation from time to time.”  Well hope, no sleeping on the job now. We’ve got work to do. 

There’s that darn persistence streak in me.