Tag Archives: AWP

What Writers Look Like (at AWP)

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Roughly fourteen thousand people connected to the writing world gather each year for an amazing conference organized by AWP. Big names, wannabes, teachers who never published a word, agents, publicists, publishers, editors, illustrators, students all sort themselves into attending five hundred sessions over three days and circle through the book fair, a gigantic assortment of booths hawking books, dreams, courses and services.

cynthia_kraack_headshotIf available sessions don’t meet your needs, people watching will fill the seventy-five minutes. Young and middle-age flesh in Lycra, baggy tunics and barely there shirts, tats, piercing and orthopedic shoes march up and down halls in pursuit of becoming better writers or associated professionals. Lots of black clothes, a good helping of interesting hats, messenger sacks, backpacks, miniscule purses and a few corporate bags file pass by. Individuals on the brink of completing graduate degree programs practice interview greetings in quiet hallways. Academic jobs are almost as scarce as generous advance payments. Writers whisper their way through paragraphs in preparation for the enviable opportunity of reading on the many stages of AWP official and offsite events.

The fifty-something sitting on the aisle could be a published bestseller, or a creative director at an ad agency with a manuscript in their home office and big dreams, or a community creative writing teacher hoping to re-invigorate lesson plans. The thin young woman with wonderful wild hair might be story editor for a literary publication, or marketing herself as a social media specialist, or a graduate student beginning the process of finding her place in this world. She might be working for a community college next year, or for an insurance company, or writing her first collection of poems while caring for her first child.

That’s what writers look like—teachers, fathers, the kid next door, the person sitting next to you on the bus. Everyone at AWP has a story to tell or skills to make that story better, more widely known, sent back for another revision. Pace yourselves these next few days at the conference. Sip that trendy Thai-style tea and find your next story’s character talking to a short, but handsome, man across the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How the Family Reads

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My father thought he found himself in a character in Minnesota Cold, my first novel. Before release of The High Cost of Flowers I spoke with each member of our family to make sure they knew this book was not about us. My writing group asked what my husband thought of a short story about an unfaithful wife. Not to worry, he doesn’t read my work. But more important, I am a fiction writer. This wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about him. It was a story.

Laurie Hertzel, Senior Editor/Books of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and author of the memoir It’s All News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist, wrote about how family members approached reading a series of blog posts that focused on childhood memories. She said some members read with interest, some with anxiety, some with disapproval. With memoir project research collecting in a folder, I’m both curious and cautious about how other’s memories of an event might differ from mine. Trained as a journalist I’m looking for the comfort of facts even though stories of our family might be the guts of the book.

I admit my twentieth century great-grandmother inspired the twenty-first century protagonist of Minnesota Cold and that my father’s devoted caring for my mother, who suffered from dementia, influenced the development of Art in The High Cost of Flowers. flowers-cover-200Writing a memoir about the actual lives of these two individuals will be challenging. The powerful influence of familiar people, places and experiences in writing is reflected in AWP 2015’s first day schedule that includes three sessions on the topic. I’ll be in attendance.

Among the fears that held me back from publishing, offending somebody dear to me ranked fairly high. More than once I’ve read that if you can’t get over that concern you need to do something else. I’ve written five novels, but this memoir is clamoring for attention. Hopefully these AWP 2015 sessions will bring insights that help bolster my courage to take on a project that should be written.

Skin in the Game: Marketing Expenses

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A business blogger tells writers to take responsibility for their own marketing, to have skin in the game. Kirkus invites publishers of all sizes to submit books for review with the stipulation that “authors must have zero financial responsibility for the book’s publication (note: this does not include marketing).”

Small publishers do what they can to support their writers and remain financially viable. At AWP 2014, a literary publicist said most publisher expect writers to use advances to pay for promotion of the book. Large publishers while placing major marketing budgets behind big name authors do also create a solid backdrop for all other authors to go out and sell. Advance reader copies, a sales force, point of sales items, website pages, the power of a big imprint are significant. Most writers published by small presses receive a handful of free advance reader copies, pay their own publicist and bear the cost of book travel.

Of course the small press might be looking for sales of seven hundred or fifteen hundred books over a year to break even versus ten thousand in ninety days so there is less pressure. Unless the author wants to cover expenses like that publicist’s contract, printed marketing materials, and travel. Added to the hundreds of hours spent writing the book, writers do have a very lot of skin in this game.

What does it cost to market a book? There are companies willing to sell self-published authors all kinds of services ranging from around a thousand dollars upwards to twenty or thirty thousand.  Think of what is needed in today’s market: website, social media presence, publicity, travel, free give aways. With over a million new titles released each year, grabbing an audience of a thousand or two thousand readers is part strategy, part magic.

Harvesting Ashwood sold over 4,100 electronic copies in six months.  The royalties weren’t much because of discounts and distributor expenses. My publisher feels the groundwork has been laid for Leaving Ashwood this summer. A possible publisher of a second novel to be released later this year feels the same.

The dirty little secret for most writers is the road to success is a whole lot like the South Park’s Underpants Gnomes model– Phase 1: Sell book to publisher. Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Big Profit!

To Blog, Or Not

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This morning another favorite literary agency blog announced its end. “And so we say good-bye” by Jessica of Bookends Literary Agency gently closes the window that provided a peek behind the curtains that protect whatever happens in the world of agents. Jessica says she feels the power of the blog has faded in a world of Twitter and Facebook.

Insane as you might think this is, I agree with Jessica. Blogs are kind of like the New York Times of miscellaneous information when news crawls across the bottom of a screen fulfill some readers’ need for all the facts. Blogs are a guilty pleasure—reading about a topic of interest for a full minute instead of answering emails or opening Facebook or something equally as immediate. The Bookends blog had a rotation of writers and posted new materials almost daily. Wow, that’s like producing a new brochure about your business every week.

While I agree with Jessica, the reality is new writers are encouraged to blog, to build an online presence, and relationship with readers. When Nathan Brandsford moved from agent to social media consultant and published writer, he backed away from daily blogging because of new demands on his time. Maintaining an authentic blog presence is a responsibility that can’t be approached lightly. Nathan is back and writing to a different reader—a person who likes YA literature and reading instead of Jessica’s audience—individuals in earlier stages of their own literary careers.

During AWP 2012 blogging was all the buzz. Poets presented blogs that featured party pictures and new works, bookstores talked about blogs connecting them to their customers, publishers emphasized that writers had to have presence to attract an audience.

While presenters at AWP 2012 didn’t present solid statistic about the value of blogs, others in the marketing world have been doing research. Social Media Examiners claims there’s a strong correlation between how frequently a blog posts and the amount of traffic generated. They claim businesses that post daily will generate 5 times more traffic than those that post weekly or less. They have interesting diagrams to support their findings.

For writers that suggests blogging could be useful not only in attracting an agent or small press, but also supportive of continued marketing of published works. It would be wonderful to have harder data, but when has there ever been hard statistics about successful marketing for writers to follow? More people are buying books and there are so many more book titles to buy. In a market that continues to fragment building an audience requires more than one strategy.

Beyond marketing data, a blog does provide a writer with the opportunity to invite readers to peek behind the curtains of a fictional world. I am not Sally Dodge or Anne Hartford. This is Cynthia Kraack figuring out the world of writing.

 

Redesign the MFA?

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One message from the halls of AWP 2012: Writers are now responsible for developing their unique following long before sending a first query. Publishers and editors told session attendees that good writing on its own is not enough to land that first contract. A writer must have a positive electronic presence including impressive numbers of followers on Facebook or Twitter, activity which is being used as a surrogate for customers ready to buy their book.

In the sales world the ratio of cold calls to meetings to qualified prospects to an actual sale is data analyzed then used to develop strategic marketing plans. Experts in social marketing know the sales net must be thrown significantly further to land a customer. More than one published writer has been disappointed to find that hundreds of Facebook friends didn’t really equate to hundreds of book sales. How to turn social media contacts into active customers may be a puzzle solved by the big internet marketers, but still is a mystery to most small publishers.

Today I began writing about ten key messages discovered during AWP. Beyond a significant number of sessions devoted specifically to social media, the topic crept into many presentations. But I sensed a bigger question: What in the traditional MFA curriculum prepares writers for this new expectation of developing a strong potential audience while mastering their craft? How many courses do MFA students take where they learn marketing skills—identifying potential markets and developing strategies? If publishers would rather accept a pretty good manuscript from an author with a thousand friends on Facebook, an attractive blog and hundreds of Twitter followers than a great manuscript from someone with more normal social media presence, shouldn’t MFA programs be paying attention?

Medical schools learned late in the game that their graduates would have to be astute business professionals in an environment controlled by big insurance or healthcare corporations. Amazon, Apple, and others have pushed the publishing world into a similar situation. The discussion has moved writers from artist to producers of possibly profitable content. Listen to debut writers talk about publishers’ expectations that the writers maintain market excitement for their books.

How to bring this reality into the MFA world could be as simple as offering solid course material on today’s publishing business, as creative as requiring that graduates display social media competency, or as innovative as collaborative ventures with other academic areas. At the least, MFA programs owe it to their students to provide space for individuals to discover their own definition of success as a writer along with faculty-led guidance for how to build a course of study to support those goals. Schools have proven they can help talented people produce amazing creative work. Getting that work to into readers’ hands needs different support.

Final AWP/Involvement

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Two more sessions on my schedule before leaving AWP 2012. There have been truly high points: panels that presented riveting approaches to craft or promotion. A playful Margaret Atwood keynote address. Sparkling readings. Camaraderie, collegiality and collaboration. And there have been sessions that didn’t quite hit the mark, presenters who feared a microphone, crowds that occasionally discouraged raising a hand. A sign of how well this conference is organized is that even the weaker sessions were valuable for some participants. All part of the staging of a large, complex conference. Jerod Santek and his team did a grand job.

This morning’s session about preparing and submitting proposals for sessions in the 2013 AWP Boston conference drew a decent group. The guidelines are online and the process isn’t that difficult. As I see it, people who value this community and save up the money to participate as often as possible also have an opportunity (maybe responsibility) to volunteer their time to building future conferences through the proposal process. Whether academic or writer, publisher or editor, many AWP members have experience and knowledge that would benefit others.

So think about what sessions you would like to attend in Boston (or Seattle or Minneapolis) and visit the AWP site to learn about how to make the next conference as successful as the one you’ve attended.

Thanks again to everyone who gave of their time to make AWP 2012 happen.

Social Media/AWP

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For everyone jumping into the social media water, the pool is crowded. No reason to get back on the beach, just lots of motivation to find your own voice and work it.

As a digital content writer I’ve watched this explosion. In late 2009 for a graduate project I researched the electronic presence of three dozen writers who represented a cross section of genres and career maturity. About one-third relied on their publishers to provide a generic website and a handful had none. The others really owned their websites, including Stephen King, Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, Jonathan Safran Foer, Margaret Atwood, Nick Flynn, and Todd Boss. These sites invited readers to stay for a few minutes with frequent personal blog writing, games, interesting graphics and such. Of course book promotion also wound through their sites, but in a support role versus the main attraction. Take a look at their sites.

What do you need your website or blog to do for you as a writer? Stay focused—does the world need to become aware of your prose, your poetry, your teaching expertise? And how do those screens about your pottery or dog breeding or state fair award winning pickles support that image? It’s tempting when spending so much time to ask your website or blog to do too many things.

I don’t have anything against pottery or dogs or pickles and once I get to know you as a writer, I’d love to have you share something about you as a person. But for those of you beginning social media involvement today, I’d recommend writing yourself a ten word description of what you want your audience to know about you, or why someone should visit you online. Today I’m interested in finding a few new writing bloggers. Let’s get to know each other.

Working AWP

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Everyone comes to a big conference with expectations. AWP, one of the largest gatherings of creative types in the country, has its own interesting cast of characters walking the halls. Talk to anyone in an elevator and stories pour out: newly minted Ph.D.s with job interviews, out of work editors with resumes hoping to hear about opportunities, poets interested in grant money, novelists searching for the elusive agent, small publishers with hopes of expanding subscriptions, presenters unsure their materials are still relevant in the always changing world of literature, successful writers willing ready to share their formula for staying on top. There are books to be written from what can is heard.

From the first sessions at nine in the morning through sessions and conversations with absolute strangers, in the Bookfair where story ideas are shared hesitantly with a publication’s editor, to the cafes and bars where an absolute stranger becomes a friend for two days, AWP is a giant whirl that can refresh the spirit while the body wears down. Except for the students who travel in miles from their friends’ homes where they bunk for free to the Chicago Hilton venue and stay until the last microphone is turned off.

Day 2 for me will include time at the Stonecoast MFA table where hopeful students bring their aspirations and former colleagues will ask about where writing has taken my life. I plan to attend sessions around the old chapbook format that has found new audiences, to hear readings and learn about the future direction of literary journals. I wish I could use my notebook to draft new characters from the nuances of the swirling crowd.

The World is Over/AWP

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So what is the future of publishing? While at AWP, it’s great to dance to the happy beat of indie publishing busting down the gatekeepers and finding their own readers. It’s daunting to hear a semi-traditional small publisher say he wants new authors who bring an established audience with them as demonstrated through Facebook and Twitter stats. And then there is the Bookfair where only a small fraction of the thousands of unique small publications are available ranging in quality from one that comes out whenever the four guys have time to impressive names with deep history.

So it is a brave new world or it is a totally crazy world.

For those who have the time and a high sense of comfort with their work, publishing a completed book is possible in the next few hours. For those with high social media aptitude there will be an audience for that book. And from what writers are experiencing, the main difference in that equation for traditional publishing is assurance from pros that your book is of quality, some assistance in learning about social media and a 90 day window to hit the sweet spot in finding readers plus losing rights to your content. I have to think that owning the content might become the name of the future game.

Amazon has created a new playing field and millions are playing and paying. Sell a million books at 99 cents and make $300,000. Yikes! Sell one hundred books and make $30.00. If merely publishing is what makes your career successful, the entry point is easy. If feeding the kids is what you need, the bar is higher. A totally personal question.

 

Windy City/AWP

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Wet, sloppy spring snow slowed travel in the Twin Cities this morning, but weather reports from Chicago prompted a last minute change in packing from heavy sweaters to lighter items. Temperatures in the Windy City on Leap Day 2012 reached sixty as AWP check-in began. True to its reputation, Chicago’s wind pulled hair in every direction, yanked doors wide open and blew the dust and dirt of city’s streets everywhere. By six o’clock temperatures began to fall and cold rain added to the thrill of walking from the Chicago Hilton to dinner.

The flavor of this year’s crowd is beginning to show in the early registration groupings—young people carrying duffle bags and string sacks. Presenters and book fair participants already at work, middle-age attendees dragging roller bags with one hand and holding on to their Caribou cup with the other. Thanks to my husband’s Hilton stays we’ve snagged a room on the executive suites floor, a quiet place for the coming days. Just the sound of the wind around the building, the El tracks a few blocks away, horns and sirens twenty floors below. Chicago.

AWP is all about social media this year. At times on Thursday more than one session on the topic has been offered at the same time. Waiting to see how many people will be blogging or tweeting during sessions. Eager to hear what others have discovered about creatively using technology in their work.

More in the morning.