Indie Author Day 2017
Introduction
The Indie Author Day as held on October 14, 2017, at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library in South Euclid, Ohio.
Link to Cuyahoga County Library website
https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/
There were four activities presented at Indie Author Day.
Summary – Anna Kopp
The first activity was a lecture by Anna Kopp entitled So You Wrote a Novel: Now What? A Crash Course on Today’s Publishing Options.
This is the Goodreads link to Rise of the Chosen.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30553316-rise-of-the-chosen
She presented four steps to consider after your novel is finished.
Step 1. Revisions. Find beta readers and an editor to help on revisions.
Step 2. Pick a Publishing Path. There are three; traditional publishing through an agent, traditional publishing through a publisher, and self-publishing.
Step 3. Make sure that you are ready. Have a finished and revised manuscript for fiction. Research agents and/or publishers to submit query letters or self-publish.
Step 4. Building an author platform. Get followers on social media, do book signings, create author merchandise.
Final tips. Write, read in your genre, don’t despair, do your research, get help, and don’t give up.
After Indie Author Day, a librarian e-mailed Anna Kopp’s power point presentation to anyone in the audience that wanted a copy of it. It was helpful to review the presentation later.
Summary – Presentation
The second activity was a presentation about the free services and resources available at the library. The event was held at the William N. Skirball Writer’s Center. The librarian talked about upcoming workshops, author’s presentations, monthly self-publishing roundtables, and the Self-E program. During this presentation, pizza and refreshments were available.
Summary – Videos
The third activity was a series of internet videos displayed on the projector screen. The topics were about writing and publishing. The videos can also be re-played.
- Use pressbooks
- Write a fantasy novel
- Market your book
- The costs of self-publishing
- Get your book into libraries
- Publish with Ingram Spark
- Produce a professional book.
- Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing
- Draft 2 Digital and Smashwords
- Create Space and KDP Direct.
Videos #1 to #7 can be found at indieauthorday.com/resources
Videos #8 to #10 can be found at Teachable.com in the A to Z of Self-Publishing program.
I watched the first two videos before I went to the fourth activity. I watched the rest of the videos online later.
Summary – Book Whisperer
The fourth activity was an appointment with the book whisperer.
From 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM Deanna Adams, the book whisperer, had 15-minute one-on-one appointments to discuss questions about writing and publishing. In my appointment, I went over a query letter for my novel, Assassin in New Marl City, with her. She helped me in finding better words to use in the query. My goal is to send this query to agents to acquire representation for my novel.
This is the Goodreads link to The Writer’s GPS.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27810622-the-writer-s-gps
Conclusion
The four activities presented at Indie Author Day 2017 were well worth the time invested for independent self-published writers and writers considering self-publishing.
Links
I attended the Indie Author Conference and Showcase on November 12, 2016, at the Parma-Snow branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Parma, Ohio. This is the link to my recap.