INTERNATIONAL BOOK PUBLISHING UNIVERSITY
SAN FRANCISCO
2014
I
had a blast this last weekend attending many group meetings and doing
one on ones with some of the top people in the publishing world.
Everyone knows how much this industry is changing, but knowing that and
keeping up with it is a different story.
One
of the major takeaways from the events and from talking to everyone
individually is the importance of the amount of social media presence
that authors must maintain these days. This is not on one site but
across all sites. Of course there will always be some debate on which
one works best or how you should use it, but all agree that you have to
master it.
Learning
the ropes on how to get in with major distributors is extremely
important and one reason why I wanted to have private time with people
like Tom Doherty (pictured below) who is president of Cardinal
Publishing Group and has a wealth of information to share. With all that
has to be done it is easy to see why who need to allow yourself six
months to prelaunch your novel.
Because
I use Ingram to distribute my print books worldwide, it was a big honor
to meet with Mark Ouimet (pictured below) who is the vice president and
general manager at Ingram. Since the last time we talked at the
Frankfurt Book Fair I have placed many of my novels in their system and
have been so pleased with the way they handle my account. He has so much
knowledge about distribution that I wished we had more time to talk,
but I am sure we will again soon.
The
major distributor for my electronic books is Amazon and it is always a
pleasure to spend time with my friend Thom Kephart (pictured below) who
is the Community Outreach Product Manager at Amazon. Thom has been with
Amazon for a while and is the go to guy if you have questions on
anything happening at Amazon. Amazon keeps creating innovative ways to
help authors sale and staying on top of them is important. To get
discovered in Amazon you have to learn how to use your meta tags and how
to take advantage of the many opportunities they offer.
I
could keep going, but when you have people like Jonathan Kirsch, one of
the top publishing and contract attorneys in the country giving advice,
or friends like Mark Coker who owns smashwords and is a highly
outspoken advocate for indie writers around, you know you are in the
best place in the world to learn. But with every meeting and every
contact the people you meet add one more level of knowledge that is
needed to make it in this crazy publishing world. It is the people like
Jim Millliot, the Co-editorial Director at Publishing Weekly who are the
best at making sense of all of the madness and making it easier for all
of us to understand easier.
Considering
I meet hundreds of people like this over the weekend, I will always
remember my time in San Francisco as one of my best trips ever in
learning to be a better publisher and writer.
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