Henry Herz was kind enough to take on hosting duties this month, giving us more insight into both the children’s book markets and indie (adult) publishing.
My notes from the meeting are below. Thanks again to Mysterious Galaxy for the space, and to Henry for hosting a lively and informative meeting!
Notes:
- san diego writers and editors guild: around 40 yrs, offers manuscript review service, meets fourth monday each month, next meeting will be from sd zoo publishing house, also has a marketing support group
- upcoming events:
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- charlotte huck children's book festival (all the way up to ya): march 9-10, university of redlands
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- henry teaching class about writing picture books, san diego writers ink, march 10 and 17
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- wondercon in anaheim end of march
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- april 13th: san diego writers festival, downtown library
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- san diego writing workshop: may 11th
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- nebula conference in LA later this year
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- san diego comic fest is next weekend
- tips for being more efficient in using your limited writing time?
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- david morel (writer of rambo) got up at 4:30 every morning and wrote for two hours before work
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- henry uses spreadsheet to track writing pieces and where he's submitted them to (or queried, etc)
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- using google calendar to set deadlines and reminders
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- managed flitter: lets you schedule social media posts ahead of time
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- 4thewords.com: gamified rpg that you play by writing (250 words in 15 min to fight a monster, for example)
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- another trick: when stopping for the day, stop mid-paragraph so it's easier to get back into it the next day
- scbwi (society of childrens book writers and illustrators) has ad-hoc critique groups that form at their monthly meetings
- indie author found personal appearances took a lot of time but yielded fewer sales than putting same time in to online marketing (10s of books vs 1,000s of books)
- indie author uses service to do all the formatting for him, makes it easier but he spends $4,000-$5,000 per book to publish it
- how do you find an editor?
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- san diego professional editors network
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- reedsy: website with professional editors that have struck out on their own
- agents don't usually expect exclusivity when querying, check their guidelines, but usually can send out queries to as many agents as you want at a time
- if you don't hear anything after three months, ping them, if still don't hear back, assume it's dead
- another short story marketplace site: "entropy: where to submit"; will show contests, etc coming up for the month
- childrens books: advice is to avoid inanimate objects as characters, because they're harder for children to empathize with
- authors guild: join, if you get a contract but no agent you can hire lawyers through them to review it for you
- henry's editing process: edits on own, then sends out to four different critique groups for feedback, multiple iterations with each one, polish off the rough edges
