I'll do it for him...

Has any one been before? (Kolona, you went last year didn't you?) How was it? Would Saturday only be enough?

Yes, I've gone to the CWC the past two years. Tor has had my manuscript for about five and a half months now because of a critiqueing session at last year's conference. The year before that, an agent requested 50 pages of it and returned them with very helpful comments , and an editor critiqued and gave me one dynamite suggestion. Need I say I have found the conference worthwhile? I also met a little gal who's a dyed-in-the-wool liberal -- my exact opposite -- and we've been friends since I found her sitting on the floor.

Oh - I understand the confusion. Eric was/is taking a class called Writing in Depth. I got the info from him, and just finished my 5th class with the instructor (on-line). The old host won't be hosting our site anymore, so Eric set up a new site for our instructor. He's been working on that - that is the "class" I meant - I have no clue if he went to Punahou, but I'm sure he would have mentioned it by now!

(Eric - didn't mean to put emoticons in your mouth!)
(Kolona - sorry to go off topic!)

Lee

I have two younger sisters who are Punahou grads who went to school in Oregon, and one of them went on to Oregon Health Sciences - she became a dentist.

Ok, let's sing it together, "It's a small world after all..."

Nice to have a vicarious connection!

Oahua, Oahua, Punahou our Punahou

Hope you have a job soon that's at least twice as good as the one you left! *crosses fingers and toes for you*

Yes, quite literally meant. My boss was jumping my rear-end about something retarded, and it finally reached the point where I knew I couldn't say a word to him with flipping out and hitting him (a point it had been building up to for about two months), so I turned around and walked out. Haven't been back.

The big take-home: It’s all about the money. If I heard it once, I heard it in probably every session. Of course, I cringed each time I heard it, but there you have it. It’s all about the money. Whereas publishing used to be a gentlemen’s occupation, it has fully sold out to Big Business.

Some quick notes I gleaned:

Regarding the PR aspect of publishing: You need an issue, an angle to speak from, which is harder to do with fiction, of course. But you need to scour your story for some talking point relevant to something today.

The discussion we’re having on one of the threads here as to what is YA? The answer: It’s a marketing decision. (See the big take-home, above.) There's more credibility -- better sales, higher cover price -- for a book sold as an adult book. In fact, departments have been known to share a book, doing separate covers for adult and YA. Depends on the book, too, as to which markets the powers-that-be determine to be more penetrable for it.

Ads don’t sell books, they just tell the existing audience when the book is out. Reviews sell books.

I finally bought the Rust Hills book Kathleen often recommends, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Haven’t gotten too far, but I can already see why she likes it. He has an undercurrent of an attitude -- always helpful in a how-to book.

Lotsa fun. Lots to digest. Glad I went.

But then what can you expect. We 5’11" Swedish models with HUB’s have to stick together.

Big Business. That was a theme. Publishing is a business, and as in all business, its about the money, ‘cause you don’t stay in business if you aren’t making a profit.

But really, the editors and agents often emphased that this is not entirely a bad thing. The author holds the one card that editors need. The writing. The big business of publishing isn’t going to work without good product. And even though some of the authors doing presentations had obviously had their bleak days with the system, there was a sense of optimism.

It was also interesting to hear that many of the choices you see about displays and product placement with bookstores has more to do with the bookstore’s, rather than the publisher’s, decisions.

Doing your own PR was also a big thing. It’s going to be mostly on you to get the word out there, even if you do publish with a big house. So start thinking of what connections you might be able to use now!

Just hearing everyone talk also emphasized this is a business on built of the varieties of the individual. Lots of different ways of working, lots of different ways of people interacting over the course of a manuscript turning into a published book. Which I can only see as a good thing too, because it only make it more likely you’ll be able to find editors and agents that suit both your personality and style, something that seems critical for something as personal as writing.