Women in Publishing Summit Notes

Last weeks Women in Publishing Summit was amazing. Five days, each filled with a number of interviews and panels with authors and publishers. It was inspiring. They were inspiring. I’m so happy I found this summit. I’m just hoping that next year it does not coincide with the business summit I also enjoyed last week. That was a lot more time than normal spent online.

And I learned so much!

A lot of things that will come in handy when I am ready to start publishing my first novella.  Some of the things I learned:

• Kindlepreneur has two wonderful and extensive lists for the author: Free Book Promotion Sites and Paid Book Promotion Websites. I will be utilizing these lists.
• Some great ideas on how to get information about other books in the genre, for marketing purposes.
• Ideas for promoting my books.
• Tips for scheduling promotions.
• About some great blogs and podcasts that will be valuable resources, in the near future.
• How one might possibly be able to make the USA Today bestseller list, though it is a HUGE amount of work that I will need a Street Team (or other named group) to help me pull it off, and some amount of an advertising budget – and still, nothing is guarantee.
• About copyright laws.
• That it’s important to go wide – meaning get the word out to many places during the course of the promotion, and sell on more than one platform.
• About more tax stuff.
• I need to find out if Maine taxes digital products, if I decide to sell directly from my site.

That’s just a sampling of what I learned, and I’m already putting some things into practice. I still have sooooo much to do and learn. And things change all the time, so some of what I learn and put into practice this year may be irrelevant or non-existent next.

Some of the things I already knew, but just don’t have the budget for:

• Every writer needs a professional book cover designer.
• Every writer also needs an editor.
• I already knew quite a bit about the tax portion.

So now I’m updating my promotional plans, and writing a couple of blog posts. It’s too quiet here at The Inn with the phones down.

~Shannon