Back in college, I would take some time the day before classes started to walk around campus and figure out where I needed to be for which class. Any Sterling people reading this might make fun of me (and several of you did back then), but even though it was a small college, I didn’t want the first day of class to be unnecessarily stressful. It also helped that one of my friends shared some of my same anxieties, so she and I would go together to figure out where our classes were.
AWP had an app that made it easy to figure out which sessions you wanted to attend, set a schedule, and listed which room number each session was in—but since I’d never been to this convention center before, the maps included made absolutely no sense. So I adopted my old college mindset and arrived at the conference about 45 minutes before my first panel in order to get my bearings and find all my conference rooms.
This was when I learned that I was going to be doing a lot of walking over the next three days, and that my snacks would have to become my lunch (and it would be good to bring lunch with me tomorrow). I also wanted to get to each room early enough to make sure I had a good seat.
These next few blog posts are going to be a little longer than normal, but as I mentioned, I want this to also serve as a record for myself.
So let’s dive in!
Session 1: Beyond the Debut: Publisher One-Night Stands vs. Long Term Relationships
The tag line for this session was: After the debut book, what happens next? I chose this panel specifically because of the questions you guys have been asking. I wanted to hear from other authors, and see if they tended to stick with the same agent and/or publisher, or if after their first book, they would need to start this process all over again. Most of the time, the agents will want to stick with their clients, but changing publishing houses happens a lot.
Something that was repeated a lot throughout this panel (and the conference as a whole) was that publishing is not a straight line. Even though it feels like it should be: write a book – revise the book – get an agent – sell to a publishing house – publish book. It also is a lot about timing and luck. Just because you wrote a good book, it doesn’t mean that it will be the right time in the market to sell it.
A lot of the authors in this panel also talked a lot about expectations and reality, and how you learn to reconcile the two. There seems to be a misconception around publishing. Not everyone who writes a book—even if it’s good—is going to be a published author, and that process takes years even after you have an agent.
That sounds a little disheartening, doesn’t it?
Lucky for me, the panelists insisted that it was persistence that wins out. Even though I felt some of my old doubts creep in (“Am I good enough to do this?” “Is my book even that good?” “Will anyone ever want to read it?”), I shut those voices out. I feel called to write—and called to this path. I know it will be hard, and it’s already taken a lot more time than I expected, but I want to do this. Therefore, I persist.
As one of the panelists said, “Sometimes the prize isn’t necessarily publication. Really the prize is more about the writing process. Revising, drafting, revising again, and finally having a finished project.”
I also learned about independent publishers in this session. I used to just think that there where two main avenues to publishing: traditional publishing and self publishing. But there’s actually a third! There are also smaller, independent presses that publish a variety of works that may not be quite suited to the traditional market. Each indie press is different. Some want you to have an agent, some don’t. Each press has a different focus, as far as what they publish, such as poetry, nonfiction, etc.
I’m not sure that a young adult contemporary novel is something that really fits into the indie press market, but it was interesting to learn about!
Session 2: First Time’s the Charm: Debut Novelists on How to Debut
I wanted to attend this session because I wanted to know how I got from sitting in the audience at these conferences to actually being a debut author. Not that I necessarily want to be on a panel, but career wise—how do I get where they are?
These authors talked a lot about the shift that comes from the solitary work of typing away at your computer, to sharing your work with others. Not only sharing, but selling. You suddenly have to give this project you’ve worked so hard for to professionals, and trust them to do their jobs. Not to mention, you also have to learn how to market yourself and your story—something that doesn’t come easy to many of us introverts.
“You must turn your writing into a team sport,” said one of the panelists.
Another panelist described the process as a garden. She said, “Your book is your garden, and it becomes hard when it’s now a community garden. But you had your hands in the dirt and you made something grow. It’s the work that matters.”
They also suggested to celebrate the rejections (and they assured us there would be many), because that means that you’re that much closer to achieving your dream.
Another question that got brought up a lot in this panel was, “How do you define success?” Is it being a New York Times bestseller? Is it having a published book out there in the world? Is it just completing a manuscript and knowing that you wrote a complete story? Once you figure out what your own definition of “success” means, then it makes it easier to strive for.
Session 3: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About (or to) Agents
This session was a whole panel of agents discussing the things they wished writers knew. Since I am currently in the “find an agent” stage of the publishing process, I found the panels with literary agents to be some of the most helpful and informative.
Something that was really comforting was that most agents really want to be your agent for your whole career—the only exception being in cases where you suddenly want to write in a genre they have no experience in or no desire to really branch out into. They also assured us that they read every query that gets sent in.
They mentioned several times that even if your first book doesn’t sell, that doesn’t mean you should give up. For many authors, their debut novel is actually the third or fourth book they’ve written.
A lot of times when agents don’t want to represent a book, it’s not because it isn’t good, but usually because they don’t know how to situate it in the current publishing market.
Remember when vampire novels were really big a decade ago? You may write a vampire novel now, and it might be fantastic, but those types of books don’t sell to the current market like they used to, so an agent may be hesitant to represent it.
The agents on the panel also assured us that the majority of book deals are not made based on the author’s online following. Sure, sometimes that can definitely be helpful. They also mentioned having an author’s website is also a good thing to have going, which means that I’m doing something right!
Finally, one agent said, “Delay is not denied. Find a way to detach your sense of joy from this process. You have absolutely no control over this.”
Session 4: Pathways to Success: Practical and Personal Tips for Getting Published
This session’s recap is going to be pretty short, because despite the name of it, it didn’t actually contain any practical or personal tips for getting published. The panel of authors really only talked about their own publishing journeys, and didn’t really provide “tips.”
It was interesting to hear their different journeys—and it really showcased just how different everyone’s publishing journey can be. They recommended several writing resources to check out, like newsletters and podcasts.
Session 5: Writing and the Day Job: How Writers Maintain a Living Outside of Academia
This session was also not quite as informative as I was hoping, but I gleaned more insight than from the previous session. The authors on this panel stated that almost all writers (except for a lucky few) have day jobs in addition to their writing careers. A couple of them also talked about how they used down time during their day job to write, and encouraged finding remote work as a way to accomplish this.
As someone with a remote job, this advice felt kind of misplaced. Even though I’m working from home, I need to treat it like being in an office. Sure, there are definite differences (for example, I can run upstairs to make more coffee or take a quick break outside with my dog), but writing while on the clock doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.
The author who gave this advice did so with the caveat that she could tell what writing had been done while doing her day job because it needed a lot more work. (Which seems like there would be a lot of extra work in the end.)
These writers also suggested that if you really wanted to write full time without having a day job, you needed to marry rich. Then your spouse can cover expenses, and you can just spend your days writing.
They also talked a lot about how writing can be mentally very taxing, and so it’s important to take care of your body—eat right, exercise, etc—because if your body is strong, then it will help your overall mental health, and it’ll be easier to deal with the rejection that happens so often in this industry.
But mostly importantly, they advised, “You gotta have fun, baby!”
***
Whew!
We made it to the end of the first day! If that felt like a lot to you, just know that this was the day where I took 13 pages of notes, so I really tried to condense it down for you all—and I left out quite a lot. (If you want to hear more specifics, you are always welcome to reach out!)
But a piece of advice that seemed to be prevalent throughout each of these talks was that you just have to keep going and keep trying. This isn’t an industry for people who give up easily. I heard several times that authors had queried 100-150 agents before finding someone to represent their work—which feels like such an insane number.
However, it sounds like if you are willing to put in the work, the rest will come.
See you all on Monday for Day 2’s recap!
Britnie Jenkins 