REPORT ON RT2017

I’m just back from a week in Atlanta at the RT Booklovers Convention, six days of parties, panels, signings, photo ops and various creative events designed to let romance readers get up close and personal with their favorite authors and cover models. The mixing and mingling culminated in the Giant Book Fair on the next-to-last day, where some 500 authors signed and sold books for eager readers in a four-and-a-half hour frenzy of activity. Whew!

For the most part, I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves here to give you a sense of what the whirlwind of RT is like. But this was my third RT con, and it was a little different, so I have some observations.

First of all, I got in the Giant Book Fair for the first time and did pretty well for a newbie. I’d do that again without reservation. I loved meeting SFR readers face-to-face and talking with them. 

But there were fewer opportunities to do that this year than in past RT cons. SFR star and past RT stalwart Linnea Sinclair was not at RT this year, so there was no Intergalactic Bar and Grille party for SFR readers and nothing to replace it. In the past, the IB&G event would draw around 200-250 readers for fun and games and an opportunity for SFR authors to showcase their work. This year, there was no event for SFR readers and no showcase for authors like me.

Heather Graham's Dancing Dead Party Invite

At past RT cons, Linnea would host up to three panels on SFR themes, inviting both veteran SFR authors and newbies to sit on the panels and be introduced to readers. The panels were always well attended. This year there was ONE panel. It was also well attended, but the issues raised were on the order of SFR 101—a rehashing of old, too-familiar themes.

Perhaps for these reasons, there was a paucity of SFR authors at RT2017. Certainly SFR Brigaders were scarce this year. It was unfortunate, and I would hate to think this is the future of RT. More than almost anything else, we need to connect with readers. We need to let them get to know us personally, to hear our opinions on what SFR is and where it’s going, to see our latest work and our backlists, to compare us with the paranormal and contemporary writers and others. Five authors (the number on that one panel) among 500 is just not enough to make an impact.

What’s it going to take to get us there? I don’t know, you tell me. 

In the meantime, have a look at some of the fun to be had when readers and authors come together!

My roomie--SFR blogger/reviewer Riley Moreland--and me.

500 Authors and eager readers at the RT2017 Giant Book Fair

                                                                            

                                                                  

Nashville's Zippy's Clutch perform at the Rockabilly Street Festival

                                                             
  

Cheers, Donna

LOVING THE LIFE OF AUTHOR-IN-RESIDENCE IN QUIRKY MARSHALL

I’m not sure when I started to think I might have gotten in over my head. 

Maybe it was when the artist organizer of the Marshall Patchwork Multimedia Art and Fashion Show, brought out the “string dresses” she’d made for a long-ago Mardi Gras, that resembled—no, that were—wildly colored sweater dresses covered with threads of synthetic Spanish moss.

Yarn hairdo and elaborate makeup--but it works for her!

Maybe it was when I had to say—a few times—that I really didn’t need elaborate makeup and a yarn hairdo for the event.

Maybe it wasn’t until the actual evening of the show, when the place was packed, the models were dressing in their unpredictably fabulous costumes, it was a hundred degrees in the old building, and I had to talk one of the designers (my friend) off a proverbial ledge before she agreed to go on. (“This is a circus,” she said. “I don’t do circuses.”)

But this was Marshall, my new adopted home town, and my friend and I shouldn’t have worried. In the end, the show was AMAZING, everyone who participated had a blast and the audience loved us! Quirky is Marshall’s middle name—right there before North Carolina. How could we go wrong with a show that featured music, art, fashion (not the kind you wear, but the kind that draws interest), and, of course, science fiction romance?

The multimedia event was the brainchild of Lois Simbach, a long-time resident of Marshall and a professional artist in several media, including fabric arts. In the carefree way of most artists, Lois just thought, well, let’s have a show, with the theme of “patchwork—all the many things that make up our mountain community.” She asked her friends to join in, with hanging pieces for the walls at the Madison County Arts Council, and fashion pieces, music and, ahem, readings for the show. 

Lois Simbach, Marshall Patchwork show organizer, in her string dress.

 

Living paper dolls from the Marshall Patchwork show.

 

And more living dolls from the show!

 

That’s where I come in. Lois is my friend—she asked me to do a reading from my new book, Fools Rush In. And, like most writers, I’ll do anything to sell a book. So I found myself among all these wonderful visual artists, a fish out of water, certainly, but willing nonetheless.

As the night of the show approached, one thing became clear. The fashion show would be wild, crazy and liable to bring the house down. So I asked to go first on the program. I figured I would have to overcome a fair amount of noise from the folks circulating with drinks from the bar, since the first hour of our 6:00-8:00 p.m. program was reserved for “beer, wine and conversation.” And, sure enough, when I began at 7:00, people kept talking in the back for a while. But about half-way through my excerpt from Fools Rush In (edited to a PG rating), I noticed things got quiet. And the audience stayed with me until the end, their final applause much more than polite. Later, complete strangers came up to say they’d really enjoyed hearing me read. According them, I didn’t sound nervous at all! 

Well, at least SOMEBODY'S listening!

 

Personally, I was just glad to have my part of the show over with so I could enjoy the fun. And, man, was it some kind of raucous entertainment! The pictures here don’t begin to tell the story. I do love my new home town. And I love even more being the author-in-residence!

Photos courtesy Colby Sexton, Marshall NC and Graeme Frelick, Marshall NC

Cheers, Donna

TO TWEET OR NOT TO TWEET, ETC.

Even Bones gets in on the Twitter/selfie action

After Sharon’s revolutionary post last week in which she vowed to opt out of the social media book promotion rat race, it seems the topic of book promo—how to, how much, if and when and whether—has captured everyone’s attention.

Including network television’s. I howled at an episode of Fox Network’s BONES this week in which forensic anthropologist/ mystery novelist Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) is forced by her publisher to join Twitter to connect with her readers. Of course, the socially awkward Bones is initially a complete failure at social media, tweeting links to articles about the family hierarchies of obscure native tribes. But at partner Seeley Booth’s (David Boreanaz) suggestion, Bones asks her young intern for advice, and is soon tweeting selfies with her arm around the shoulders of the lab skeleton. She goes from 10 followers to 3000 in the course of days, and, you guessed it, begins to ignore everything and everyone around her. Finally, fellow “squint” Angela (Michaela Conlin) pulls the intern aside and lets her know she’s creating a monster. Time to back off. At the end of the episode, things don’t exactly go back to the way they were, but Bones has found some kind of balance.

I don’t tweet. I had to make a choice a few years back of which of the many evils I would consider the lesser and went with Facebook. Zuckerburg’s baby had other advantages for me besides just as a promotional platform, and I figured I could control how much time I spent interacting with FB better than with Twitter, which is in your face all the time. Of course, now the evil Facebook gnomes with their indecipherable algorithms try to limit my “reach” to the people who have legitimately Liked my Page in hopes of hearing from me.  But Ha! I have discovered a way around that, at least for now. (I won’t tell you here. They may be watching. Email me. Or better yet, meet me in a public place in broad daylight where they won’t dare do anything to us.)

The problem with either of these platforms and with blogs like this one, too, really, is that we too often preach to the choir. We have our writers’ groups and special interest/fan groups and, yes, writers and fans read, but they too often have their own books or projects to sell. So we end up in this infernal loop selling to each other. I could spend the next two years doing nothing but just reading the books of people I’ve met in these groups. Maybe that would be good and maybe not, but it certainly wouldn’t be productive for me as a writer. This post by Delilah Dawson stirred some strong reactions when Spacefreighters co-blogger Greta van der Rol shared it on Facebook recently: Please Shut Up: Why Self-Promotion as an Author Doesn’t Work. But I have to say I can relate to a few of the things Delilah said.

I can’t get over the feeling that I should be moving beyond the writers’ communities to actually reach readers. There I have to admit my own market behavior as a reader is no help whatsoever. I’m a complete dinosaur when it comes to finding new reading material. I rely on word-of-mouth, the bookstore shelves, my favorite authors’ new stuff and, believe it or not, newspaper reviews. Yeah. Ancient.

But RWA® surveys have shown that word-of-mouth is still the Number One method by which readers find books. How that works is a complete mystery. Reviews are an important source, too, on Amazon, Goodreads, RT magazine and elsewhere. So even though it is risky to put your book out for review, it is a necessary means of gaining an audience. (Some people will even say a bad review is good, since there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I find that one hard to swallow, though.)

Your “presence” on Amazon or other online retailers is the equivalent of the bookstore shelf, so it pays to polish that presentation. A recent article in Romance Writers Report®, the official magazine of RWA® (“Managing Metadata: Mastering Mountains of Minutiae”) recommends playing up the book description as much as possible. I just added a “lead line” (a one-liner tagging the book) and endorsement quote to my naked blurb on Amazon in hopes of snagging more readers.

Finally, I may be wrong about this, but I doubt there is any substitute for physical interaction with the reading public. I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I’m an introvert and “public speaking” used to be the bane of my existence, but I’m looking forward to getting out there and buttonholing a few folks about my book.

This summer holds a couple of huge reader events for me—the RT Booksellers Convention in Dallas in May and the Shore Leave STAR TREK con in Towson, Maryland in August. I’ll tell you more about those as we get closer to the dates. In the meantime I’ll be warming up with some smaller events closer to home. Saturdays in May and June I’ll be signing Unchained Memory at my local library branches. Selling books at a library, where people can check out the book for free, may be a hard job. But I’m planning to have bookmarks—and candy! And you never know who you might meet if you put yourself out there.

Guess that’s the point of all this promotion in the first place, isn’t it?

Cheers, Donna