This conference, held at The Surgeon's Hall, was a celebration of the new freedom that authors now have in the digital age. Self-publishing is now more or less respectable and well differentialted from so called vanity publishing. Writers who are weary of rejections and the generally snail like pace of the traditional publishing industry can take the plunge and with reasonable IT skills do everything themselves, thereby retaining a much higher proportion of the book sales income.
Promotion of writers/books is also easier using all the social media opportunities available, although these can be time consuming and eat into core writing time. Writers were given a lot of information on what works best in trying to build an online platform that will support sales beyond friends and family.
However most writers still want to be published via the traditional route, perhaps this is the new vanity? All the e-promotion activity is just as relevant here as authors have to do more for themselves in the face of lower publisher marketing budgets.
Representatives of the publishing industry sounded rightly nervous about the future which for many will lie in creating specialised niches for themselves.
Altogether an inspiring day for writers!
The Stuart Agenda by Alan Calder at willowmoonpublishing.com, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
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