On Friday I was able to attend an excellent workshop sponsored by the Writers’ Union of Canada and Canadian Heritage entitled: Secure Footing in a Changing Literary Landscape.
This professional development symposium for writers was so inspiring for me that I have barely been able to sleep since attending. Deborah Windsor, the Union’s executive director, discussed authors’ contracts which was informative and helpful if you are considering going the route of getting a traditional press to publish your work. Information from authors Betsy Warland and Ross Laird outlined the huge changes in the literary industry. What really fired me up was the information they gave on the innovative digital and Internet opportunities that are out there for people to take advantage of. The world-wide web has spawned new pathways and creative venues for publishing and it means re-thinking what we are currently doing and how to take advantage of the constant barrage of new technology.
The entire publishing industry has been turned on its head and many of the long-established bastions of literary production are now publishing, not manuscripts that have been submitted in the traditional way, but books based on what people are reading on the Internet. A good example of this is the book/movie Julie/Julia; another case in point is Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman whose successful blog created such a stir that a traditional publishing company offered her a cookbook contract.
The most gratifying point for me was Ross' comments about self-publishing. He profiled several authors who have become very successful selling their own work and explained that the days of vanity publishing "shame" are now over. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, self publishing has been viewed as derogatory often implying that the author is only printing their book out of vanity and that the work would not be commercially successful enough for a traditional publishing house to take on. Curse the fellow who invented the term. Many companies, including the Writers Union of Canada now offer printing on demand and this is allowing authors, who have stories to share but who may not have been able to get a traditional press to look at their work, to become very successful. Did you know for example that if an author in Canada sells 5,000 books they are considered a best selling author? With the world wide market of the Internet available that it not such a difficult feat.
Those points all brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to stand up and shout the proclamation, "My name is Susan Greig and I AM a self-published author. I had four books sell in a bookstore & now my books sell all over the world on the Internet!" As detailed in my previous blog the Batten Disease Association approached me in 1995 and gave me funding so that I could self-publish my book, Forever Special Friends. To tell, the truth I've always been ashamed of this and have felt that I was somehow not a "real" author. I put in my profile that I was published but it felt like a lie. People from all over the world have sent me wonderful letters of appreciation for FSF all of which I have denigrated and discounted only because of the spectacles of shame that I have been peering through.
On Friday, Ross helped me throw away those lenses; I saw things in a new way and there will be no going back. I will proclaim off the roof tops and eventually a new website that Forever Special Friends is an amazing resource for families who are battling a disease that will take their children away from them. To think that we started out with a print run of 5,000 books and I have less than a thousand left. Within a few years I will be a best selling author! It may have taken me fifteen years to sell the first 4,200 books but I can guarantee the last 800 will fly off the shelves in comparison.
There are so many other things that I learned and have to work on but sharing them with you will have to wait for another posting. You can also look forward to some new announcements about my plans for my new author website and an up and coming entrepreneurial venture that I've been working on.
Cheers,
Salynne/Susan
©2009
(sorry no photos today--I cannot get them to upload-must be a problem with the site-will add later!)
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