We inform, support, encourage & promote writers
The program for the February 16th KWA meeting was arranged by Wes Brummer. He invited a film crew from WSU Shocker Studios to come talk about their programs, and making trailers. WSU Shocker Studios website https://www.wichita.edu/about/wsunews/archive/index.php?si=3853
This should be a great learning experience. Come with questions for our guests.
The Wichita Public Library is having their Third Annual Local Author Day September 8. The day begins with a panel on the pros and cons of self-publishing; next, meet with your favorite hometown authors and see what’s new in Wichita’s literary world.
Authors will have available copies of their books, including adult and children’s books.
Check out the link for more information on the event and for how to sign up as an author.
We will have a special guest speaker at the August 19th meeting: Victoria M. Patton. She will talk about “How to Become an Indie Author and the Steps You Need to Take.”
Patton will do a quick overview and have some handouts that will have resources. She will give some marketing pointers and will offer advice on how the KWA members can set themselves up as a self-published author that will help set up the marketing aspect. And she will be happy to answer any questions.
Contact information for Victoria M. Patton:
Website – www.whiskeyandwriting.com
Facebook – @victoriampattonauthor
Instagram – @victoriampatton
Do you write stories that include animals? Have you ever considered what might happen to your animals in case an emergency happened? Or have you considered having a character involved in animal response during a disaster?
Personally, I write children’s stories about Blossom the cow and her friends. I haven’t though about what might happen to them if a disaster struck their farm. Maybe I should…
The meeting this month will have a representative from KSART (Kansas State Animal Response Team) sharing information about the organization. They develop and maintain working relationships with other disaster response organizations. Emergency Management and Red Cross are two such key agency relationships. Actions by teams and team volunteers must be made with the focus of the big picture, helping the people of Kansas and their pets through natural and man made disasters.
KSART website for more information.
August 20th Meeting Schedule
12:30 Board Meeting, other members are always welcome
1:30 Carolyn Schultz, KSART and writing about animals (our own authors)
2:30 Marketing opportunities
3:30 Critique, additional Board discussion (if necessary)
Put Saturday, September 10 on your calendar!
From 10:30 am to 3 pm, join the library for an inside look at the ins and outs of the publishing industry.
At 10:30 am, they will feature a panel of experts including former Kansas Poet Laureate Denis Low-Weso of Mammoth Publications.
At 1 pm, they will have a meet and talk with authors from Wichita and the surrounding area. If you are a local author that would be interested in presenting your work at this program, please call 316-261-8580 to reserve your space today. You can also contact Sarah Kittrell at skittrell@wichita.gov.
Local authors will be allowed to set up tables at the library and sell their books. Approval for these tables must be obtained from the library in advance.
Our April 16th meeting will be dedicated to helping members prepare to attend conferences. Many of our members attend the Oklahoma Writers Federation (OWFI) conference in early May (for more information, check out http://www.owfi.org/). This year the conference will be May 12-14 in Oklahoma City.
We’ll be helping members practice their pitches. Pitch sessions are opportunities to try to convince an agent or editor to read your completed manuscript. They are typically 10 minutes long. If you decide to participate, come prepared to introduce yourself and spend several minutes telling us why your book is awesome.
Additionally, Rae Cuda has volunteered to take professional portraits at no charge for members of KWA. (Membership is easy, and you can become a member the day of the meeting.) You may want to have a professional portrait even if you aren’t going to a conference (website, Face Book, author photo).
Sonny Colllins will also be discussing the details of the upcoming KWA Anthology with its Kansas theme this year.
Following the basic meeting, we will have a critique session for authors looking for feedback. Time will be set aside after each monthly meeting to allow those who are interested an opportunity to meet. Bring no more than 10 pages to read and discuss.
MEETING SCHEDULE:
1:30 – 3:30 – Pitch sessions, photos, anthology discussion
3:45 – ? – Critique session (until no later than 6 pm)
January 16, 2016 KWA Meeting at 1:30 pm in the Rockwell Library on Ninth Street.
Do you have a finished writing project that you are ready to promote? Are you getting ready for that stage of the writing process? Pulling together all of the many pieces and parts about that project can be complicated. But it can be even more stressful if you are suddenly asked for the details about the project and you aren’t ready to provide them.
Starla Criser will be presenting a program on Media Kits and Marketing Plans. She will provide handouts and samples. And then the membership will add their own experiences, advice, and questions.
Writing a book may seem like a daunting task, and it is, I’m not slighting that at all. After the book (novel, novella, even an article) is finished, next comes yet another complicated task: getting it published. Of course, during this part of your being-an-author process, you start or continue working on the next project.
After you have found a publisher or decided to go the Indie published author route, then you need to dive into the world of promotion. Trust me, your publisher really wants sales, but they are only willing to do so much to get the product sold. Their biggest part is finding outlets to make your book available (their website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Fictionwise, Bookstrand, etc.). All of that is great! But now YOU need to promote your product anywhere and everywhere you can.
One of the ways I promote my books and myself as an author is to take part in a blog tour or finding blogs to appear on. In the last 3 months I’ve done blog posts at 14 blogs. I have another 11 lined up from now through the end of September. It can be time-consuming to come up with slightly different information about yourself as an author, coming up with a short blog post on a topic somehow related to your book, or finding yet another way to share information about your latest release. Yet I love the challenge and it pays off in getting new readers interested in checking out my various books.
Now I’m taking this blogging thing a step farther. I’ve added Tuesdays and Wednesdays with Starla Kaye for guest authors to my website’s blog. I started promoting this a week ago to my fellow romance authors, my four publishers, and two promotion services I work with. My calendar is full from June 21-August 31 and I will start taking reservations for September 6-the rest of the year.
My point about this is not to brag on what I’m doing, but to share what I’m doing. Having a blog is important as it draws people to your website or your blogsite and gives them an opportunity to look at what books you write. Hosting other authors who have an established fan base that follows them around where they blog can also be valuable to you. Yes, you get that pleasure from helping someone else. You also get a chance to have others who might not ever have seen your books or come to your site to learn more about you. I strongly recommend you consider hosting guest authors on your blog, authors that write in your genre. You are welcome to check out my newly redesigned website and see how I have set up the calendars and more. Starla Kaye
In today’s world we communicate via email. Of course many of us still make phone calls and text, too. But the common way we communicate with friends and family, our readers, our agents, our editors, and our publishers is via email. Your signature is an important way to reveal information about you. It is the cheapest form of promotion you can find. Use it well.
This week my article at the Writers Tools blog on my website is on The Art of a Writer’s Email Signature. Be sure to read this article and check out the number of links on how-to’s for creating email signatures.
Starla Criser
Starla Kaye/S. K. Fero
