Conferences, Community & Beta Readers

The importance of Community can be hard to understand for people in a quiet, lonely profession such as writing. Most of our work is done sitting at a computer or typewriter in a room by ourselves.

For an introvert such as myself, to whom loud noises for long periods of time is like torture, reaching out to people is simply Not Done. But I got a wild hair and decided to attend the Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Conference in Marquette last month.

I was inspired, I was motivated and I learned a whole lot. But perhaps most importantly, I talked to people. Listened to their journeys, their lessons learned through experience. Simply sharing this passion with people made me excited to get my own writing moving again.

I realized how critical outside perspectives are. We tend to disregard a stranger's opinion about our affairs because how could they know? They haven't been living it. But that's just the point. They have enough distance that they can see things objectively. (Given that the stranger has some idea of what they're talking about, of course.)

My big motivational take-away from the conference was from keynote speaker Karen Dionne, author of best-seller The Marsh King's Daughter:

Know when to move on to another project.

If the project you've been working on just doesn't have great market appeal, an agent isn't going to pick you up. They want only the most marketable cream of the crop, they're not going to take chances on something that might be great, but doesn't have wide appeal.

Or maybe your voice has grown and you need to take a hard look and realize the story doesn't speak to you anymore. It's ok to scrap it so you can Move On to another project that you can get excited about.

In my case, moving on meant going the self-publishing route with my project rather than holding out for a Traditional Publisher.

One of the presenters at the conference made the case for why she chose self-publishing over traditional and is making more money because of it. It had a lot to do with promotion. Traditional publishers will only heavily promote their top sellers. The books she had locked in with her publisher were sitting there getting dusty and not earning her as much royalties as her self-published books, because she was doing the legwork for her KDP titles and getting results.

I also realized this: The best promotion you're going to get is your next book.

By having a backlist of titles, customers are more like to find you. Someone likes one of your books? Oh look, she's written another. You just made another $1.60 in royalties from another purchase.

Get your name out there. It doesn't have to be on grocery store endcaps, nor will it be at first. Just Get Started.

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Another note on Outside Perspectives.

Outside perspectives are especially useful for your manuscript. This is called Beta Reading. A step in the writing process I didn't even know existed until this year. At the UPPAA conference, it seemed a lot of other folks didn't either. So let's talk about it.

Your mom isn't going to give you an objective analysis on your first draft, unless she's an English major. Your friends don't want to tell you that thing you've been working yourself to death on has, like, a LOT of problems.

Enter the Beta Reader, one of the only situations in which you should consider the opinion of a Stranger on the Internet.

Beta Readers, sometimes called Critique Partners, depending on how in-depth you want the feedback to be, typically work in a symbiotic fashion. You read my manuscript and give me feedback, I'll read yours and give you feedback.

The Beta Readers Group in the Goodreads discussion forums is a great place to find Beta Readers/CP's. There are also plenty of Facebook groups to connect people.

Sometimes a beta reader will give you feedback simply because they like to read, but this is rare. You can pay for beta feedback, but at that point, you might just want to pay for professional editing, so you can include it in your agent query letter.

I've had good CPs, I've had not-so-good CPs. It helps to have a specific list of questions you want them to think about as they're reading. Or if you just want to get their general feeling, you may not want to distract them with questions beforehand.

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Finding a writing community can be especially hard if you live in a less-densely populated area, like me. There are no Meetup groups for writers within 250 miles of me. But I scoured the Internet for writing conferences and, even though I had to drive 2 hours, it was totally worth it for the once-a-year conference.

The online writing community, if you utilize it, can be just as fulfilling as an in-person writing group. Get involved in the Goodreads forums and listen to your peers experiences. Some of their advice may not work for you, but you might just discover exactly what you need.

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