Self-Pub Success Story! This Wall Street Journal article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html) opens by saying that author Darcie Chan’s debut novel, The Mill River Recluse, has sold 400,000 copies and has placed her on the best-seller list “next to writers like Michael Connelly, James Patterson, and Kathryn Stockett.” Then the next paragraph goes on to say, “It’s been a success [...]

Cheri’s Note: This was an uplifting and inspirational way to end another great WD conference! The Drive to Write–Chris Baty, Founder of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo); author of No Plot, No Novel and Ready, Set, Novel NaNoWriMo: Writers sign up to write a 50K word novel, from scratch, during the month of November each [...]

This Was One of My Session Choices on Sunday, January 22. The First 50 Pages (and Why Getting Them Right Is the Key to Your Success)–Jeff Gerke, Founder & Publisher of Marcher Lord The focus of this section was fiction. Gerke asked: What do your first 50 pages have to accomplish? Fiction is about someone [...]

Sunday, January 22–Panel Members: Phil Sexton–Moderator of Panel; Publisher, Writer’s Digest Karen Cooper–Publisher, Adams Media Michelle Howry–Senior Editor, Touchstone (an impring of Simon & Schuster) Donya Dickerson–Senior Editor, McGraw Hill A. What is the most common mistake writers make in nonfiction proposals? Too much emphasis on the manuscript. Not enough evidence of need. Why does [...]

What the heck is the pitch slam anyway? Well, depending on the person answering that question, the pitch slam can either be comparable to walking the proverbial plank, or the experience can be a writer’s nirvana. Technically, the setup involves a whole bunch of agents sitting at little individual tables arranged around the edges of two huge hotel conference rooms. And those agents [...]

(Cheri’s Note: Not only is Barry Eisler a successful author  of an impressive stream of thrillers (traditionally published), but he also made publishing history in Maarch 2011 by turning down a $500,000 two-book deal with St.Martin’s Press in order, instead, to published his next novel electronically. That next novel, Detachment, was released in the fall of 2011, and [...]

Day #2, Session 3: Seven Secrets of Successful Self-Published Authors–Keith Ogorek, Sr. VP of Global Marketing with Author Solutions. (Full disclosure: Author Solutions is the parent company of iUniverse, Inc., which has been my publishing choice for both of my novels. They helped me create beautiful products, by the way–and my second novel, Separation of [...]

Cheri’s Note: The next session summarized below seemed important to attend, even though I’ve been going the self-published route for some time now. But I wanted to hear what was new and what has changed since I listened to a group of agents at last year’s conference. A year ago, I mentioned in a blog post [...]

Note: All of my notes from the Saturday and Sunday sessions are forthcoming. Here’s what I’ve been able to put together so far. Also, since you’ll only be seeing summaries of the sessions I attended, the WDC staff said that there will be some sort of summary on all of the sessions posted on the [...]

Writer’s Note: This morning I did get up at 6:00 to write my post on yesterday’s conference sessions. But I didn’t finish writing/editing before I had to get ready for the first of today’s sessions, which started at 9:00. Then the day turned out to be nonstop, without a single break except for the half hour [...]