Broads of a Feather at the Library

Opening remarks :)

This past Saturday, my author cohort and friend C.P. Stringham and I had a presentation about being independent authors at the Spalding Memorial Library in Athens, PA, just one of our many local libraries.

And it went really well.  There was a comfortable amount of people there for both of us - the seats weren't all filled, but neither were they all empty. I'm not counting the little kids seats in the front row because I don't think they were used.

It was a mixed audience, men and women, young and old.  Even Mr. Janney was kind enough to come along and snap some pics for me.  He even managed to stay awake for it all!  Mr. Janney's not much of a reader, and he doesn't always get what I'm up to on the computer.  There was one moment when I made a comment to the audience about how I hoped I wasn't boring them that Mr. Janney fake snored and got tons of laughs from everyone.  That's why I married him!  I couldn't have planned that half so well!

After we were done sharing our experiences breaking into print though independent publishing we opened it up for questions from the audience.  And they had a few, which was good.  One woman who prefers writing her material out longhand wanted to know if there was any way around transcribing it to the computer.  Not really.  Unless she hires someone to do it for her, but like I said to her that for me personally - I still write things out longhand (especially when I'm at work and the computer is at home) and I find that copying it to the computer is just another part of the creative process.  For me when I sit down at the computer, another door opens for me and the juices kick in - there's a difference to it that I don't have words for, but to me it's just another doorway into my imaginary universe and I have no problem walking through that door and writing what I see and hear.

uhm ,yeah ...... about that ......

There was one older gentleman, who had some questions for us that quite frankly we didn't really have answers for.  I'm pretty sure this explains the looks on our faces in this second picture. (That's CP's daughter Sydney standing in the middle)  He had published a book about 30 some years ago and had questions about copyrighting.  Not a clue.  Neither CP or I go through any other form of copyrighting outside of the Kindle Direct Publishing. Which we told him.

And that we didn't have to pay anything upfront for publishing; it all comes out of the price of the book.  Amazon gets a portion, and we get a portion.  Simple.  It means that even the most financially challenged writer can get published.

I'm still not sure what he'll need to do about using the same cover he used the last time, as it was not his own cover art.  CP and I both do our own cover art.  I've toyed with the idea of contacting a Facebook friend to see if he'd do something for me at a reasonable price, but that's as far as I've gotten so far.

All in all, despite the shaky start to Mr. Janney and my day, everything went well.  I was a little worried that I might have to end up cancelling because of a family emergency, but thankfully the relative ended up stabilizing somewhat before the afternoon.  We've both had enough loss in our life recently and were thankful for the change.

I'm looking forward to our next presentation already, although it has yet to be scheduled.  I've got all sorts of ideas in my head as to how better to present myself so I don't stumble over my own words (I didn't do too badly).  I'll have to take some time and look the PowerPoint over again and take some notes.  Maybe have something written down for some of the slides so I'm not standing there wondering what was going through my head when I asked for it.

CP and I make a pretty good team.

I really need to work on keeping my eyes open more or Mr. Janney needs to work on his photography - one or the other!

2014 ~ Teamwork rocks!