Day: October 9, 2012

3rd Annual Avondale Writer’s Conference

Avondale Writers ConferenceThe 3rd Annual Avondale Writer’s Conference is a literary event which will be held at the Avondale Civic Center in Avondale, Arizona on November 3rd 2012.

This one-day conference allows you to connect with agents, editors, and other writers. The theme is “Pen, Polish, Pitch, Publish, Promote”— steps that lead from an idea to a published book that is successfully marketed. In addition to sessions with authors, editors, and agents, there will also be an Agent Pitch Slam.

Proceeds benefit The Friends of the Avondale Libraries, a Not-for-Profit (501c3) organization. Sponsored by Friends of the Avondale Libraries and the City of Avondale.

Conference Registration Fee: $99

Registration Deadline: November 2, 2012

For more information, please visit the web site.

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Information and announcements such as these are provided from time to time by Indies Unlimited in the way of a public service. We strongly encourage interested parties to exercise due diligence in researching and evaluating all such opportunities of interest before choosing to participate.

Indie News Beat with Chris James

IU Ace Reporter Chris James

The big publishing story over the last few weeks has undoubtedly been the sock-puppet scandal. First broken by the New York Times, suddenly we were drowning in stories, articles and opinions from it seemed everyone in publishing. But just as suddenly as the elephant in the room was acknowledged, so it disappeared.

The general outrage that a few bad apples in the Indie movement would actually pay for multiple, glowing reviews on Amazon, soon diffused when stories appeared reporting that some mainstream authors were also not averse to puffing their own work, while sticking the knife into their competitors. Likely the mainstream authors will suffer more in the short term, given their higher profile, but all this summer flurry really did was draw more attention to the intense competition on Amazon, and the shortfalls of its rating and review system. Continue reading “Indie News Beat with Chris James”

How Nowhere Man Became a Bestseller by Robert Rosen

Author Robert Rosen
Photo by Mary Lyn Maiscott

How did my John Lennon biography, Nowhere Man, a book that was originally rejected by everybody and then published by a tiny upstart indie that operated out of a tenement basement on New York City’s Lower East Side, become a bestseller in five countries? Luck had a lot to do with it—terrible luck for the 18 years that the manuscript languished in limbo. And then, I don’t know what happened. Maybe the stars lined up. Whatever the case, my luck changed: A friend of a friend introduced me to a hungry agent who’d just left his job as an editor at a major publishing house. He recognized Nowhere Man’s potential and signed me as his first client.

My agent was shrewd enough to sell U.S. rights to Soft Skull Press for a small advance, knowing that foreign rights and serial rights would be a gold mine—which is exactly what happened. And Soft Skull, which no longer exists as an independent, was very good at one thing: They knew how to publicize a book. Continue reading “How Nowhere Man Became a Bestseller by Robert Rosen”

Tuesday Tutorial: StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon LogoI’ve been a member of StumbleUpon (SU) for years now. I can’t remember how I found it, but it seemed to me a good place to spread the word about my blog posts. SU (no, no relation to IU) now has over 25 MILLION members, or Stumblers, as they call them, making it a platform worth exploring. Continue reading “Tuesday Tutorial: StumbleUpon”