My workshps at the Southern California Writers' Conference

I always swore I never do this (or write a book on how to write unless I already a half-dozen novels on the NYT list) but I'm going to be giving workshops at the SCWC in San Diego this February.


Writers who live in San Diego are fortunate to have a conference of this importance in town: there are people who fly in from like New England and pay for three nights in a hotel for it.



My workshops are on (and I'm quoting the conference website here) "The Online Edge: WebLit, eBooks and the New Path to Publication" and "Self-Publishing for an Income"

Basically, alternate paths to publication... and how they can help you get a publishing contract, and provide something worthwhile if you don't get that far.

The SCWC is a pretty cutting-edge conference and the first to have anything like my "Online Edge" workshop...but a week after they posted it, Writers Digest announced a $50 "Webinar" on using self-publishing (taught by an editor who has never sold her writing and has no book publishing experience other that slapping her high school poems on Kindle to say she did it) It's a new, exploding area of getting read that is just starting to be really understood, as it mutates.

Anyway... that's me in February.


http://www.writersconference.com/scwcmain.html

So what I'm kind of wondering is, have you been to a conference? Or thought of attending?
What did you want from it: to be treated, to be told, to be asked?

What did you expect to get for your money's worth, and if you didn't get it, how could they have done more for you?

Did you buy a lot of books from the workshop leaders and sleep with them?
How was it?

Lin,
Input is certainly helpful in preparation. I've never attended a writer's conference, however when conducting seminars I found questionaires to be a big help. Sometimes audience expectations are unrealistic.
Good luck with the conference. It's a bit far for me to travel.

I have never gone to a writer's conference or even taken a writing class. It's on my to-do list. I'd especially like to go to a conference. I just haven't prioritized it yet. My motivation would be to hear people who have done the topic of the seminar share their experience.

When I attend any kind of lecture, I appreciate succinctness. I dislike speakers who wander off-topic, don't have an organized talk, or -worst of all- entertain audience questions that take up too much time and are too specific to the asker. I dislike workshops that are actually more "group talk" than authoritative talk. If I wanted to hear an audience member talk about himself, I'd have bought a ticket to his conference.

Take along lots of samples to hand round. One copy of a self-published book held in the presenter's hand will have necks straining at the back of the room.

Take a handful of books and pass them out. When everyone has held a copy for at least a few seconds, ask for opinions about quality, whether they would buy the book, how the books compared with commercially published books etc.

Give your audience the information they want to hear, not the information you want to give them. Few, if any, of your audience will be in the same situation as you. They want to know what will work for them, not what did work for you. Tailor your experience to guide them.

Good idea about showing quality samples.  I'd love to figure out a way to find out what they want to hear, actually.   I wish I could send questions to registered attendees.  I'm going to suggest that in the future they have a forum or page to communicate with attendees before and after the fact.  Meanwhile, I generally try to figure that out early on in a session.