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| Author's own photo from RT 2016 |
This week’s theme: Lit Cons, Fan Cons, Comics Cons: What’s
Best For You?
I’ve been to NASA conferences, Romance Writers of America
conferences, RT Booklover conferences and Wondercon. I’ve even done a couple of
virtual conferences online and book readings fairly locally. I even got invited
to a Star Trek con (on my own dime so I had to pass because it wasn’t in the
budget at the time) because I’m an official Red Shirt Enterprise crew member, having read the part in a Star Trek
audiobook! I had fun at all times. I enjoyed being a presenter, I enjoyed being
in the audience, I loved meeting readers, meeting some of my own favorite
authors, going to parties, doing the
book signings. Meeting up in real life with people I ‘knew’ on social media was
wonderful!
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| With Author Friends at RT 2016 after a big reader event |
Conferences of all types are off my radar now as far as I
can see. Not to go into tremendous detail, travel is currently nearly
impossible for me due to a couple of chronic medical conditions so I’m a
homebody and internet denizen. I don’t even do days at Disneyland right now and
that’s pretty darn close via freeway. I get to the grocery store and that’s
pretty much it most weeks.
But even before that, I’d decided in late 2016 I was basically
done with conferences. The travel and fees were pretty expensive for my budget
and I didn’t feel the money spent was giving me a good return on investment as
an independently published author. As a person having a good time, ok WOW, yes,
bring it on and do more! But as a business decision for my particular small
business (which a self-published author IS), I was better off spending the
money on more targeted promo of my own books or paying for fabulous book covers, for example.
The experiences were priceless and I satisfied a number of
my own personal goals about being a published author (do panels! do a big
signing! do cosplay! Meet Nalini Singh!) But I couldn’t justify the hits to my
bank account to rack up more of those fun milestones.
An additional consideration for me was that all the prep
work before and the down time after that I required after a big conference and
the associated travel cost me a lot of writing time while I recovered. Maybe
other people can step in and out of their regular lives smoothly and do these
big events with nary a ripple, but I’m not one who can.
I think my experiences go to show the truth of the rule that
there’s no one right or wrong way to pursue being a published author and
growing your base of readers. I tried doing cons, it was FUN OMG, but didn’t
work for my particular business.
Not saying categorically I’d never do another but it would have to be a really special event
that I could not resist and would require a lot of forethought.
