Writers’ Roundup

What’s a Flying Change?

• an elegant dressage move that allows the horse to instantly change direction without loss of balance or momentum.
• what we writers can do in e-publishing once we’ve empowered themselves with the technology.

This page will notify you of conferences, websites, publications and links which could help you get up to speed. I invite you to peruse these and glean whatever you find relevant to your own situation.

This upcoming workshop, for instance, organised by Cynthia Good, looks extremely promising. We writers need to understand whether or not giving our writing away can work for us. Here’s the conference info:

Giving It Away

Books, Business and the Culture of Free
Friday, June 19, 2009

Giving It Away is the most anticipated, provocative and essential book event of the year. Don’t miss it! Mark your calendar for June 19, 2009!

“If we allow the established paradigm of creation and distribution to reassert itself, then the window of opportunity opened by the Internet will have been closed, and we will have lost something beautiful, revolutionary, and irretrievable.”
From the Manifesto of the Free Culture Movement

Now deeply into the digital age, we find ourselves thrust into a new universe of textual media, provoking some unexpected questions. “Giving It Away” will confront these issues of access, diversity and democracy. Increasingly, the pressure is on publishing to ‘give it away’. It’s happened in the music business, and it’s starting to happen in the newspaper industry. Is book publishing next? Will it go beyond sampling and current marketing methods to the very core of what we do?

On one hand publishers want to encourage creativity, innovation, communication and free expression and many favour public access to knowledge. But can we survive financially? How would writers, publishers, booksellers and librarians function fiscally in the “Culture of Free”?

Giving It Away will address the key issues. Speakers will provide the theoretical framework for enlightened discourse, referencing such innovations as the Creative Commons, torrents, peer-to-peer sharing, and more. Participants will learn about new business models that promote profit, excellence, fairness and protection of authors’ and artist’s rights. The conference will provoke, stimulate and educate in the world of free culture, offering the latest and best examples of marketing, social media and collaboration from Canada and beyond.

As with our previous conferences, Devices & Desires and Another Country, we will again offer six different workshops, where the emphasis will move from theory to practical application. Participants will learn from leading advocates, innovators and practitioners of “Free Culture” and have the opportunity to discuss and workshop their own ideas and experience.

FOR SPEAKER INFORMATION AND MORE, FIND US ON THE WEB AT: www.giving-it-away.com

Presented by Humber College and the Book and Periodical Council

The Insider’s Guide to Getting Published

An intensive workshop for authors who want to know how to get published and who want to understand the publishing process.

March 12, 19 and 26, 2009 From 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Cynthia Good,  former president and publisher of Penguin Canada, covers the basics in this one. It’s rarely a waste of time to check out the latest intel on the root canal work we  love so well — getting published.

Learn
•    what’s happening in Canadian publishing today and what it means for you
•    the pros & cons of literary agents and self-publishing
•    how to prepare covering letters and book proposals that get results
•    how to build your author profile and increase your sales
•    the publishing process from manuscript to bookstore (and online)
•    how to market your book
•    how publishing houses make their acquisition decisions

Workshop Leaders: Cynthia Good is the former President and Publisher of Penguin Canada and current Director of the Creative Book Publishing Program at Humber College. Jennifer Murray is the former Vice-President of Marketing, Penguin Canada and Kids Can Press.  Iris Tupholme is the Vice-President& Publisher of HarperCollins Canada.

The workshop runs from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at the Toronto Writers’ Centre located at 627 Bloor Street West, a few of blocks west of Bathurst.

Fee:                  $340.44

For information, contact:    Cynthia Good
416-675-6622 ext. 3462
cynthia.good@humber.ca

For further information, please see Humber’s part-time studies calendar at http://parttimestudents.humber.ca