WWW team members Shari Stauch, Bren McClain and Ellie Davis conduct author workshops, participate on panels, give keynotes and offer clinics at select writers conferences each year. To inquire or schedule an appearance, please email [email protected].
Where We’ve Been
We’re proud to have offered workshops, clinics and keynotes at these outstanding conferences and festivals: Writers Digest Conference | Tucson Festival of Books | IBPA Publishing University | Deckle Edge Festival | SC Book Festival | Tallahassee Writers Conference | Historical Writers of America (HWA) | Publish15 Atlanta | Historical Novel Society Conference | Words & Music New Orleans | SC Writers Workshop | Chanticleer Authors Conference | PubSense: Emerging Authors, Emerging Avenues | Florida Writers Conference | Atlanta Writers Conference | Chicago Lawyers for Creative Arts | Pat Conroy Literary Festival | Book Expo America Indie Author Stage | Killer Nashville
In 2017, we’ll be HERE!
What Shall We Talk About?
Below are descriptions of our most popular conference talks. Talks can be customized to meet your audience needs. Each topic can be scheduled to accommodate anything from a short keynote to half and full day interactive workshops:
Want to be a Best-Seller? It’s All About the Influence!
How to Grow Your Audience Using Key Industry Influencers
• Why reviews and sharing reviews across your platform matters
• How to reach into the homes of readers via live book clubs
• Creating reader communities using local indie bookstores and libraries
Learn how book reviewers, book bloggers, booksellers and live book clubs can tip the sales scale in an author’s favor. This discussion includes sources for finding your reviewers and clubs as well as suggestions on how to approach them with your book(s).
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
Top 20 “Outside the Box” Book Marketing Ideas!
How Thinking About Your Readers Will Sell More Books
• Why shouting “Buy my book” isn’t enough anymore
• Case studies of authors who went outside the box (and sometimes over the top!) to market their work
• Brainstorming – how can YOU use any of these ideas to build readership?
Learn how other authors have identified key marketing strategies to set themselves apart in an ever growing marketplace of books. Includes a facilitated brainstorm session: Authors will walk out with at least three new ideas to grow their own readership.
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
Lights, Camera, Author ACTION:
Creative Uses of Video to Build Your Author Brand
• Seven ways to create and use video to promote yourself, your brand and your books
• Elements of a great video book trailer that will actually sell books
• Where to push that video content once you create it!
Interviews, video book trailers and more can bring life to your words in all new ways to build a serious fan base. This informative workshop includes ways other authors are using video to build buzz, the elements of successful video book trailers and the dozens of ways you can use and share the video content you create to build a bigger reading audience.
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
Book Events Worth Booking!
• Best ways to pitch booksellers, book clubs, libraries and affinity groups for book signings and readings
• Landing a date is just the beginning: Tips and strategies to promote sold-out events
• How to leverage your book events into ongoing opportunities and increased sales
Scoring an event where your book(s) are featured is just the start. Once you nail down a date, the real work begins, to make the event for both you and your host location. And the right moves during and after an event will guarantee you maximum exposure and additional opportunities to keep the ball rolling!
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
Deep Dive: Social Media Savvy for Authors:
Building an Author Platform Using the BEST Social Sites for YOUR Audience
• Which are the key social media sites you need to be on?
• Tips for building your audience on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goodreads, and Pinterest
• What to share and how often to share it!
A key part of building your platform revolves around serious social media. But what should you share? And how often? And with who? We offer tips for each of the most important traffic building sites for authors today!
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
Becoming An Outrageously Successful Author:
How to Build Your Audience of Readers, Even Before You’re Published!
• How to make sure YOUR words get read.
• Five key ingredients for a successful writer website
• Building a successful social networking platform to create a ready-made audience for your book
Platform is key in today’s publishing arena, whether self or traditionally published. Learn how to make sure as an author that the conversation about you and your book is in your control; what matters in an author website; the best blogging platforms and tips for drilling down to your audience.
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
Publishing and Marketing Platforms
Knowing Who Does What and How Can Launch Your Author Career
• What is a publishing platform and how does it benefit the indie author?
• Favorite sales and marketing platforms and their advantages
• Budgeting and strategizing to get the most bang for your production and marketing bang
Today’s most popular publishing and marketing platforms allow you to do everything from produce your book, create print and ebook versions, enable distribution and sales outlets, and market to readers and influencers, from reviewers to libraries to book clubs. Get a feel for who does what and how to effectively use each.
With WWW’s Shari Stauch and Gatekeeper Press’s Rob Price
It’s a Blog-Eat-Blog World:
How to Find and Connect with Your Audience
• Why blogging increases your sphere of influence
• Today’s easy blogging platforms
• Expanding your blog audience in minutes a day
Learn why the blogosphere has become so influential in people’s reading and buying decisions and how to begin blogging and identify the topics and keywords relevant to your audience. Learn how to grow your audience using SEO and social media; and how to widen your circles of influence with free tools, exchanging guest blogs and more.
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
Why Book Clubs Matter:
Reaching These All Important Super Fans!
• Why book clubs matter most to an author’s sales
• How to find the best live and virtual clubs for your book
• How to pitch book clubs and manage appearances
Learn why book clubs are the golden ticket for author book sales these days, both virtual and live clubs. Discover how and where to source the best clubs and how to make the most of each and every book club appearance!
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
7 Steps to a Great Author Website:
It’s All About Function vs. Form
• A professional website is a must-have hub for your author communication
• Why the “prettiest” websites tend to fail at the book sales box office
• Combining form with function to present a professional message that converts visitors to readers
An author website can be attractive and still WORK. Learn why so many sites aren’t reader-friendly and how to ensure your own author website attracts attention and more important, book sales. Discover how to increase your searchability, what content readers are looking for, and what keeps them on your page (and coming back for more!)
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
Put Your Passion in Print:
How to Share Your Vision and Influence with a Greater Audience
• Why having a great idea and enormous passion is no longer enough
• Five free ways to quickly give voice to your vision
• How to customize your passion platform to reach (and influence) a receptive audience
• Case Studies: Seven ways other writers are giving voice to their vision that you can start doing in just minutes a day (because you are, first and foremost – a WRITER!)
Learn how authors touch on greater themes and issues in their work (i.e. animal rights, sustainable agriculture, women’s rights, sexual harassment in the workplace, grief counseling, etc.) to tap into more (and more passionate) readers. Identify your own passion issues and use your writing to effect change!
With WWW’s Shari Stauch
You’ve Written Your Book. Now, what are you going to say about it?
How to Create the Buzz You Want
• Thinking your way through to the right words
• Five questions to help you prepare your message
• Setting the lens to focus on your message
Most of us begin our “Messaging Preparation” with the question – What should I say? Here are five questions prior to that, to help you set the right lens through which to look BEFORE deciding what you’ll say. This will give you the focus you need – and, therefore, the results. Hint: The first question you’ll ask is: What is MY subject?
With WWW’s Bren McClain
No More Bad Questions!
How to View All Questions as Opportunities to Sell Your Book and You
• Good questions or bad questions; they’re all still questions
• How to field questions and take control of interviews
• Giving your power to the answer, not the question
• Scanning questions for the gifts they offer us
Why is it that we automatically categorize questions? We’re quick to say it’s a “good” or “bad” one “stupid” or “hard” question. That labeling gives questions too much power. Why is it we worry about questions so? Let’s use the shelf space in our heads for something we DO have control over, the ANSWER. Come listen as we learn to lose our allegiance to the almighty question and attach it to our answer.
With WWW’s Bren McClain
Your Power:
It’s Not the CON of CONtent, but the CON of CONnection
• Content is important as a writer, but…
• Audience connection is CRITICAL when you’re facing your readers
• Fully develop your 90% factor when giving your talk
Message content certainly is important and absolutely must have our attention. But, like at a volleyball game, words only get the ball up the air. What gets your talk over the net is something even more powerful than words – and that’s our connection with people. I call it the “90 percent factor.” Learn how to make sure your 90% factor is fully functioning when you have those important opportunities to communicate with your various audiences.
With WWW’s Bren McClain
How to Take Charge of Your Media Opportunities:
Putting Yourself in the Driver’s Seat
• Understanding what reporters are after
• Prepare by examining the potential of a media opportunity
• Crafting your message using Bren McClain’s Message Tree
A question is the questioner/reporter’s time to talk — Your answer is your time to talk to influence the particular audience and/or the readers, viewers or listeners of that news outlet to DO what you need them to do. In most cases, it’s BUY YOUR BOOK! Once you know what you want you say, you wait for the question to be asked — and then bridge to offer your messages. Longer sessions will simulate media interviews and role-play, using the skills learned.
With WWW’s Bren McClain
Author + Editor = Love and Books:
How to Foster a Strong Relationship with Your Editor
- Seven things to consider before hiring an editor.
- Know what to expect from a professional editor.
- Ensure you get all you can from the editing experience.
- The importance of creating a writer/editor agreement.
Before hiring an editor there are a few things every writer should know. Beyond knowing a particular editor’s style guidelines and reviewing an editor’s editing samples, it’s important to have a clear idea of how you’ll work together and how much interaction you’ll have with your editor. Will they help you secure an agent? Will they help walk you through the publishing process? How is communication important? What about genre? What should you expect and what might you request? In this ninety-minute workshop, Ellie Maas Davis shares key strategies in how to choose the perfect editor for your manuscript and your style of writing.
With WWW’s Ellie Maas Davis
DIY Editing:
Solo Copy and Content Editing Techniques that Work
- Ten ways to strengthen your manuscript all on your own.
- The best way to proofread your manuscript using Microsoft Word.
- Ten common consistency mistakes.
- Finding ways to vet writing groups.
While professional editing remains the best path to create and publish a strong, marketable book, there are a number of things you can do if you don’t have a second or third set of eyes to review your manuscript. In this two-hour workshop, Ellie Maas Davis shares tricks on how to edit and proofread your manuscript as well as how to find and nurture a community of fellow writers.
With WWW’s Ellie Maas Davis
The Self-aware Author:
Understanding the Editing Process and Why You Need It
- A dozen ways that working with a professional editor makes a difference.
- How it is that mimicking the traditional and hybrid-publishing process strengthens the indie experience.
- What an author should consider when hiring an editor.
While self-publishing has opened up more avenues for writers, there’s still a lot self-publishers can learn from traditional publishers, especially when it comes to creating a best-selling title. In this half-day workshop, Ellie Maas Davis delves into the lonely writing process and how using a professional editor will lead to a better book and increased sales. Starting with a review of The Chicago Manual of Style’s publishing process, she offers indie authors a clear vision—a veritable blueprint—of what’s involved in editing and publishing your manuscript.
With WWW’s Ellie Maas Davis