If you want to be a writer, you need to network. There's no two ways about it. You need to see and be seen. You've gotta press the flesh and schmooze. And that means going to cons and other writerly events.
Cons, as the name suggests, are a great way of spending lots and lots of money. They are gatherings of the great and good where, forthree or four days at a stretch, you get the chance to pester publishers and editors, agents and fellow writers, with the small but tantalising possibility that you will meet someone who can do your 'career' some good. Yeah, you get to listen to people standing at podiums and going on about stuff - how they got their big break, how they organise their time, how to market in the digital age, and so on - but the real reason everyone is there is to get their face known.
Or so I'm told.
Other people tell me its all about meeting fellow writers and discussing one's art with people who will understand, or who will at least be clever, interesting people who like to drink and have a laugh.
Whatever it's all about, it's expensive. I've just done the sums for the two cons I'd like to go to this year. Travelling by coach and the very cheapest flights, staying in the cheapest possible hotels, and not eating much, each con comes to a little over a twelve hundred dollars. Even the book launch I want to go to, travelling by pack mule and eating only tree bark, will set me back about six hundred dollars. So, a total of three thousand dollars for three marketing events.
If I got an agent out of it, and she got me a book deal, it would cover the cost (although I'd have to wait maybe two years to get it all back.) If I didn't, I'd have to sell a barrow-load of short stories this year to pay for it - my quick calculation puts it at about a tenth of all those printed in the paying mags this year.
As a marketing proposition then, going to a couple of cons and a book launch is probably a non-starter. In fact, if I self-published my book and spent the money on online advertising, I'd stand a much better chance of breaking even (I'd only need to sell about 600 copies).
Of course, if I did that, I'd miss all the fun of sitting in bars with half-drunken writers for seven evenings - which is not to be sniffed at - but I'd also miss the six days of travelling by JetStar and Crisps Coaches, and the ten nights of staying in cheap hotels miles from the convention centre.
What I can't understand is why I still want to go.
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10 years ago
1 comment:
I know what you mean! I want to go to one in March and I just cannot defend spending that much money in this economy. I just don't have the money to go. I'd have to sell a LOT of art to pay for it before breaking even. When I was making the big bucks I used to do it anyway, but now I am stretched to the limit and will miss the one big show a year that is finally close to me, not on the opposite coast!
I think it's the other artists I want to hang out with, mine for information and just maybe feel a kindred spirit with. Face it, we are social animals, even recluses like me. So, if I could afford it, I'd go, money be hanged.
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