Recent Adventures at Jessica Morrell's "Making It In Changing Times" Writer's Conference & NIWA Symposium

We've been BUSY!! Since our book launch in September and October, we've had at least one book signing and / or workshop per month. Needless to say, we are looking forward to taking a break and refocusing on our novels....we are writers, after all, first and foremost.

In January, we participated in Jessica Morrell's 'Making It In Changing Times' conference. In February, we co-presented a special edition of our 'Push, Pull, POP: Seamless Self Promotion' workshop with Delilah Marvelle at the NIWA (Northwest Independent Writer's Association) Symposium.

Both events were extremely successful. It is always fun to engage our audience and help them with their marketing. Our courses are designed to be interactive. By utilizing case studies for fictional authors and books, participants take on the role of marketing consultants and work in teams to design Push, Pull, and POP marketing for their case study clients.

Here's why workshops are a great marketing tool for our nonfiction book:

• It fits our platform of Marketing Myth Busting and creates an opportunity for free and open information sharing.
• We can engage our audience directly and provide a positive customer experience. We often start our session with a handful of skeptics. By the end of the workshop, we have a roomful of fans.
• We get to help our audience by providing personal advice and suggestions.
• People can buy our books before, during, and after our presentation. <Jessica Morrell made sure that print copies of our books were available for sale.>

The day we were at NIWA, there wasn't a formal book sale. BUT members of our audience pulled out their e-readers, smart phones, and laptops to purchase and download our books on the spot. How do we know that they bought our ebook? They told us! And we were able to personally thank them for their purchase. One attendee even told us that she bought both the print and ebook versions.

Check our Endorsements page for what others are saying about our book and message.

Questions to Ponder for Fiction & Nonfiction Authors & Small Business Owners:

• Are there any topics you feel comfortable presenting as a workshop at a professional conference?
• If nothing immediately jumps to mind, think outside of the box. 
• Do you have a process for world building or character development? 
• Morgan creates beautiful world building journals. 
• Therese has a "Characters Arcs By The Stars" workshop that references basic astrology for the cast of characters and emotional journeys.
• Maybe you have a useful technique for story plotting, cooking, knitting, grooming your pets.
• Perhaps you are an accountant and have a great system for authors to track their expenses.
• Maybe you are skilled at building networks through Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, etc.
• Consider your professional networks to team up with complimentary topics or products.
• Are there topics you feel comfortable presenting at a conference or symposium for your other interests? You could *conveniently* mention the fact that you have a published book <product>. :) 

Delilah Marvelle & Therese Patrick at NIWA. (Morgan took the picture.)

Gary D. Robson Book Signing Tips

Take a camera. If you have a friend or family member along, have them take pictures. If not, ask someone at the store to do it for you. Then use the pictures on your blog, Facebook page, website, and newsletter. If someone else takes a good picture of you, give them a card and ask them to email it to you or post it on one of your social networking sites.