Last week we alerted you to the rapid approach of a very, very special day on the literary calendar: Indie Author Day! And this week, we’re popping our heads out of the holiday season frenzy to remind you of its imminent arrival. Mark it on your calendars! (We’ve certainly marked it on all of ours.) Indie Author Day takes place on October 8th, 2016. And there’s a lot you can do to get involved, from tracking down the closest participating library and attending events to streaming the headline “Digital Gathering” online.
Want to sign up? Hop on by the official Indie Author Day website at www.indieauthorday.com. Most helpful, the website includes a “NEWS” tab, where you can find up-to-date information on events happening both near and far from you. You can also check out the latest information on the online “Digital Gathering” for indie authors, advocates, and fans. As with everything else Indie Author Day-related, this will take place on October 8th at 2:00 PM Eastern Time (ET) and will feature a Q&A session with writers, agents, and other industry leaders.
The Digital Gathering will be moderated by Jon Fine, a native New Yorker as well as longtime industry expert and author advocate by way of his experience as Director of Author and Publisher Relations for Amazon, and before that he worked for Random House, NBC, and King World Productions. Having left Amazon as of 2015, he now works as a consultant.
The program’s four panelists are Robin Cutler, who has worked in publishing for over 30 years for many of the industry’s major players, indie and traditional both; Kiera Parrott, who works as Reviews Director for both Library Journal and School Library Journal and has years of experience as a children’s librarian; Jim Blanton, Chair of the Kentucky Public Library Association and repeated award-winning librarian before that; and last but not least, L. Penelope, self-published author of Song of Blood & Stone, her debut novel and winner of the 2016 Self-Publishing eBook Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. You couldn’t begin to dream up a more star-studded cast than this one! Better yet, they have been primed by very particular life experiences to answer your questions related to the indie publishing process.
And as we mentioned last week, libraries hosting the Digital Gathering and other Indie Author Day related events will be streaming these events onsite, but if you can’t make it in or if no library near you happens to be playing host, you can also watch the event live or after the fact on YouTube. The Indie Author Day website even offers a “How-To” page with information on tuning in.
See you at the library!
Thanks for reading! Keep up with the latest in the world of indie and self-published books by watching this space every Saturday!
Self Publishing Advisor