The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist

Conferences and Book Festivals

126 Conferences and Book Festivals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anywhere where a publisher sets up a booth is a place for you to potentially land a book deal. I’m not suggesting that it’s an easy thing to do, but it does occasionally happen at conferences like the Associated Writing Programs and the Modern Language Association or at some book fairs, like the Miami Book Fair International or the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. At the Associated Writing Programs conference, for instance, hundreds of publishers set up tables and booths displaying their products . Manyof these tables and booths are reserved by magazines, but a good number of them are for book publishers.You won’t find many commercial publishers here—although Norton tends to be there— but you will find dozens of smaller presses, like Unbridled Books, featherproof, and Coffee House Press, as well as dozens of university presses, like Wayne State University Press, the University of Chicago Press, and the University of Nevada Press. Most editors I know don’t want to lug home heavy book-​ length manuscripts, but they do want to meet prospective authors with the hope of finding book projects that are good fits for their list. Even if you leave the conference without a book contract or an invitation to submit your manuscript, you should at thevery least walk away with a better sense of what each publisher wants. One year, I talked to a few editors at publishing houses that specialize in textbooks. I didn’t have a proposal with me; I just wanted to get a sense of what their criteria were for taking on an author who had a textbook idea.The idea I had was for a textbook on a genre that was not my primary specialization, so even though I’d had success as a writer within the genre, I didn’t bring any teaching experience in the genre to the table. The editor’s advice was for me to teach some courses at my university and, if possible, at some conference so as to establish myself as an expert in the area. That conversation took place three years ago, and I took it to heart. I have since taught the subject several times, in both venues that she suggested, and while I haven’t yet put together the proposal for the textbook, I at least now have the credibility should I choose to pursue the book project. Getting Published 127 It’s taken me years to feel confident enough to approach an editor, face-​ to-​ face, about a book project, but what I’ve learned is that most want to hear what you’re working on, and as for those who aren’t interested, there’s always another booth, another editor. ...