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Backspace Agent-Author Seminar - November 3 & 4 - NYC |
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| REGISTRATION is now open. Early bird discount through August 30. | ||||
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| January 26, 2012 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ten Minutes, Ten Pages One-on-One Agent Meetings This year, in addition to our small-group workshops on Thursday, Backspace is offering pre-scheduled 10-minute one-on-one editorial critique sessions with select literary agents on Friday, May 25. Participating agents include: Jeff Kleinman (Folio Literary Management), Janet Reid (FinePrint Literary Management), Kristin Nelson (Nelson Literary Agency), Katharine Sands (Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency), and Josh Getzler (Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency). These sessions will run concurrently with the conference program. Authors can book as many sessions with as many different agents as they like for $40 per session (to cover the expense of renting the room, as well as providing coffee and light refreshments). PLEASE NOTE: These are NOT reading fees, and agents are not compensated financially for their participation. Authors are invited to bring the first ten pages of their manuscript to each “Ten Minutes, Ten Pages” one-on-one session they book. Agents will read a chunk of materials (a paragraph, sentence, part of a page) to themselves (or have the author read the materials out loud), flag anything they find of concern, discuss what they’ve noted with the author, and then move on to the next chunk, continuing in this manner until the 10 minutes are up. Please note that these 10-minute one-on-one sessions are "high-level" editorial critiques, meaning that these sessions will be most helpful for writers who have already undergone the critique process with fellow writers and who have mastered basic writing principles. Also, please be aware that while we're calling these sessions "10 Minutes, 10 Pages," agents who have done this type of one-on-one session at other conferences tell us it's rare to make it to the end of the full 10 pages in 10 minutes. Exactly how much material is covered during each 10-minute session depends on the quality of the writer's work, how many questions the author has, how detailed the agent's comments are, and other variables. What we can guarantee is a relaxed, friendly, and helpful paragraph-by-paragraph discussion with the author of their material.
IMPORTANT: As with our small-group query letter and opening pages workshops on Thursday, the intention of these 10-minute one-on-one critique sessions is NOT to get an agent interested in your work (though this can certainly happen). Instead, please understand that the purpose of these sessions is simply to get an experienced professional's feedback on your opening pages, in order to help you reach your publishing goals.
CLICK HERE to reserve your Ten Minutes, Ten Pages session! Please note: you MUST be registered for Friday, May 25th in order to participate. Jeff Kleinman: 6 sessions available Janet Reid: 6 sessions available Kristin Nelson: 2 sessions available Katharine Sands: 6 sessions available Josh Getzler: 8 sessions available
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| January 24, 2012 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Look who's joined the 2012 Backspace Writers Conference program On Friday, May 25, Colleen Lindsay, former literary agent and community manager for Book Country, Lauren Cerand, publicist, and Dan Blank, founder of WeGrowMedia.com will present the following workshop: The Writer as Marketer: Using Social Media and Digital Tools to Build a Platform, Connect with Readers and Grow Your Community Online This panel will discuss how to get started in this scary new digital world, best practices for using social media, balancing the personal and the professional online, and – most importantly – what you do to make sure that your writing doesn’t suffer in the process. Q&A session to follow! ------------------ Again on Friday, award-winning novelist Maria Murnane, who went from self-published to traditionally published through creativity and sheer perseverance (and whose novel Perfect on Paper recently reached #2 on Amazon), will teach a workshop: Self-publishing vs.traditional publishing: Get the inside scoop from an author who has been on both sides of the fence This workshop will explain the difference between both routes and provide a clear, step-by-step guide to each. Based on her personal experience, she’ll also share her thoughts on the pros and cons of each path to help you weigh them against your goals as an author. ------------------- And on Saturday during the noon hour, I'll be conducting a Spotlight Interview and audience Q&A with Backspace's very own New York Times bestselling author Darcie Chan! More on the conference at www.backspacewritersconference.com |
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| December 29, 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Super E-Books - A New Display Website for E-Books If the Internet seemed slow on Christmas Sunday, it might have been because around the world, literally millions of new e-reader owners spent a fair part of the day downloading e-books. It’s too early to know exactly how many e-readers were sold this year as holiday gifts. But on December 5, Amazon announced that its customers had been purchasing Kindles at the rate of more than 1 million per week -- for three straight weeks. Barnes & Noble was expected take delivery on 1.1 million Nook Tablets and 400,000 Nook Colors during 2011’s fourth quarter, according to a report at DigiTimes, which adds that "the vendor has set a target to order 4.0-4.1 million 7-inch Nook Tablets" for 2012. And in the UK, "At just £89, the all-new Kindle. . .was by far the biggest selling product of the festive period," said Christopher North, Managing Director of Amazon.co.uk Ltd. as quoted in Yahoo Finance. "As a result, Christmas Day will be one of the biggest sales days of the year for Kindle books as people turn on the device and download their favourite title in under 60 seconds." When it comes to filling their new e-readers, most new owners will go to the source. Kindle owners will shop at Amazon; Nook owners at Barnes & Noble. Mega-retailers such as these offer readers literally millions of e-books from which to choose. Because of the sheer number of titles available, these online stores are easiest to navigate when readers know exactly what they want to purchase. But for e-book readers who aren’t sure what they're looking for, there are a growing number of websites that focus solely on e-books, striving to make the online e-book buying experience as comfortable as browsing in a physical bookstore. Of these, Super E-Books.com is unique. Super E-Books doesn't sell books directly to readers. Instead, the website collects, or catalogs them. On each e-book’s catalog page, readers can enjoy author interviews, watch a book trailer, read an excerpt and find out what reviewers have to say — and then click through any of the multiple direct buy links to the online retailer appropriate for their reading device when they’re ready to make their purchase. Many of the titles listed on Super E-Books were previously published in print. Some are New York Times bestsellers. Thanks to electronic self-publishing, these books' authors are able to make their out-of-print titles available to readers once again. Others are written by authors who have elected to bypass traditional publishing. Darcie Chan’s New York Times and USA Today bestselling Mill River Recluse, which tells the story of a wealthy Vermont widow who bestows her fortune on town residents who barely knew her, and Sam Winston’s What Came After, a post-apocalyptic adventure in a desolate and treacherous world, are two examples of the excellent books featured at Super E-Reads which are currently available only in "e." “What appeals to me as a reader,” says author Barbara Taylor Sissel about the Super E-Books online catalog, “is the way the genres are listed right there on the main page, with no confusion. The whole website is streamlined and professional, very straightforward and easy to navigate. And with one click you have such a variety of information, all in one spot.” A typical e-reader holds somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 e-books. Which means that whether they shop at the large online retailers, or seek out alternative websites, for e-book readers, there's going to be plenty of good shopping in the days ahead.
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| December 7, 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2012 Backspace Writers Conference - mark your calendar! REGISTER NOW for early discounted savings!Keynote SpeakerLauren Baratz-Logsted, multi-published author of children's, young adult, and adult fiction Workshop InstructorsDonald Maass, President, Donald Maass Literary Agency - "Writing the Breakout Novel" David L. Robbins, bestselling author of 9 novels; creative writing instructor, the College of William and Mary Katharine Sands, Sarah Jane Freymann Agency - "Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent's Eye" Literary AgentsJeff Kleinman, Katharine Sands, Stéphanie Abou, TBA AuthorsJessica Keener, Keith Cronin, Priscille Marcille Sibley, Julie Wu, Jael McHenry, Karen Dionne, Randy Susan Meyers, Ellen Meeropol, Nichole Bernier, TBA
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| November 12, 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2011 Backspace Agent-Author Seminar a Huge Success! But don't take OUR word for it! Here are links to a few blog posts made by seminar attendees: Backspace, Part I: SHOW, DON'T TELL Excerpt: Here's the #1 thing I took away from Backspace Writers Conference: Show, don't tell is real life. Oh, yes. Yes it is. Here's a simple application: I could tell you how amazing Backspace was. I could rant about the friendly people; the constructive, energized atmosphere; the amount I learned; the confidence it gave me in my knowledge of the industry and how to better my own work - but what you'd get from me ranting about it would hardly even scrape the surface. I highly recommend you go, and let the conference show you how awesome it is, rather than me telling you. [endadvertisement] Okay, here's the example I was leading up to: Agents constantly TELL us how subjective the business is, but to be honest, we're not always SHOWN that. Backspace, Part II: THE PITCH Excerpt: In the interest of full disclosure, I've never been to a pitch session. I would imagine those are stressful for all parties involved, because you have that oh-god-I-have-one-minute-to-forestall-doom feeling. (See, Backspace has no pitch sessions. They have fifteen minutes between each panel or workshop so the authors can meet the agents in a relaxed atmosphere.) Hands-down, the stupidest thing to surprise me at the conference was that agents. really. love. stories. I mean, I knew this beforehand - which is why it's dumb that it surprised me - but I didn't understand the extent of it until the conference. During workshops, the agents got involved with every story as quickly as if they'd been working with the project for ages. And it was the same for my pitch. It was a nice surprise that they were instantly willing to invest in my novel. No skepticism or judgment, just a nice, civilized conversation ... What I Learned from the Query Critique At Backspace What I Learned From the Two Pages Critiques at Backspace Backspace Panel “Why Queries?” Backspace Panel “Agents and Editors Working Together” |
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| A R C H I V E / H I G H L I G H T S | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Backspace: A Retrospective Backspace began in April 2004, before the days of social network sites like Facebook and Myspace, back when writers were just discovering the Internet as a means to connect with other writers. Co-founders Christopher Graham and Karen Dionne met at a public online writers discussion forum, where they saw a tremendous amount of potential in interacting with other talented, serious, up-and-coming writers. But because the site wasn't moderated, they often had to wade through pages of useless information to find the posts of value. So Karen and Chris started their own forum, a private site for serious writers, and invited everybody whose experience and talent they felt they could benefit from to join. "We knew we were onto something when 110 writers signed on the first week," says Chris. Five years later, 45 of the original 110 members have been published - most by major publishers; many more than once. Six of their books have made the New York Times bestseller list (Sara Gruen, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS; Ally Carter, I’D TELL YOU I LOVE YOU BUT THEN I’D HAVE TO KILL YOU and CROSS MY HEART AND HOPE TO SPY; Lesley Kagen, WHISTLING IN THE DARK; Allison Winn Scotch, TIME OF MY LIFE; Karen Abbott, SIN IN THE SECOND CITY). Six of the original 110 members have also sold film or television rights. Their books have won awards: the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award (Jon Clinch, FINN; Sara Gruen, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS), the National Library Association’s Colorado Book Award (Kim Reid, NO PLACE SAFE), been featured as a Today Show Top 10 Read (Allison Winn Scotch, TIME OF MY LIFE), featured in Cosmopolitan Magazine (Martha O’Connor, THE BITCH POSSE; Jackie Kessler, HOTTER THAN HELL), named a John Singer Sargent Award finalist (Jon Clinch, FINN), Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award finalist (Karen Dionne, FREEZING POINT), and #1 New York Times bestseller, 2-time Quill Award Nominee, 2007 Booksense Book of the Year (Sara Gruen, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS), to name just a few. In addition to these 45 published authors, another dozen of the original 110 Backspace members are on the cusp of publication, and are either currently or have been represented by agents and have had their work on submission at the major publishing houses. Considering a mere 4% of aspiring authors ever see their novel or non-fiction project in print, these stats represent a success rate that would be the envy of any MFA program in the country. As of this writing (April, 2009), Backspace has close to a thousand members in a dozen countries. Members released 112 titles in 2008 (see list at right), and a third are agented and/or published. Backspace has the endorsement of  top literary agents and bestselling authors. The Backspace homepages (www.bksp.org) have been named one of Writer’s Digest Magazine’s 101 Best Websites for Writers all five years of our existence. (2005 - 2009). Backspace also puts on an annual writers conference in New York City that faculty members, attendees, and even other conference organizers rank as one of the best. "Backspace is relatively new, but it’s the real deal,” NYTimes bestselling author Lee Child once wrote, “which is amply proved both by the quality of discourse within and the truly amazing hit-rate its members have already achieved." For years, members have maintained that the Backspace discussion forums are the best-kept secret on the Web. We think it's time the world found out about the incredible confluence of talent that spawned one of the most unique and successful writers communities on the Internet. Send author a comment on this post
Excerpts from the 2009 Backspace Writers Conference |
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The Backspace organization is predicated on the idea of writers helping writers, which we accomplish by means of discussion forums, a guest speaker program in which agents, acquisitions editors, and bestselling authors regularly conduct online question and answer sessions with the group, and articles and advice from agents and other publishing professionals on our homepages, along with useful links, conference and book reviews, and more. Backspace has attracted the support and/or participation of Richard Curtis, Dan Lazar, Jenny Bent, Sara Nelson, Kristin Nelson, Jeff Kleinman, Kristen Weber, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Robert Crais, Neil Gaiman, Chris Bohjalian, Elizabeth George and many other publishing professionals. |
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