After I published this post to my blog, I realized it was rather rambling and had no focus! So I think I will add a bit to the beginning and tell you briefly about my weekend at FAPACON2024 (Florida Author and Publishers annual conference) in case you have never been to a publishing conference. The conference is intended for small publishers and authors who publish their own books or use a small publisher.
The conference begins on Friday afternoon with “Speed Dating.” Participants rotate around to about eight tables, each table with an expert who leads a brief conversation about the topic of their expertise, with a question and answer period. Topics might include artificial intelligence, authors and the law, formatting in Word, etc. That evening there is a networking event with food and a cash bar.
On Saturday, beginning in the morning, there are four consecutive workshops. This year the workshops were Email Marketing Tips, Getting Your Books into Bookstores, Copyright Law for Authors, and Artificial Intelligence.
The conference is capped on Saturday evening with the book awards dinner where authors who have won awards receive their medals. It is a very dressy and anticipated event. There is also a raffle with baskets containing books authors have donated plus other goodies like wine. The raffle proceeds go to awarding two scholarships for college students involved in writing.
And now….
I have been on four boards in my lifetime, all fairly recently: one writing group, two publishing groups, and a political group. Except for the writing group, I have always been the secretary. I guess I like a well-defined job. I am a decent (good?) writer and a fast note taker. I always say that I have a business and can do the secretary job but that is all I am going to do, and that has been fine. In the writing group, I was one of three vice presidents. It was the plan at the time that it was a training ground to be president. I wanted nothing to do with being president, so I quit the board in short order.
In my San Francisco publishing group (Bay Area Independent Publishers Group) I was actually on the board twice with some time in between. In my Florida Publishing Group (Florida Authors and Publishers, a sister group to the San Francisco group) and my political group I was appointed early and then went on to serve one more term.
Several months ago, I decided I had had enough of the meetings (thank you Florida Authors and Publishers for having nice, short meetings), the note taking and deciphering that followed, typing up the notes, sending them out, getting minor corrections, etc. I always felt as if I had notes to type. So when my terms were up, a few months ago for the political group, and last weekend for Florida Authors and Publishers, I resigned from the boards. I am free!
I am actually not a real board “type.” I don’t consider myself a leader. And I don’t consider myself a follower either. I don’t consider myself as someone who enjoys working in a group, but I did enjoy the camaraderie. I am definitely an individual contributor in life.
The change of board for Florida Authors and Publishers takes place at their annual conference in Orlando. Perk of being on the board is you get the conference and the two-night Hilton stay free with working the conference. (Oh, and the food). I was very grateful and surprised to get a beautiful plaque from them just for serving a term on the board.
I am still a member of both Florida Authors and Publishers (since I live here ) and Bay Area Independent Publishers Group (since I used to live there and love the group). The monthly meetings of Bay Area Publishers (BAIPA) are on Zoom and have been since Covid. I really enjoy the meetings, which last for three hours once a month and remain well attended and interesting. Florida Authors and Publishers has board meetings on Zoom and an annual conference, but no member meetings to speak of. I really missed that. Although they are sister organizations under the umbrella of IBPA ( Independent Book Publishers Association), which has at least a dozen such clubs across the United States, they are very different. It might be because Florida Authors and Publishers needs to serve an entire state. BAIPA serves the San Francisco Bay Area, so they were able to have in-person meetings, not so viable with the whole state of Florida.
Also, the audiences might be different. BAIPA members seem to mostly be authors who publish their own books with a smattering of other experts in print brokering, editing, cover design, formatting, and more. Florida Authors and Publishers seems to have more members who use small publishers to publish their books and people who are small publishers.
While BAIPA has monthly meetings which include a Q&A session, member introductions, and a speaker (and occasionally puts on a conference or book awards contest) and draw 30-60 members, FAPA has an annual conference (quite pricey) with an extravagant book awards ceremony. Monthly Zoom meetings have not been successful there. Maybe it is because it covers an entire state, so the only time people connect is at the two-day conference.
In any case, now that I am free, what am I going to do? Right now my ambition is nowhere to be found. I could just sit and read all day (and drink coffee). What I say I want to do: Get busy on learning/improving my keyboard playing, write songs and work on the songs I wrote decades ago, fix up my romance novel draft, write another romance novel.
We shall see!
Leave a Reply