Self-Publishing: A Revolution for Midlist Authors?
Self-publishing's moment has arrived. Authors both famous and obscure are releasing their own ebooks,cutting out the middleman, bypassing the gatekeepers of a notoriously hard-to-break-into industry, and sometimes making huge profits. But it's midlist authors, established but not bestselling, who stand to benefit the most from the self-publishing boom. This panel, comprised of already-published authors who are either trying to or intending to self-publish, will examine the benefits, pitfalls, and potential of self-publishing, and will point the way toward a new self-reliant digital future for book writers.
Presenters
"Joni Rodgers is a pure storyteller. She writes with a wit, lyricism, humanity and joy that make her books impossible to put down." Aaron Sorkin
NYT bestselling author, celebrity ghostwriter and book doctor Joni Rodgers is the founder of Stella Link Books, a digital imprint, and The League of Extraordinary Authors, a coalition of seasoned professional authors who are choosing to indie/self-publish.
Joni is repped by William Morris Endeavor.
As the proud and happy conference chair/community guidance counselor for O'Reilly Media's Tools of Change, I get to meet and work with some of the coolest, smartest, and nicest folks in the publishing and tech communities. I adore my bookish techy peeps, and I love helping them share their ideas with the rest of the world.
My background includes editorial and marketing experience with a number of regional and national trade and academic publishers, among them: HMH, Communication Skill Builders, the University of Arizona Press, and Rio Nuevo Publishers.
Prior to joining O'Reilly, I dabbled in the social media arts, acting as Chief Content Wrangler for my company, Next Chapter Communications. At Next Chapter, I reveled in crafting campaigns for clients including SourceBooks, NetGalley, AllRomanceE/OmniLit, Adaptive Blue, the University of Arizona Press, Poisoned Pen Press, BookSwim, and a little company called O'Reilly media!
Also co-hostess of #FollowReader, a weekly twitter chat on books, reading, publishing, and things of that nature...check it out!
Author of #1 Amazon.com bestselling parody "The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within... Just Like Papa!" Beckerman has written for Esquire (where he served as an editor), Playboy, Salon, Discover, Wired, Mental Floss, Nerve, Huffington Post, and the Daily Beast. His website is www.martybeckerman.com and you can find him on Twitter: @martybeckerman
Neal Pollack is the author of Stretch: The Unlikely Making Of A Yoga Dude, Alternadad, Never Mind The Pollacks, and The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature, among other fine works of literature. A frequent contributor to both the American and British editions of Wired, Pollack has also written for every English-language publication except for The New Yorker and Field And Stream. In 2010, he received his Ashtanga vinyasa yoga teacher's certification from Richard Freeman in Boulder, Colorado, which has nothing to do with SXSW, but he's still proud of the fact. A former resident of Austin who's trying to get back, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.
Monday, March 12
