BetaBooks Update: Conventions and Conversations

Wow, it's amazing how busy we've been over the last few months! We started 2019 at a sprint and haven't slowed down since. As a result, we've communicated a lot less than we normally do, so I wanted to say hi and let you know what we've been up to.

In February we returned to the San Francisco Writers Conference, which was fantastic. Andrew lives there, so it's a great chance for us to connect and chat about BetaBooks in person and to meet and talk to a ton of authors. Andrew's wife, Pam, and I share a birthday, and it overlapped with my visit, so we had tons of fun celebrating together. THEN early Friday morning before the conference really got going Andrew and Pam welcomed their third child. Luckily our friend Burton had joined me to help so I wasn't all alone. I had the opportunity to moderate a great panel discussion about digital formatting which I really enjoyed. Overall it was a fantastic time.

BetaBooks was also invited to speak at the first New England Speculative Writers conference in Portland, Maine. I love being a part of new things, especially when the organizers are so passionate about helping authors reach their goals. It was a great one-day event. They gave me a full hour and fifteen minutes to talk, so I expanded the  talk I normally give about how to beta, and shared a lot of what we've learned about identifying and reaching out to potential readers.

We are always working to improve the BetaBooks software. We're also hearing a lot of feedback from the BetaBooks community (Yay!), and responding to author requests has slowed down new feature launches a little, but there is stuff coming! I was feeling discouraged about that until Jeremy Flagg, one of the organizers of the New England Speculative Writers Conference, reminded me that BetaBooks as a software company is in much the same position as many of our author customers. We, you and us, know we are doing good work and that people are interested in what we are making, but we are just not quite at the point of going full time. Working through this stage feels slow but I hope all of your are persevering just like us. Thanks for being awesome!