Encouragement from San Francisco Writer's Conference

I just attended my third San Francisco Writer’s Conference last week.

This was the first time Pam and I have worked a conference together and it was great. Her thoughts echo my own so well. I did notice one other thing that seemed different from past years though.

This year flying home I realized I didn’t encounter a single, “Oh, that’s a self-publishing thing,” or an eyeroll accompanied by, “You know how traditional publishers are.” Absent was the occasional moment when you realize that someone is so entrenched in the traditional or independent world that they look down on the other.

I believe it was inevitable that authors and service providers would reach the point where everything blended into one toolkit for reaching readers. I am overjoyed that we seem to be accelerating towards that. We are not quite there but it wouldn’t surprise me if within the next 10 years all authors are hybrid authors.

Being an author is hard enough without the creation of false divisions, and it was amazingly encouraging to hear a successful traditionally published keynote author say he was thinking about self-publishing a book, and to realize that the people who seemed most excited about the idea of beta-ing to validate book reader fit were coming at it from the traditional side.

Encouraging in the extreme. It was also great to see Pam get out and mix it up with so many people.