Thought about San Francisco Writer’s Conference

 Overall speaking, there are many processes and practices in the publishing industries that can be optimized to make the event more insightful and people more involved.

This Feb, early spring season, there were quite a few conferences across the industrial boundaries held in the San Francisco Bay Area. I stopped by the San Francisco Writers Conference, which was held in the downtown area, As the staff there didn’t respond by request for getting the conference pass timeline, so I just briefly walked through the meeting. 

The workshops and information sessions were tailored for fiction, nonfiction, memoir, children’s lit, speculative fiction, romance, mystery, and more, plus crossover topics like narrative nonfiction and publishing. The sessions cover some industry trends, market forecasts, and practical publishing advice.

There were sessions for sharing fundamental information about book proposals, and self-publishing strategies. Practical seminars on contracts, rights, royalties, marketing, book launches, platform-building, and monetizing writing beyond books. There were small-group workshops focused on scenes, voice, pacing, characterization, and revision techniques with hands-on exercises.

Compared to many conferences in other industries I recently participated in, this is a mid size meeting. As an author, I think the facilitators should respond promptly and invite more experts and readers to the conference, even making it a large scale book fair to create momentum. Otherwise, the leaders and innovators think the meeting was kind of a silo event. It didn’t integrate with the emerging technology and the broad base of audience. Overall speaking, there are many processes and practices in the publishing industries that can be optimized to make the event more insightful and people more involved.

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