July’s Meeting

From Bill:

We had a very spirited and enthusiastic meeting tonight with 9 attendees including 4 new members.  Welcome to Jim, Debbie, Elizabeth, and Todd. Hope everyone got something out of this meeting.

Fred talked about the differences in getting a fictional and a non-fictional book accepted by the agents.   For anyone in the non-fiction genre, he mentioned a new book that he just bought:  NON-FICTION BOOK PROPOSALS THAT ANYONE CAN WRITE. 

We also talked about Writers’ Conferences and the importance of attending them so you can pitch your book.  Fred passed out information on a Conference in Cleveland on Saturday, August 21st.  We have registration applications if anyone desires to attend. 

Jim brought up self-publishing and Rich told how he successfully self-published his first book, made some money on it, but now is having problems due to his publisher dying. 

Elizabeth told us about self-publishing using www.Amazon.com .  They have a few different methods on their WEB site to do this.

Rich passed out info on having a Reading of our member’s works at the next meeting. Rich will bring his portable PA system.  We have permission from Books-A-Million to try this.  So put down your thoughts on a short story that you can relate to your fellow writers.

We also received info on how to write a Radio Essay.  If anyone wants to try this, I do a lot of video processing and have some videos on www.YouTube.com .  I’ll be glad to work with anyone on this.  A video Podcast is easy to set-up also.  Rich did one for Jason which he promised to talk about at the next meeting.

Speaking of the Internet, there are numerous ways to start getting your name out there so you will be more recognizable.  You can start a blog and upload your thoughts on a regular basis.   There are many sites out there that will accept short stories and may even pay for them if they are widely disseminated.  Facebook is another site that may get you a lot of followers.

Here’s a thought to work on for the next meeting:  Should OVWritersGroup have its own Facebook page to get more recognition and more followers?  My photography club has one as do most of the other small organizations around Wheeling that I’m connected with.