Tag Archives: Panels

16.6: Building Your Brand

Your Hosts: Dan, Erin, Brandon, and Howard

Branding, in marketing terms for writers, is the process of establishing a recognizable identity—a brand— for you and your works in the marketplace of readers, and people who buy things for readers. In this episode we talk about what our brands need to be doing for us, and how we go about getting them to do that.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Play

Find the elements of your brand from your friends, alpha readers, and beta readers.

Writing Excuses 10.37: Being a Good Panelist and a Great Moderator, with Susan J. Morris and Marc Tassin

This month’s wildcard episode comes to you from the 2015 GenCon Indy Writers’ Symposium, where Dan and Howard had the opportunity to interview Susan J. Morris and Marc Tassin. Susan is one of the finest moderators the symposium has ever seen, and Marc directs the event, building the schedule around good panelists and great moderators. Their advice is insightful, fresh, and spot-on. If you ever find yourself scheduled to speak on, or moderate, a panel, this episode is a great listen for beginning your preparation.

Play

You’ve been invited to BobCon, and when you arrive at BobCon you realize WHY it’s called BobCon. How do you escape?

A Darker Shade of Magic, by V. E. Schwab, narrated by Steven Crossley

Writing Excuses 9.42: The Convention-Author Relationship, with Deirdre Saoirse Moen

How does a convention play into your career as an author? How might you expect to be participating in programming? How, in short, do you get to be on panels?

Deirdre Saoirse Moen, who organizes fan-run literary cons and schedules programs for them, joins us to talk about programming from the convention’s point of view. Conventions want to create engaging programs, and want authors to be able to participate in that. Authors, of course, want to do things that ultimately result in selling more books. These goals are not incompatible, but there’s a trick to getting them to mesh well.

We also talk about what you should do when you find yourself on a panel — things to expect, things you can do to prepare, and some things to take care to not do.

By the way, registration is open for the 2015 Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat. We talked about that mid-week, and appended that bit of audio to the end of this episode. If you’d like to discuss the event, here’s the place to do so. That’ll keep all the questions and answers in the same place!

Play

Write your bio in four lengths — one each at 25, 50, 100, and up to 500 words.

The Saint: The Original Sinners Book 5, by Tiffany Reisz, narrated by Elizabeth Hart

[CONTENT WARNING: Explicit about all the things.]