This was not very interesting. The interesting part was the publishers talking (again) about the state of the industry, but the rest of it wasn’t anything new. It was about the process of edits, cover selection, publicity and sales. Sure, some people may not have known it, but I don’t know if it warranted a 1 hour session of its own.
Probably the most interesting part was how much book sales in Australia are down this year. There are a lot of reasons for this, and the publishers’ comments didn’t really touch on the issues of high cover prices vs internet purchases. So not sure if they are in denial about the realities of the situation, or are just trying to gloss over it. After all, these were some of the people who were so patronising about the fact that they now accept romance and women’s fiction.
I was only in that session because all the others were booked out. I wish I had been able to get into Bob Mayer’s session on Writing your story in 3 dimensions: Point of View and Voice. Or Susan Wiggs‘ session on What Readers Want. Or even the session on Staging a Fight Scene by a former policeman. I’ll obviously have to book earlier next time.
Wow, it sounds like a super conference, Philippa. The other sessions would have more than compensated for the odd disappointing one.