IPNE Member Blog

GRANT NEWS UPDATE

The 2020 IPNE Pandemic Grant, organized by Jon Meyer of Brilliant Light Publishing in collaboration with the Independent Publishers of New England Pandemic Grant Committee has been very successful. Applications are closed, and 16 grant recipients have been selected. We thank everyone who helped with organizing the grant, together with our sponsors and those who applied.
 
The recipients have received cash grants; mentorships; and editing, marketing, and design services from sponsors who are excited by their work and happy to support what they have to offer about independent publishing. We have received positive feedback from the selected recipients, and are happy to be able to connect authors and publishers to much needed resources.

"Publishing During a Pandemic"

Conference recordings now available to registered attendees!

Are you planning on writing a book, in the process, or are you just curious about the process of getting a manuscript to an audience?

Whether you publish traditionally or DIY, you'll likely be in charge of things like your own publicity and marketing, for example, or and you'll need to know about book design, "meta data," ISBNs, and book launches. The two days of sessions on the publishing process were capped by our 8th Annual Book Awards.

At the 9th Annual IPNE Publishers & Writers Conference, we brought in speakers like keynoters Angela Bole (CEO, IBPA) and Carol Gino (author, Me & Mario Puzo) and many other experts who have been there, done that, and eagerly shared their expertise to help attendees flatten the learning curve. 

"Publishing During a Pandemic" was the theme of the 2020 Conference. Last year's conference brought publishers, published authors, New Englanders and folks from far and wide to join the virtual crowd.

Look for next year's conference in early November - we're still weighing the in-person option, we'll have to see how vaccination goes and the state of Covid-19. We were very pleased with the 2020 virtual event, however, and that will remain a part of future conferences, so that people far and wide can join.

We have a winner for the Nov. #IPNEMember hashtag contest!

IPNE member Martha Reynolds was born and raised in Rhode Island. When she wrapped up her distinguished career as a fraud investigator in 2011, Martha decided it was time to do something she really enjoyed.

Fast forward to 2020, and Martha Reynolds is now the author of nine novels. Her novel Villa del Sol was awarded the 2018 Book Prize in Literary Fiction by the Independent Publishers of New England. She is also a member of ARIA, the Assoc. of Rhode Island Authors.

Use the #IPNEMember hashtag on social media for a chance to win publishing services, memberships and renewals, books and other goodies.

YOUR 2020 BOARD 

The election for the IPNE Board of Directors has been certified! We are pleased to announce that we have a great group of 11 talented and experienced board members who are eager to serve IPNE.  An annual meeting to introduce the new board members will be announced soon.

Click links to find the IPNE profiles for your new board members: Inanna Arthen, Kiki Tapiero, Connelly Akstens,  Ruby Fink, Jon Meyer, Spencer Smith, Mike Rochester, Jane English.

Incumbents serving for another year are Eddie Vincent (president), Charlotte Pierce (member-at-large), and Mike Piekny (awards).

• Mon. Nov. 23 Nomination deadline (extended from 11/16)
• Weds. Nov. 30 Ballots sent to membership
• Mon. Dec. 7 Ballots due
• Fri. Dec. 11 New Board of Directors announced
• Date TBA: Annual Meeting
• Jan. 12, 2021 First board meeting of 2021

Dec. 7 is the deadline to get your ballots in for the IPNE Board of Directors! We have a great group of talented and experienced candidates who are eager to serve IPNE. Click links to find the IPNE profiles for this year's  candidates: Inanna Arthen, Kiki Tapiero, Connelly Akstens,  Ruby Fink, Jon Meyer, Spencer Smith, Mike Rochester, Jane English. Incumbents in for one more year are Eddie Vincent, Michael Piekny, and Charlotte Pierce.

Ballots have been sent out - please check your email, make sure your membership is current, and submit your ballot electronically by Dec. 7. You can also find and fill out the ballot on this website. For questions, please email the Nominating Committee.

• Oct. 1 Call for nominations
• Mon. Nov. 23 Nomination deadline (extended from 11/16)
• Weds. Nov. 30 Ballots sent to membership
• Mon. Dec. 7 Ballots due by 11:59 PM
• Fri. Dec. 11 New board announced
• Jan. 12, 2021 First board meeting of 2021

Among IPNE's most promising initiatives are the local groups that are forming across the region. Groups active this year include Maine, Vermont, and Metro Boston Publishers. Southeast Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are in need of coordinators, but groups have been set up and these groups have a core membership.

What does a regional group coordinator do?

Dive in, it's easy and fun! Simply set up regular meeting spot, invite some author/publisher friends, pick a topic or speaker (or not), and presto! You have a regional group! As a coordinator, you'll get a free IPNE membership or renewal after a year and/or 4 meetings (online recommended during the pandemic), and other perks. IPNE can set up a Zoom or Streamyard session for you if you wish, and we will post your meetups on this website in our Events page so people can RSVP.

Thanks to Meditative Gardner and 2019 Book of the Year winner Cheryl Wilfong and HeartWood Press publisher Lynn Levine for organizing this year's Vermont Regional Group! Click here to join the Vermont regional discussion group.

I liked a post by Gail Reitenbach in today's IPBA email newsletter about her choice to pursue indie publishing after having worked in various capacities in the industry. It details a number of reasons why traditional publishing today isn't a good home for striving authors and what the alternatives are, but it provides no magic bullets for getting authors and their publications noticed in the marketplace. Still, it's a good and instructive read.

Let me ask a favor, one I would be happy to return. While this blog is pretty quiescent, it seems a good venue to reach out to the authors, self-publishers, and indies who collectively make up IPNE. Are your notifications on?

The favor I'm asking is for you to visit my publishing website and rummage around in it (It has a dozen or so pages, most of which concern my novel Turkey Shoot, and a blog). Then tell me what I'm doing wrong, and if any ameliorations occur to you, what  I could do better. In return, I will cast an eye on your online enterprise, if you care for feedback.

I read a lot of columns and listen to podcasts telling authors how to approach the hardest part of their job, publicity. They tend to play up the importance of websites as sales magnets. And so, having run a Wordpress blog for about five years, I used it to publicize the novel I was writing between 2015 and 2018. Among those pages were a lead-in, synopsis, backstory, a sample chapter, a set of podcasts of me reading chapters, and even a list of the people and places that populated the story line, and also photos evocative of places where the action took place. All in all, it was a lot more collateral than most authors put online.

When it came time to publish, I opted for the Hybrid model with a publisher that gave me all the rights to the book and allowed me to publish under my own imprint. And thus, Perfidy Press was born. And of course it needed a website that would put my novel up front, as opposed to the back pages of my blog.

I picked a cute URL, bought it for under a dollar, signed up for hosting, and set up another Wordpress. The whole exercise took less than a month to get working. It went online about a month before my launch date (9/11/18, selected as appropriate for a thriller featuring an Islamic Terrorist). After a few months of little usage, I changed the theme, edited some of my copy, and embedded a video of an interview I had before the book came out. There's even a press kit, and of course a pop-up announcing the award IPNE bestowed upon the book last month ("Courage in Fiction").

I choose not to set up any eCommerce. Even though it probably wouldn't have been hard to do, I had decided I didn't want to involve myself in fulfilling orders, and simply directed readers to the online bookseller of their choice with links to my book at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Indiebound, and B&N. Was this a mistake?

I keep tweaking it, but am never quite sure how engaging Perfidy.Press is for someone who has stumbled upon it. Few comments come my way and even fewer new subscriptions to the TinyLetter newsletter that I occasionally emit to 140 victims, most of whom I coerced onto my list in the first place. At least, only half a dozen have unsubscribed. And for the record, I haven't spent a lick of time optimizing SEO, black art that it is. Am I missing out on significant traffic as a result? What do you think?

So check it out and sock it to me. You can find me in the member directory, but just in case here's an email address. And feel free to comment underneath this post if it isn't for eyes only.

And if you have a website you want checked out, give a shout.

Thanks y'all.

 I taught history for 37 years at Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, the Naval War College, and Williams College, and wrote eight books.  Earlier this year I published A Life in History, my autobiography as an historian, under my imprint, Mount Greylock Books.  On May 28 I talked about the book before an enthusiastic audience at the Harvard Coop.  The talk can be heard here.  Enjoy!

 David Kaiser

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Code is (all caps): SELFPUB

So a $49 savings on print and $25 on ebooks

This information was shared by Mellisa Sherlin on 4/10/18