My Worst Conference Mistake by Heidi Chiavaroli

This is Heidi's last post with us as a regular contributor on Seriously Write. I'm going to miss her posts and I'm going to miss working with such a wonderful individual. I look forward to having her as a guest on Seriously Write as often as she is able to visit. So long Heidi, we know God has a wonderful plan in store for you!

- Terri

As you read this, I’m no doubt excitedly preparing for the ACFW Conference in Nashville next week. While I’m not a stranger to both local and national conferences, I  do still get those butterflies. 

I’m certain you can find a multitude of blog posts on how to prepare for a conference, so I won’t outline that here. I’ll just give you one tip of advice—and it’s one that I struggle with myself.

Relax. Be yourself.

That’s it. Sounds easy, right? But it just isn’t, at least for me. So when I start getting wound up, I remember my first national conference six years ago. I was far from relaxed. Prepared, yes. Organized? Of course. I had all my appointment times carefully written down, and I thought, memorized. I’d remembered a whole pitch after all. Certainly I could memorize an appointment time.

Or so I thought.

You know that appointment that you really want? The one that you practically came to conference for? Yeah, that one. I was late for it. Ten minutes late. And as many of you experienced conference attendees know, ten minutes in Pitchland is like an hour in the real world. It’s bad. Really bad.

To this day, I still don’t know how I got the times mixed up. I’d been ready. Prepared. Maybe far from relaxed, but I had that pitch down.

And I blew it. While the agent did graciously squeeze me in, I could tell I’d already made my not-so-good impression.

I’d been so busy rushing around, trying to gather extra appointment slots, that I’d missed the appointment I wanted most.

I’m convinced if I had just taken a breath and relaxed, maybe even tried to enjoy the conference a bit, I wouldn’t have been late for that appointment. Maybe if I had went out of my way to bless another writer instead of racking up unneeded appointments, I wouldn’t have made such a naïve mistake.

Yet even so, God is full of grace. One busted appointment wasn’t the end of my writing career. Far from it. And that conference wasn’t totally ruined. I met some amazing women who are still very much a part of my writing life.

So yes, do relax. But even if you fail at that, if you make a mistake like I did, give yourself grace. Look around, find another writer who might need someone to talk to. In this business you are never alone.

Heidi Chiavaroli is an author, runner, wife, mother, and grace-clinger—not necessarily in that order. Ever since taking her first trip to Plimoth Plantation with her sister, mother, and grandmother at the age of nine, she has been fascinated with history and its significance to today’s people and culture. Heidi is the winner of ACFW’s 2014 Genesis Contest, Historical Category. Her debut novel will release next year from Tyndale Publishers. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two sons, and Howie, her standard poodle. Learn more about Heidi on her website: www.heidichiavaroli.com.  

Pitch Your Book by Eddie Jones

One-Sheet Sample

It's conference time again. Can you feel your heart pumping just a little faster? Well, Eddie Jones is here to give you some insider tips and help you prepare for those agent and/or editor appointments. He's even got a sample one-sheet for you to check out. Click on the image to the left to see a full sized copy of his one-sheet for Dead Calm: Bone Dry. - Angie

Step One: Take a Breath

Sometimes at conferences authors get so jazzed up with the appointment that they aim a fire hose in the face of faculty. They’ve been told they only get a couple of minutes to make that pitch and get the editor or agent’s attention, so they come prepared with their one-sheet and proposal but then forget to take a breath.

Often, the faculty wants to know more about the person sitting across the table than they do the project. This is a relationship business. No matter how good the pitch or project, or even how well you write, if the editor or the agent doesn’t feel they can build a rapport with that author and establish a relationship, they may not be that jazzed about the project anyway. So slow down and breathe.

Step Two: Bring Your One Sheet

Bring your one-sheet. And bring your proposal if you have it. Do not expect the editor or agent to take that proposal with them. In fact, most of us may not even take your one-sheet. But it’s good for you to have both because we’re going to ask questions and you’re going to need to refer to that proposal or that one-sheet to answer those questions. We may ask what your marketing plan is and you need to be able to quickly flip to that section of your proposal and give us that information. How many Facebook friends do you have, Twitter followers, what’s your Pinterest reach, are you on Goodreads? What’s your platform and can you market the book? We may ask those questions. You need to be able to get your hands on that information quickly.

Each editor and agent looks at a one-sheet a little bit differently. I take about a minute to read over the sheet and I approach it like a reader might in a bookstore. I tell authors to imagine they are in a Barnes and Noble. They are standing in front of a bookshelf. Pick up a book and scan the front cover. That’s going to give the title, the author, and if there’s a tagline that goes with that title. The one that comes off the top of my head is – I think it was the second Jaws movie – “just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water”. That’s a killer tag line.

So you have your title, your tagline, your author name, and probably in some cases you have some visual elements that hints at what the cover might look like. It’s not that you’re designing the cover, but if it’s a romantic beach read you’re probably going to have picture of a sunset or a sunrise at a beach, or people walking on the beach. But you don’t have to do it this way. Some editors and agents don’t want to see visual.

Next, it’s that back cover copy. What is the promise of the book, what is its premise? Is there a payoff for the reader? If I’m interested in that book I’ll ask for more – as would a reader. That’s the power of a one-sheet.

Step Three: Be Prepared to Email Your One Sheet or Proposal

Most editors and agents that come to conferences are flying in, so they just don’t have room to take printed copies of anything back with them. Often, we will ask a conferee to email us the proposal or the one-sheet as an attachment. If you’ve got it on a flash drive, that’s good too. When I go to conferences if somebody gives me a flash drive I take that back to the room and transfer it to my laptop, and then I have it with me. For me that’s really helpful because I’m flying to conferences, and if I’ve got the proposal when I leave the conference, or the one-sheet, then in the airport and on the plane I can kind of look over a lot of what I’ve just talked with an author about, and make a decision before I get home. If I don’t do it while I’m in the air then it may be months before I get back to that author.

Step Four: Know in Advance What a House is Looking For

If an editor is not looking for the project that you’re pitching, be respectful of that and don’t argue with the editor. Most major houses have their submission guidelines up on the site, so you know what they’re interested in purchasing before you get to the conference.

Step Five: Watch the Time

Editors and agents want to give your their undivided time, but they have also been asked by the conference director to stay on schedule. Make it your job to watch the time for them. Trust me, editors and agents appreciate an author who knows the value of time and respects the 15-minute slots for ALL authors. Personally, when I find an author who helps me stay on-schedule I know that I’m looking across the table at a professional.

So there you are: pitch, breathe, listen, and leave on time.

Good luck at your next writers’ conference.

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Key to conference appointments: pitch, breathe, listen, and leave on time. Click to Tweet
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About the Author

Eddie Jones is a North Carolina-based writer and Acquisition Editor for Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. He is a three-time winner of the Delaware Writers Conference and his Young Adult novel, The Curse of Captain LaFoote, won the 2012 Moonbeam Award in the Pre-Teen Fiction/Fantasy category and 2011 Selah Award in Young Adult fiction. Dead Man’s Hand, the first book in the Caden Chronicles mystery series, is now available from Zonderkidz.

Skull Creek Stakeout
The good news is, vampires aren't real. The bad news is...you can't believe the news. Nick Caden is a normal fourteen-year-old kid with a "supernatural" knack for finding trouble, ghosts, vampires, and all sorts of undead--or so it seems.

After solving the ghost story murder at Deadwood Canyon, Nick lands a job as a roving reporter for The Cool Ghoul Gazette, a website on paranormal or supernatural disturbances. When the editor sends Nick to investigate a murder in Transylvania, North Carolina, the young super sleuth finds a corpse with fangs, bite marks and a stake driven through the heart. If Nick proves vampires are real, his job as an investigative journalist is set for life! But once he begins to peel back the clues surrounding the mystery of Skull Creek, Nick finds his new job is not only scary and dangerous but about to suck the life out of him.

The Skull Creek Stakeout - a story middle-readers and adults can sink their teeth into.

The Caden Chronicles - winner of the 2013 Selah award for Young Adult fiction.