Doing a little IndieRecon

Recently, a friend on Facebook posted about IndieReCon.org, an online conference for independent writers.

Laptop magnifying glass. ©iStockphoto/RTimages

Laptop magnifying glass. ©iStockphoto/RTimages

Since one of my StoryDame goals for 2014 was to self-publish some content I have created as ebooks, I thought this conference might hold some helps to save me time consuming research and more time consuming mistakes. I hopped online and found the conference started Tuesday. I decided to attend because 1.) it looked promising and 2.) other than a personal time commitment, it was free. Promising and free is a combination worth sharing, so I also shared the link on StoryDame.

I arrived early Tuesday and by the third session, I was hooked. Over the next three days, I availed myself of the free information on writing, publishing, and marketing. While most attendees seemed to be fiction writers, writing is writing and much of the information could be applied to nonfiction as well.

Maybe more interesting to me, as one with an MA in media psychology, was the method of delivery. The conference was launched off what is essentially a blog (powered by Blogger) with pages for home, the schedule, presenters, giveaways, and the like. Scheduled events launched off both the home page and schedule. Presenters’ choice of delivery included live web, video, Twitter, and Facebook chats, video and document postings. Most sessions had some type of giveaway you could register to win in multiple ways including newsletter subscription, follow on Twitter, liking on Facebook, and tweeting. If you happen to be away from the home or schedule pages, you can still see what’s coming up on the handy Twitter feed on the blog, on Twitter or on Facebook if you liked IndieReCon.

Was my time investment worth the cost? For me, yes. I was entertained and informed by J.A. Konrath and Barry Eisler and the prolific Bob Mayer. I walked away with valuable, time saving tools like Book Registration Basics by Peter Bowman, Getting Started on Goodreads by Patrick Brown. Johanna Penn sparked new ideas I hadn’t considered in 5 (Interesting) Ways to Build Your Readership. I made friends with and followed and got followed by new folks.

While there were a few glitches (what conference doesn’t have those???), all in all it was a pleasant experience. Hats off to S.R. Johannes and Ali Cross!

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