East of Eden Writers Conference

Want to hear advice about writing your memoir from successful memoir authors?

This fall’s East of Eden Writers Conference, held in Salinas, CA, John Steinbeck’s home, was a big success. I was fortunate to serve as the moderator for the Night Owl Memoir Panel. You got that right. We started at 9PM after two long days of sessions and workshops. However, there was great enthusiasm for our topic and we had a wonderful audience. I hope that the questions I asked and those asked by the audience will help you on your writing writing path.

Because the panel lasted about 1 1/2 hours, I’ve edited the audio file into several parts — each around 15 minutes. I post them all in the coming weeks. In this first segment, you will hear the introduction of the panelists — Linda Joy Myers, Phyllis Matson, Maralys Wills, Kendra Bonnett, and Betty Auchard — as well as responses to the first two questions posed.

I’ll share photos of the panels at the same time that I ask them a question.

Maralys Wills answered the first question: What was the most difficult part of writing your memoir and how did you overcome it?

Linda Joy Myers responds to the question: It is said that the process of writing a memoir changes the author. In what ways was this true for you?

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Kendra and I just returned from the 2008 East of Eden Writers Conference. As you might guess, the conference is held in John Steinbeck’s hometown of Salinas, California, known as the “salad bowl of America.” Driving there, we passed the spring-like pale green, red-tipped, and dark kelly green tops of the numerous lettuce varieties growing in the nearby fields. A treat for the eyes.

Kendra’s presentation focused on Using the Internet to Write Your Way to More Book Sales. As the audience gathered, she talked individually with those on the front row about their current use of the Internet.

The workshop participants were eager to learn the differences between “old school” and “new school” approaches to marketing your book. As Kendra says, “Classic approaches to marketing are always effective. But now the Internet means authors can directly build readership for their books.”

Kendra urges all writers to begin to build their brand and their future readers as soon as they start writing their book.

She highlighted the importance of branding yourself and building your audience with the following statistics for the most recent year available from Nielson’s Bookscan: 1.2 million books published. 950,000 sold 99 copies or fewer (that’s 79%). 25,000 sold more than 5,000 (that’s 2%). 500 sold more than 100,000 copies (that’s an infintesimally small %). “Think getting a publisher who places your book in all the bookstores is your ticket to sales and fame? ” continues Kendra. “Well, think again. Seventy percent of all books in bookstores are returned to the publisher. That means no royalties for the author.”

Still want to go with a big publisher? “Hey, that great,” says Kendra.”But the best way to get an agent and a publisher is to prove that you already have readers who like your voice, your style, and your content. Creating a popular blog, driving traffic from social networking sites, and developing relationships will help you land the deal you want. Get started now.”

Think it was all work and no play at the conference? Heck no. Kendra and I took off between our workshops to go over to the coast. Here’s a photo of us when we stopped along the 17-mile drive to watch the fiery red sunset.

I need your help. On September 6, I’m moderating a panel of women memoir authors at the East of Eden Writers Conference in Salinas, CA. Each woman has published at least one memoir and two have two published memoirs.  

We already have a few questions to pose to the panelists. I’ve listed them below. If any of the questions we’ve listed resonate with you, let us know. If they don’t, let us know that as well.

But most importantly, I’d like you to imagine yourself in the audience of that session. What questions would you ask if you were sitting in that room?

You can post your questions as a comment to this blog. Or, you can email me using the information in the Contact tab of this site.  I look forward to hearing from you. Your reward? More about that in a minute.

Our current list:

Q1. Why did you write your memoir, in other words, what was your motivation?

Q2. What was the most difficult part of the writing process and how did you overcome the problem or difficulty?

Q3. If your memoir required research, how did you go about finding the information you needed?

Q4. What audience were you writing for? Did you find that the people who read your memoir are primarily the same audience?

Q5. What advice would you give to someone just starting to write a memoir?

Q6. What did you learn about yourself in the process of writing your memoir?

Q7. Do you feel that you were changed by the process of writing your memoir?

Q8. What was the biggest surprise that happened in this process?

Your reward for sending us your questions? We’re going to tape the session and post it on this website. You get to hear your questions answered.

Thanks.  I look forward to hearing from you.