Hello my friends!
I’m finally back from my vacation, and feeling eminently less stressed. Melanie and I have already met up to hash out current battle plans. It certainly makes planning easier when talking face to face!
One thing Melanie and I wanted to try this year was to find a sponsor for the conference. It was the first time any of the Write to Publish managers had tried to partner with a presenting sponsor, but to Melanie and I the idea just made sense from the beginning. What we can offer and the quality of the conference increases if we partner with someone else. We hoped that we could find a partner involved in the publishing industry, but realized we might have to go outside the industry.
We are ecstatic to announce that we have secured a sponsor for Write to Publish 2015: Pubslush, the global crowdfunding and analytics platform for the literary world. Run by a mother and daughter duo, Pubslush tailors its services to the needs of authors, agents, and small-presses. If you aren’t familiar with Pubslush, check out their website or blog. Forbes also wrote a great article about the company. Pubslush actually approached us, having heard about the conference, asking about how they could get involved; in addition to sponsorship, we thought about other ways we could benefit from their experience.
As a result, Nicole McArdle, marketing director of Pubslush, will be attending the conference and speaking on a “How to Fund Your Creative Project” panel. She will be joined by publishers Chris Morey, of Dark Regions Press, and Patrick McDonald, of Overcup Press, in addition to well-known publishing consultant Todd Sattersten.
Our other panels are almost filled as well; we are confident that by the end of summer we will have a finalized schedule to present to you, readers. We have one workshop set; two more to go. Our short story contest and our design contest should be starting around the same time our schedule is finalized. We are currently working on press releases and marketing initiatives for both those programs, so we will be ready for when we open them to submissions. The website continues to be built one line of code at a time and so far progresses well; in the meantime, some information is available at our temporary page at http://ooligan.pdx.edu/writetopublish/.