Having never before participated in an AWP panel (though I have attended many), I was initiated only from the perspective of an audience member. Knowing that an uninteresting topic coupled with boring presenters may drive the audience to mutiny, I came prepared to be as concise and witty (hopefully) as possible. Overall, I consider my effort a success. Of course, having panelists like Tanya Egan Gibson, Dan Blank, Bethanne Patrick, Christina Katz, and moderator Jane Friedman at the dais made failure near-impossible.

I’ve argued before that and author should openly embrace Social Media; the goal of both online social engagement and book-bound literary endeavors are the same: communicating on a human level. While naysayers abound, the consistent monologue about the form (such as this very AWP panel) seems to slowly be cultivating a more accepting and even more eager mindset.

Listen to the full panel using the player above. Or you can subscribe to The Velvet Podcast via Feedburner, Podcast Alley, RSS, or iTunes.

Here’s the official description:

The Art and Authenticity of Social Media: Using Online Tools to Grow a Community. (Jane Friedman, Tanya Egan Gibson, Dan Blank, Bethanne Patrick, Christina Katz, Caleb J. Ross)

Social media is easy to disparage as meaningless socializing, undignified shilling, or time better spent writing. Yet sharing information online and having conversations with readers is critical to spreading the word about what you (or your organization) does. Online community building can help develop a long-term readership, plus open up new opportunities.

Spoken during a panel on the Nitty Gritty of Publishing. One of the panelists was talking about how many writers think that their audience is just other writers.

To paraphrase: “Don’t think that. All the writers in the country are in this building. I hope your audience is bigger than that!”

That comment sent a roar up from the crowd and for me, a few shivers. Obviously there are more writers in the country and the world than in here. It was a metaphor, but it is exciting to be surrounded by so much talent, and passion, and love for the written word.

Other good advice:

• Everything you can do to promote your book is great – social media, events, etc. Marketing/Publicity departments can only do so much, especially so at the smallest presses.
• Don’t lead with the book. Read other people’s blogs, join in the conversation, but don’t just Facebook and tweet and comment about your book. It’s boring and annoying.
• Be nice to your editor. Stand up for what you believe in but trust that it’s not a battlefield. The editor, publisher, and marketing/publicity people are all in it to sell your book. They aren’t trying to make you a sell-out for suggesting a change in title, cover art, order of stories, etc. Give them a listen and work WITH them, not against them, to get what is best for the book.

Heading now back to the conference and the bookfair. Going to a 3 pm panel on the Future of Fiction. Should be more excellent food for thought.

Wi-Fi on a plane is the greatest thing since sliced bread…bread that communicates to other loaves of sliced bread via a wireless internet connection.

So, after worrying the night away watching newscasts spike ratings with tales of snow-mageddon, the ride to the airport this morning (and the current flight) has been beautifully uneventful. So far, I’m on target for all I’ve promised, including keeping this blog, the @awptweets feed, and the awpchannel YouTube accounts active with my own tales of word-mageddon (ratings, right?). Dear God, words are coming to DC. Quick, purchase ridiculous amounts of milk and bread (the wireless variety) at crowded grocery stores and then call for a pizza delivery because “well, it’s just too dangerous out there to drive somewhere to eat.” (re: the pizza delivery guy’s life is worth less than mine). Seriously, as a friend of a pizza driver, please don’t make that a-hole call for food delivery in bad weather.

I digress.

I’ve got to keep the tangents under control though, as I am officially part of the Social Media panel to take place on Thursday at 3:00pm. Other panelists include Christina Katz, Dan Blank, Bethanne Patrick, Tanya Egan Gibson, and moderator Jane Friedman. I’m a last minute addition and should I not suppress the verbal diarrhea, I may never be invited back. “Oh yeah,” I’ll say, “Well, in the future all social media has gone the way of yellow pages and MySpace, so I don’t want to be invited back to your stupid conference, anyway.”

I hope all others made it safely as well.

Yes, that’s the actual departure screen from my flight to Atlanta this morning. Proof that the literary gods love me (or at least tolerate me).

(Lori A. May, Kathleen Driskell, Tod Goldberg, Meg Kearney, Michael Kobre) Low-residency program directors will discuss innovative approaches to providing value-added opportunities for students at a distance—regardless of varied geographic locales. Topics include adaptability in pedagogical training, funded editorships and real-world publishing experiences, online approaches to the traditional workshop model, the inclusion of commercial projects in film and television, and how students may become involved in a reading series or literary journal.

When: Friday, Feb 4th: 9:00 a.m.-10:15 p.m.

Caleb J Ross: You said something at last year’s AWP which stuck with me. Paraphrased, of course, you said that you teach your MFA classes like an instructor of any trade program might, with the end goal of providing financial opportunities for the students. This seems like a radically different approach than most MFAs which may instead focus on non-definable, creative signposts to gauge student success. First, am I expressing your idea correctly? Second, how is this goal compromised by a low-residency program, if it even is?

Tod Goldberg: Pretty close. Essentially my philosophy is that if you’re in an MFA program, your goal isn’t to become the most well-read person on earth with a handful of literary quotes at your disposal at all times, it’s to be published. It’s to be produced. Graduate programs in creative writing are some of the few that seem entirely esoteric because they don’t seem to be training you for anything tangible, apart from maybe being a particularly enlightened barista, because, well, that’s frequently the case. But I think that has to change. Being a professional writer is a job. And if you want to write books, or write screenplays, or write poetry, simply for personal edification, you certainly don’t need an MFA program to do that. But if you want to become a professional writer, I think an MFA program can and should be a clear stepping stone in that direction. Most aren’t. Most entirely eschew the idea of life after the MFA — in fact, most programs tend to herald your acceptance into the program as the “making it” part of your writing career, which is silly. It’s school. It’s what you do afterward that makes a difference. So in that light we talk about publishing and production a great deal in the program I run at UCR, about the difference between being workshop-good and publication or production good. We have agents and editors and film producers and studio heads that come in an read our students work and give them a real world idea of where they stand. And our professors are doing it, too (no one works in the program in the professor who isn’t still publishing or producing).

I got my MFA late in the game — I’d already published 5 books, countless short stories, sold several projects to Hollywood, written hundreds of pieces of journalism and was actually directing two MFA programs at the time (before going to strictly a low residency MFA, UCR Palm Desert also had a part-time traditional MFA program, too) — when I went to get my MFA from Bennington, so I feel that I have a unique perspective on this. Clearly, I didn’t need an MFA to be successful. But my experience with one particular professor at Bennington, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, opened my eyes regarding how to become a better writer, how to build on what I did well already, and that alone was worth the price of admission, and I believe that comes from that mentor/mentee relationship that low residency programs foster.

So I don’t think this philosophy of mine is hampered in the least by low residency program; in fact, I believe it is the best avenue to pursue this line of thinking. Being in a low residency program mimics the life of the professional writer. You’re probably balancing your writing with another job, you’re probably also writing some stuff like book reviews on top of your creative work (or doing coverage if you’re a screenwriter) and you’re probably at home on the weekends, up until late in night, in your underwear, typing.

CJR: What have you observed as main differences between students full-residency programs and those of low-residency programs, in terms of being motivated and concerned with job opportunities?

TG: In low residency programs, the students are older, generally more career-oriented, and are spending their own money on their education, so the desire to have some end result that is easily within grasp is much more predominant. They are there because they don’t want the life they have, they want to become professional writers or, in some cases, they are professional writers and they want to also teach and thus need that degree to do so. The end result is that they tend to be pretty driven and you don’t need to pester them for their work.

In traditional programs, the age is a little younger, they tend to have the same literary goals but they are often matched with unrealistic end results — I want to make millions! I think this book will be a great movie! [Every time someone says that, an orphan is murdered. I truly believe that.] — and, since they often aren’t paying their own way, the attrition rate is a little higher, too. But I think the biggest difference is this: When you’re in a traditional program, you’re living in the academy, so to speak. Your whole life revolves around the university. You’re learning there. You’re probably teaching there. Your drama, your love life, your caloric intake…all of it happens somewhere near a quad, or a commons, and, well, it’s not real life. That’s not to say it’s bad — I think it’s great, actually — but it’s different than what happens to a student in a low residency, who is living a different kind of life and still is expected to turn out a great sum of work.

CJR: The description of your AWP panel (above) mentions online approaches to the workshop model. As someone who has a personal interest in the online model, I am interested to know if there are any hard-and-fast rules for making this type of environment conducive to great critique? Or, is it that the online model provides a better experience, and the in-person model has something to learn?

TG: The chief difference I’ve noticed over the course of the last decade that I’ve been teaching is that students working online seem to progress faster. I think it’s for a simple reason: When you’re getting workshopped in a classroom, you really don’t process what you’re hearing, which is to say you hear “you suck, you suck, you suck, you suck” and then maybe you hear “you’re great, you’re great, you’re great, you’re great” and you go home and the nuance of the arguments about your work are hard to piece together. But online, when you receive a written examination of your work from your professor (and it should be noted that at UCR, the students don’t critique each other during the online portion of the term; this is just the criticism between the professor and the student) you have time to process it before responding. You can then have that give in take, in writing, with your professor and the process gets drawn out over a period of time and becomes more varied and instructive — plus, the technology itself allows you to quickly, say, insert a passage from X book as an example of something. And of course what’s also happening is that the other students are reading along (we use Blackboard at UCR and the critique process is open for all the people in the workshop to see) and learning from things and then referencing critiques in responses to lectures and such. That’s another important aspect to what we do online: there’s a great sum of craft taught online, too, through lectures and reading and such, which is then followed by conversations online between the students, which fosters both a sense of community and an intellectual exchange of ideas, vs. just the professor saying, “Your dialog needs work.”

That said, I think the in-person part of workshopping is very important, too, which is why I don’t think strictly online programs work as well. By having the online portion and then 10 days of workshops in person, that sense that you’re dealing with real people, with real emotions, with difficult subjects on their plate, really coalesces into a whole. You get to know a person, you get to understand how and what they need to become better writers. This is a human business we’re in and I think the online experience removes that sometimes, or it can.

Finally, what online learning really does, for writers, is very simple: it allows them to express themselves in the way they are most comfortable and lucid — with words on a page. Plenty of writers are great on the page but then you meet them and they just can’t express themselves very well. The online classroom removes that aspect and allows the writer to be in a comfortable medium, which is part of why I think they end up progressing so rapidly.

CJR: What makes the low-residency program worthy of its panel? Why should people come to your panel, given the wide selection of available panels?

TG: Well, let’s see. I’ll probably swear a lot. I’ll probably offend someone in the audience, who will then get up in a noisy huff and storm out while I point out that they’ve made a huff and are storming out, which is always a fun thing to see. There’s a high probability I’ll tell off-color jokes about the other panelists. At some point, I’ll tell someone that they should transfer programs if they aren’t allowed to write genre fiction [This makes me crazy, too...I mean, seriously, people in academia, who the fuck cares what your students are writing as long as it's good?] which will then cause someone else to storm out. And then? Well, then I’m going to hustle out in time to see Josh Ritter on his panel.

Tod Goldberg is the author of the novels Living Dead Girl (Soho Press), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books/MTV), and the popular Burn Notice series, as well as two collections of short stories, Simplify (Other Voices Books), a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of he Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize and Other Resort Cities (Other Voices Books). His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Black Clock, The Normal School and The Sun, twice receiving Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize as well as being named a Distinguished Story of the Year in the 2009 Best American Mystery Stories. His essays, journalism, and criticism appear regularly in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Las Vegas CityLife and have earned four Nevada Press Association Awards for excellence. Tod Goldberg holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from Bennington College and directs the Low Residency MFA program in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside. He lives in La Quinta, CA with his wife, the writer Wendy Duren.

F164. The Future of Book Publishing: How Authors Should Navigate the New Market. (Mary Gannon, Dennis Loy Johnson, Jeffrey Shots, Michael Reynolds, Lee Montgomery, Julie Barer) Editors and agents will discuss the changes that have occurred in the practices and policies of literary publishing—from acquiring books, producing them in all of their incarnations, and marketing them. They will also offer timely advice on how authors should best navigate the changing industry and the new market.

This panel was a fantastic look into the varying opinions of the direction of book publishing. Dennis Loy Johnson played the role of the electronic book sympathizer to counterpoint the general physical-paper-book consensus of the rest of the panel (as you can probably guess, the ebook v. paper book debate claimed most of the discussion…and rightfully so, I think). Mr. Johnson embraces the digital revolution. His publishing house (Melville House) was essentially birthed from a blog, so “digital,” he said, “is in his DNA.”

The moderator, Mary Gannon, asked a series of questions. The one that got the most response was: what is the biggest change in publishing over the past five years?

Lee Montgomery: Electronic books and with that, trying to figure out how to use the internet to market. Ms. Montgomery does think the physical book is safe. Though, people should not turn their nose up at the different ways people can hunt down books. She liked the potential for ebook devices (Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader, etc.) to that of the iPod, commenting about how much more music she buys now that she has a device built to allowing just that. Personally, I completely understand this point.

Dennis Joy Johnson: The conglomeration of publishing houses and distribution is one of the biggest changes and is possibly the biggest downfall. The death of independent sellers, and with that, the growth and power of Amazon.com, has made it almost impossible for independent, local bookstores to survive. Additionally, the forced discounts that Amazon.com puts on publishers makes it extremely difficult for authors and publishers to make money.

Mary Gannon: Bookscan is the biggest change. Bookscan, according to Wikipedia, is a data provider for the book publishing industry, owned by the Nielsen Company. BookScan compiles point of sale data for book sales. According to Ms. Gannon, is that the industry relies too much on Bookscan to determine purchasing quantities of an author’s subsequent books. The problem is that Bookscan doesn’t track all channels, so the numbers are often incorrect. My feeling is that the rise of POD printing, micropresses, and the fragmented distribution channels, should be incentive to have BookScan get its act together and adjust to the changing market.

Finally, which this comment doesn’t fit perfectly into the flow of this post, I still feel it important enough to cram in here at the end. Dennis Joy Johnson says that word of mouth has traditionally been a bookseller’s favorite and most successful advertising outlet, and that book blogs are the new word of mouth. So, on that note, read lots of books, so says this blog.

R163. What’s Your Platform? What Agents & Editors Are Looking For in Writers. (Christina Katz, Jane Friedman, Robin Mizell, David W. Sanders) Yes, the quality of your writing still matters. But becoming visible and influential is more crucial to landing a book deal than ever, according to agents and editors in every facet of the publishing industry. Aspiring authors need to develop a platform in order to get noticed. Fortunately for emerging writers in all genres, there are more affordable, accessible tools available for platform-development and building, which make this important responsibility a pleasure and not a chore.

Much of this panel focused on what exactly a platform is, why it is important, and how an author should go about developing one. Many of the suggestions felt obvious (getting a website, establishing a Twitter feed, be on Facebook, Redroom, and various other social networks). Some, though, were new ideas to me.

Here’s a run-down of some of the best points:

Christina Katz would rather call this panel Harnessing the Artist’s Power. She explains this concept by saying that the author must use his ability to be passionate about his work to create passion among others.

David W. Sanders said that there is a connection between how known a writer is in the world and how well they succeed.  He went on to say, “a book may not sell because the writer is dead. Which is a valid reason; the only valid reason.” A writer must be a missionary for his work.” He also suggests writing fan letters to authors as a way to show investment in the literary community.

Robin Mizell says, “your platform is not your CV. Your platform is a continuing conversation with your audience.”

What are the ways to build platform?

Christina Katz offers…

• Build website/Facebook/twitter/etc.
• Publish eZines
• Teach classes (even online classes, or mentor via forums or email)
• Write for specific publications
• Give lectures, readings, and workshops
• Host a reading series
• Offer contests and giveaways on your blog

Robin Mizell offers…

• As an agent, she can guild the author, but her job is not promote the author (? Really?)

This question was posed: What are the biggest challenges with platform building?

David W. Sanders says time is the biggest challenge. An author only has so much time.

Robin Mizell  says that it is necessary to be “other focused,” which many wannabe authors aren’t. Engage in conversation before even telling someone you are a writer or have a project going.

Christina Katz offers…

• Confusing platform development with socializing
• Not communicating everything you offer
• Not focusing enough on your audience
• Thinking there is an end. Platform building ends only when your career ends.

The panel members then each offered resources for more information about platform building.

Robin Mizell recommends Christina Katz’s book, Get Known Before The Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform.

Jane Friedman recommends Seth Godin’s blog, “279 Days to Overnight Success,” and the “There Are No Rules” blog.

Ultimately, the panel left me wondering, if an author must have an established platform (re: a group of people willing to buy; a hyper-focused demographic) to sell a novel, then what is the point of a traditional publisher. Why not just self-publish?