Nick’s Author Nation AAR

You're so money and you don't even know it.

Hey, gang! Nick here with a quick and dirty After Action Report from Author Nation in scenic Las Vegas, from 10-15 November. I was fortunate enough to attend the trade convention along with our Production Manager Jonna, editor Lisa, and friend of the press Wally. This was my first time in Las Vegas, so in addition to the great lectures and classes, I enjoyed the sights and sounds of a new place.

There is a lot to see and do, but we didn’t want to miss any of the convention, so we saw less than you might think. After arriving on Sunday and catching up, we had a quiet dinner before walking around the Strip for a bit near the hotel. The first day was light on events, but we still wanted to be well-rested, so we did not stay out late.

On Monday, Lisa and I attended the Vellum formatting workshop and demonstration. Vellum is the software we use at Raconteur to do e-book and print layouts (there are a few exceptions). It is easy to learn the basics, but some of the higher-level functions and tricks are a little hard to figure out, so it was good to be able to see the Vellum team put the program through its paces and answer questions. I’ve reached out to them in the past and they are responsive and helpful, but nothing beats face-to-face communication.

I also got a writer headshot, which was available for free by a local photographer who was there all week. I could swear I read somewhere that the free headshots were sponsored by one of the guests of honor, but now I cannot locate that information, so I may have hallucinated it after smoking some bad granola.

Look at that idiot.

Monday was also vendor day, so a lot of the main room was taken up by booths. Editors and editing services, audiobook studios and voice actor/narrator types, marketing firms, teams from the major sellers, and some presses. It was good to wander and talk with different people. Got to meet some folks I have only corresponded with online, which was nice.

Tuesday was a full class day. An intense session on Amazon ads was one highlight, one of three sessions throughout the week on this topic. I was intrigued by the presentation, and the presenter, who worked for Amazon for years. The things that I do not yet know about online marketing could fill a very large hole. Raconteur will have a lot of irons in the fire in the next twelve to twenty-four months, and the more help we can get putting our products in front of the eyeballs of new readers, the better.

Speaking of those irons in the fire, I was pleased to also sit in on the Marketing for Middle Grade session. The presenter had a mountain of great info and tips for generating and sustaining buzz for middle grade books. While I have no intention of writing in a similar genre—her books all have to do with tween and early teen girls in competitive gymnastics programs—her advice is applicable no matter the genre, and I came away with lots of good ideas for marketing our upcoming middle grade adventure books.

Next up was Serials and Serialization, which was fascinating and may have some direct influence on another Raconteur endeavor in the coming years. MTF on that at a later date, but I was surprised to learn how large a market this is and how passionate the fans can be. Serials, of all genres, are big business. The same presenter gave a lecture on increasing subscriber numbers and nurturing a relationship with readers, which was also interesting. She has some ideas and methods that never would have occurred to me, and her success proves that they work, so I am looking forward to experimenting with them.

Wednesday was the busiest day for me. I was in seven hour-long classes over the course of the day. In the interest of time, I won’t detail each one, but each was great in its own way. We had a continuation of the Amazon ads lecture series, with the briefer going even deeper into the subject matter and addressing things like ad targeting and how advertising can and should dovetail with organic performance (“word of mouth”). A session about managing back-catalogue and another about maintaining an enthusiastic fanbase were both interesting. The subject of building and maintaining fan engagement was a common one throughout the week.

Next were two classes that I like to think of as “nuts and bolts” material. One was about worldbuilding, and the other was about creating deep characters. Both were good, but the character lecture, presented by screenwriter T.D. Donnelly, was fantastic. In one hour, I learned more from Donnelly than I’ve learned from many books, articles and lectures about writing characters. I will sign up for anything I see him brief in the future without even reading the description first. It was that good.

Next were a lecture on Booktube that I found engaging and informative, and to round out the day was a fun session on writing fight scenes. This class was given by Carla Hoch, a fighter who has written a lot about writing realistic and exciting fight scenes. Carla is a great lecturer and instructor. I would recommend this session for anyone attending Author Nation.

Thursday’s main event, for me, at least, was Matt Dinniman’s fan engagement lecture. The creator of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Dinniman is a pro at creating and maintaining his fan community. As I said earlier, this was a recurring theme throughout the week, but I appreciated hearing from a wide range of writers on the subject. Dinniman was funny and responsive to questions, and his slides were good enough that I refuse to believe him when he insisted he had just learned PowerPoint that week. His slides were better than those of most senior staff officers I’ve worked with.

There were other sessions on Thursday that I enjoyed, as well. There was one about developing and editing your first few pages to hook the reader deeply from the start. That was interesting and I picked up a few tricks I am going to try soon. Later in the day was the Post-Apocalyptic panel, and that was not as interesting in the way I had hoped, but in other ways, it was more than I’d expected. Did you know, friends and neighbors, that there is a genre called “Cozy Post-Apocalyptic?” Yeah, wrap your mind around that. The panel also generated some interesting discussion about how current geopolitical and cultural concerns can influence what type of Post-Apocalyptic literature people prefer, and how the pandemic affected the genre and the audience. I also got a couple things for my reading list that I’d not heard of before the panel.

Last but not least, Friday morning was the Military Science Fiction panel. This was the first and only panel where I already knew three out of the four panelists. It’s lovely to meet and get acquainted with new people, but it was also nice to finally see some familiar faces. There was a lot of discussion about what draws writers to MilSF and whether readers are drawn for the same reasons. The panelists opined on how much actual, you know, combat should be in military SF. As someone who has been following the recent spate of “where are all the books for boys and men?” articles, essays, thinkpieces and podcasts, that was interesting to me. This panel, too, also gave me a few more titles to add to my reading list. When Rick Partlow says a particular series singlehandedly got him into writing, I take that as a must-read.

The convention had already mostly wound down by Friday morning, and I believe the MilSF panel was one of the last ones. The Raconteur crew had the afternoon, so after spending some time writing and doing other work in the hotel, we walked down the strip to the beautiful Arte Museum and enjoyed the displays there. I should also mention at this point that I found a Taco Bell that was serving cocktails, because this is Las Vegas and of course that’s a thing there. So, yes, I got some Taco Bell with a giant margarita.

Waiting for my manna (and nectar) from Heaven.

We departed the next morning, our brains mush from Death By PowerPoint, but also full of great info and ready to bring fire back down from Olympus.

All in all, a great informative week, much different from any previous convention I’ve attended. Even “writer cons” usually have at least some element of fandom to them, but there was none of that here. Nobody walking around dressed as Jet Black or Frylock, nobody selling waifu body pillows, and a lot more collared shirts and blue blazers. The attendees were not broken down in the genre lanes to which I’ve become accustomed: there were SF/F writers, yes, but also detective, thriller, romance, and even nonfiction genres like history and travelogues. It was interesting to meet and get to know such a wide range of writers, and I really enjoyed talking with everyone I met.

An actual picture of my brain at the end of the week. Image: Cedar.

It's a bit pricier than some conventions, but I would recommend Author Nation to those who are truly interested in the business end of writing. I think in 2024, even if you want only to write and do nothing else, you should have at least a cursory knowledge of the money, logistics, marketing and sweat that goes into the other side of the industry. To badly mangle Trotsky: you may not be interested in the business, but the business is interested in you.

If you’re lucky.

Later, taters.