Checking In From the Conference

Today was a rough day. Massive snowfall overnight made it tricky (understatement) to get to the conference site. But I soldiered on, and my rewards so far have been plentiful. This is a good conference. A few snapshots--

---
Overheard in the hallways--
Two women walking together, carrying conference bags and talking rather loudly.
First woman says, "So I told him, how should I know that that's a whatever-you-call-it grammar thing. Like I care."
Second woman says, "Anyway, that's the editor's job."

(sigh)

---
A lot of people are buying into the myth that erotic romance e-books generate vast sales across the board. Some ER e-books generate strong sales, and some do not. It's pretty much like any genre.

---
In the coatroom where I temporarily parked my snow boots, I received only two impromptu pitches. Usually a confined space like this will generate a lot more stealth pitches.

---
One of the fun parts of a conference for me is the chance to hobnob with other editors and agents. Today I had a lovely 20-minute gab with a small press publisher whose recent months mimic ours very closely: distribution conundrums, staffing issues, and a shocking amount of time spent on marketing and PR. It's comforting, in a way, to know that we're all dealing with universal conditions.

---
After that chat, another publisher talked some about innovative PR strategies his house is implementing. This excites me because some of his ideas are in line with some things I've recently suggested for our house. I hope to have the opportunity to pick his brains a bit tomorrow, but don't know if I'll get the chance. Alas, he mentioned that he couldn't really tell if any of their strategies were having any impact on sales. Sometimes I wonder if we (the collective publishing industry) ought to shift some of our resources away from convincing people we have a good product, and toward making sure that the product actually is good.

---
Two really killer formal pitches this afternoon, both from writers who claimed never to have pitched before. Both stories are loaded with potential, but it's impossible to learn much of anything about publishability from a pitch. I need to see pages. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but (as the old saying goes) it's all in the execution.

---
Thank you, Todd, for piercing me with my own sword during the editor panel this afternoon. I once told Todd that part of what I'm doing in pitches is trying gauge how crazy the writer might be. He used that as a moderator's question during the panel, and I couldn't help but laugh to hear my own reckless words used that way. And yes, for the record, I confessed to the audience that I was the big meanie editor who silently performs a mental health screen during pitches. I don't mind copping to my own brand of crazy.

---
Thank you, Terri, for the banana. The hotel really ought to open the restaurant when there's a big conference happening.

---
It turns out that MWA recently went through a revamp of their publisher-recognition standards. I hadn't heard about that. I knew about the similar changes in RWA's policies and, from what I can tell, MWA and RWA have adopted very similar standards.

---
Everybody is talking about facebook and blogs. Nobody is talking about myspace or second life.

---
That's it for day one.