Whangārei members' coffee meet up

We pre-empted the Sketch and Scribble with a coffee catch-up of members and writer friends on Thursday 8th August! No sketching or scribbling was done, but we shared lots of news, and had a great discussion about bookshops and book selling, from the experiences of both traditionally published and self-published writers.

Sherryl recently attended a Australian webinar with two booksellers speaking about how they select what books to stock, how the ordering works, and what they base their decisions on – lots of factors including reviews, publisher support, who their customer community is, what media coverage the book has or will receive. As a guide, one of the booksellers said August is a quieter month for publishing, yet she was presented with 3000 new books coming out, and selected 700.

We talked about our local bookshops (of course!), and how hard it is to get them to work with self-publishers.  Yes, it’s the paperwork, but more often it’s about getting them to pay for your books after they have been sold. Our local Paper Plus has just been taken over by new owners, so we hope they will be as amenable as the previous ones to events like launches.

Those who came along (and their most recent book) were Donna Blaber (“Just Keep Going”), Justine Payen (“Tea With Miss Tilly”), Heather Whelan (“Timepiece”), Anna Williams (“Magpie and the Morning Light”), Janine Williams (“Like the Wind”) and Sherryl Clark (“Mina and the Whole Wide World”). Aki Fukuoka sadly couldn’t make it. And yes, Janine kept her secret that she had been awarded the new Lynley Dodd Children’s Writers Award! Congratulations, Janine.

If there are any other members up north who would like to come to our next coffee catch-up, please do let me know – clark.sherryl@gmail.com 

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