The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 28 – How to attend author conventions and get results from it

Is it really worth it attending author conventions and events? And if it is, how can you ensure to get results from it?

What is you would like to organize your own convention or event? What do you need to consider and are there financial risks to take into account?

Zach Bohannon & J. Thorn from The Career Author podcast (http://thecareerauthor.com/) are sharing their experiences.

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Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (0s):
Have you ever wondered if it's worth going to writing events and is it worth your money and is it really worth your time and what if you are sort of further along in your career and then you won't be speculating about is it worth creating some of my own events? That's what we're going to talk about here today. If you're fantasy author then you've come to the right place. My name is Jesper and together with Autumn we've published more than 20 books and it is our aim to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors.

Jesper (36s):
So today I have been joined by somebody else. Then the, actually it's the guys from the Korea author podcast. I listened to their podcast every week and I will let her put the link in the description field below for our podcast so that you could go and listen to if you want. But the reason that I wanted them on here to cover this topic is because I know that they have talked about it before because, and they also have both of their perspectives on this thing, so they both joint conventions by themselves. As a participant, but they have also an art creating events for other authors themselves.

Jesper (1m 10s):
So we want it to try to cover both angles here and they're welcome to, uh, the amwritingfantasy, uh, channel. Uh, Jameson.

J. Thorn (1m 19s):
Yeah, thanks. That's for, we're really happy to be here. Thanks for having us.

Jesper (1m 23s):
Thanks a lot. And, uh, well I guess we can sort of just jump right into it. I know you guys have participated, if we start with sort of the participation angle, and I know you guys have gone to different events just as participants where you have not been new organized so a bit, but I wonder if you could sort of share a bit about is. Is it worth the time and the money that it takes to go to these events? And if you do go to these events, how should, could you go about it to make sure that you actually get anything out of it? Because, uh, it, it is at least, I think quite a both expension of time, but, but also as S introvert authors, maybe it's not the coolest thing that we can think of.

Jesper (2m 1s):
Is it worth it?

J. Thorn (2m 3s):
Yeah, I think it's totally worth it. I can say that without hesitation. Uh, I'm thinking back on some of the live events I've done more recently. So I've done, I did the indie author lab that was put on by publishers weekly. Uh, last year I did podcast movement I think in 2016, 2017 which sort of like a big convention. Uh, I did a story grid certified training and a and a story grid weekend with Shawn Coyne last year and a couple of years ago.

J. Thorn (2m 34s):
Uh, so yeah, participation I think is really important in those and. And I think what's most important is that it's not necessarily what you think you're going to get. It's going to be what happens when you're there that you can't plan for. You can't anticipate things like conversations with other authors over a cup of coffee that leads to a further discussion that leads to a possible project or you know, you meet someone who happens to know somebody else and it's a good connection way. And I, I hesitate to use the term networking cause especially for introverts that makes our skin crawl.

J. Thorn (3m 6s):
It's got sort of this really dirty connotation, but, um, it really isn't, it's not networking in the, in the sleazy internet marketers sense. It's more about making connections with other people and, and really allowing yourself to be in the moment and to absorb what's happening. Certainly the speakers and the content is important and I think people will probably only sign up for events that they believe are going to help further their career. Um, but I don't think that's the main reason for going to a live event.

J. Thorn (3m 36s):
I really believe it's the interaction with the other participants, possibly the people who are putting on the event and then all the potential that comes from that. And even if I don't meet someone and I don't have a very, uh, concrete outcome from that meeting, there's always a skill or a strategy or a new way of looking at things that, that comes out of those events that doesn't happen for me online.

Jesper (3m 59s):
Yeah. No. And I know, especially from what you've shared in the past, us facilitated that you get quite exhausted from Merde, sir, you said in person events or things. So how do you go about it? You know, if you, uh, if you are like an author who are very introverted and don't really like seeing other people, do you sort of mentally pitch yourself up to, okay, I need to talk to a few people today are, how are you doing?

J. Thorn (4m 25s):
Yeah, that's a great question. And uh, I mean it is, it's a very broad generalization that, that creatives are introverts. Not all creatives are introverts, but I anecdotally, in my experience, I've found most of the writers I deal with are introverted or towards the introversion scale of, of the Myers Briggs and and. There's really sort of two ways, uh, an introvert can approach a live event to make it more manageable. The first one is exactly yes for what you, what you mentioned, which is to kind of set a little game of buy it for yourself and just say, okay, today at this event I'm going to talk to at least two people.

J. Thorn (4m 59s):
I don't know. I'm going to introduce myself to two people or one person. Like it doesn't matter the number, right? It's that you are your creating a little incentive for yourself that will put you in the right mindset and sort of open, um, you know, you're sort of opening your mind to, to meeting other people. But then on the flip side, it's really important to both at the event and after the event to have time to decompress. And I think this is where introverts really have to do this for themselves because it's not usually built into the events.

J. Thorn (5m 31s):
You need time within the day of the event to go and sit by yourself for 30 minutes or go read a book or go journal or just go and not talk to anybody like you. That has to be built into the day. And then I think it's also good and I think this applies to for extroverts as well. Once you get home from the event, you need time to decompress as well. I think it's really hard to just kind of jump right back into your, into your daily grind. You need time to, you need time to recharge and get some of that energy back.

J. Thorn (6m 2s):
Because for introverts, being in those crowded environments is not impossible. And it's not that we hate it and that's a misconception. It's just very draining on your energy and you need to, you need to be able to wait to do that and not sort of at a secondary level. I think it's really important both leading up to during and after the event that you are paying very close attention to your biological needs, making sure you're getting enough sleep, your eating properly, you're exercising if possible, because there's a tendency at these events to kind of go off the rails and eat and drink and, and, and you know, and do things that you wouldn't do at home.

J. Thorn (6m 37s):
I call it living like a teenager. And so if you're not a teenager that, you know, that's gonna take its toll too. It's, I think all of that taking that sort of comprehensive approach can really make not only an experience great, but make the least amount of disruption in your day.

Zack (6m 52s):
I'll also add real quick, like, I mean I'm definitely JL straight up, call me an extrovert. I don't know if I'd go that far. I mean I definitely have introvert tendencies, but um, I'm definitely more extroverted than he is in a lot of other authors and but to me, one thing I've noticed being at these events though too is that, you know, this, it's not the same thing as going to like a cocktail party or like a work Christmas party or something. I mean, there's a lot of other people in the room who are Waikiki and I think that knowing that comfort and that you're not the only introvert, most of the room is going to be introverted from what I've seen.

Zack (7m 25s):
I think that really helps open up people talk. And I know with our bigger events, specifically our conferences, you know, we try to, uh, you know, we, we do like the round tables where people were kind of forced to sit together, but it's not like there's never really been any kind of uncomfortable thing for me. Then we have our genre at dinners where people put together by the genre. So like we're kind of encouraging people to kind of break out a little bit, but not in like a funky like, uh, you know, speed dating type of way or something like that. But it's like really uncomfortable, you know?

Zack (7m 56s):
So that's just kinda my perspective from being a little less introverted, much less introverting I should say.

Jesper (8m 1s):
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think from my own experience when I've been to sort of conferences or events or stuff like that is it's not as hard to strike up the conversation as one might think in a way you just sitting at the table and as long as you're sort of smiling and are open to people, then usually you can start talking. But where I think it's a bit difficult and where I'm curious, what would you guys say about this? Because the aftermath of it, you know? Okay, so you've gone home, you talk to five people, but how and why should you get in contact with them again?

Jesper (8m 32s):
That that part is a bit mysterious mystical to be, you know, how are you supposed to do that? I mean, okay, I can just find a, send an email to somebody. Hey, it was great seeing you at that event. But that's it's a bit, yeah, I dunno. I think that's

J. Thorn (8m 45s):
a good first step. And a lot of times you don't really know how or when or if that's going to happen. Uh, I remember I went to podcast podcast movement when it was in Chicago. Brian Cohen up from somewhere book show and he's very outgoing and extroverted and he had no problem walking up and talking to a lot of people. And and I think that was good for me and I, and I think if you are, if you tend to be more introverted and you have a more of an extroverted buddy you can bring with you, I think you can play off each other's strengths in that way.

J. Thorn (9m 16s):
And so I was able to kind of kind of tag along with Brian and then like I was really good at sort of looking at all of the offerings and saying, okay, well why don't we look at this one and sort of thinking about this one. And that was not something Brian was like really good at. So we kind of, we kind of balanced that out. And then what I did was when I came home, of all the people I met, I did exactly what you said. I sent an email and just say, Hey, it was really nice to meet you, a podcast movement. Um, if you, if there's anything I can ever help you with, just reach out.

J. Thorn (9m 48s):
And I kind of gave myself permission to leave it at that and I thought, you know, I'm going to do that. It's sort of a, it's courteous, it's kind and um, if something's meant to come from that, I'll hear back from them. And some people, I didn't, some people I didn't and and you just never know. I think the big thing that we always preach is that if you start a relationship by giving as opposed to asking, it's always, it's always better that way. So even, even the following up with a thank you from a live event, I think if you're just saying, Hey, thanks a lot.

J. Thorn (10m 19s):
If I, if there's any thing I can ever do for you, just let me know and then leave it at that. I think, um, that's, that's a good way to approach it. Not feeling that pressure to sort of work all those contacts that you just, you know, you just got all, all those business cards, you collect it. I don't, I don't think you necessarily have to have to force yourself to, you know, make connections with those people that aren't a natural.

Jesper (10m 41s):
Is there any specific events that is spread? You mean, I'm going to hook you up on the spot here, so it's okay if you don't know, but, but I'm just thinking that some of the people who are watching this video and, or listening to this podcast might be people who are also pursuing my traditional publishing wrapped. So are there, in your view, certain places that are better than other, if anybody wants to walk over there?

J. Thorn (11m 5s):
No, it's perfect timing because as we're recording this, I'm about three weeks away from heading to New York city for thriller Fest for the first time. Uh, so I, I think, uh, you know, if your listeners are not familiar, thriller Fest is the annual gathering for the thriller writers and that's where they have all their awards and there's Pitchfest and agents are there. In fact, I'm going to pitch fast, I'm going to be pitching a project to am to several agents. And I think every sort of a top level genre has that annual gathering.

J. Thorn (11m 36s):
Like for the horror writers association, they have Stoker con, uh, waa, waa has a big gathering. Uh, the, uh, science fiction and fantasy writers of America have an annual gathering. So I think if you are looking for, you know, an agent or if you're more interested in sort of the traditional publishing world, those, those, those are the events that you want to attend. And those are the big ones. And, uh, and, and they're, they're somewhat affordable. Like they're not, they're not out of reach. I think for, you know, a few hundred dollars per ticket.

J. Thorn (12m 8s):
Uh, you can, you can go to any one of those. And, uh, and I think that that would be a great way for people to get to know what, what that industry is like.

Jesper (12m 17s):
So I guess we can conclude, conclude that it's definitely worth going to these events and you need to put a bit of your extrovert hat on and then go through wasn't and try to build a bit of relations but, but I'm wondering then if we sort of jump into the time machine he say then we fast forward a couple of years and now the people listening or watching the video, they have sort of grown a certain pattern to a certain level in their career and they're starting to thinking, okay, maybe it would be cool to actually organize some events on my own and thus maybe use it as something that supplementary income to my book selling or whatever it may be.

Jesper (12m 53s):
Maybe it would be worth if you guys just spend like a minute of talking a bit about what you guys are doing and who you, so just to set the scene a bit for talking about what kind of events you are renting and how you're going about it and what you're thinking about and so forth.

Zack (13m 8s):
Yeah, we, uh, the, the whole thing started kind of funny for us. I mean it really came out of, we ended up doing a authors on a train is kind of our like a event that responded and that came out of us going on a train trip with Lindsay broker and Joanna Penn and spending a week writing and a VALIC. We went, rode on a train plan to book out and it's been a week in new Orleans, Louisiana. I'm writing a whole novella together and you know, J and I were sitting outside one night, uh, having, having a burger before went to a concert while we were in new Orleans and we just kind were like, man, I'm like, why couldn't we do this with other people?

Zack (13m 48s):
This is like a really cool niche event type of thing that really we didn't, we don't see anyone else doing stuff like this. Like you see people doing writer's retreats from, they'll go like rent a cabin every, want to work on their own stuff. And um, you know, you see the conferences and stuff, but you really don't see these like smaller, really unique things. Like who else was taking people on a train? And then my, you know, the really weird thing and that's really what started it. And it's spa, you know, it kind of snowballed into the smaller, like the world, the world building type advanced or we'll go and we'll pick a unique place and go build a world out together.

Zack (14m 24s):
Um, and then of course we're stood in authors on a train and we have our bigger conferences as well, which is the career author summit, uh, formerly the somewhere bookshelves summit. Um, so yeah, that's, that's kinda the, the main stuff that we have going on and we can obviously as conversation goes down deeper in each one of those.

J. Thorn (14m 39s):
Yeah, I would add to that there's sort of an intermediary step for someone who's, who's thinking about this. And, and I, I think it's very, uh, this was really good. I think it's really great to be thinking about diversifying your revenue streams as an author. I would ha, I would highly encourage people who feel like either organizing or putting on one of these events sounds like something that like to do. I think that you should definitely do it. Am don't listen to that. The, there's too many or there's too many people doing it. I don't buy into that. Um, I think there's always room for more voices, new voices, new experiences.

J. Thorn (15m 12s):
But I think between being at an attendee and then, uh, running our hosting, there's this other space that I would recommend people explore, which is start, uh, talking or offering to speak at other events that you're not running. I think it's really important to not only refine your public speaking skills and your ability to present because as you know with a podcast, whether you're on a podcast or on a stage, you are performing, it's a performance. And it, and it takes a certain level of skill and practice.

J. Thorn (15m 43s):
It's not the same as having a casual conversation with somebody. So I think you need to practice getting in front of people. And the way I did it is I started offering to do talks for fruit for my local library system. And I would go in and I would hold these little workshops and I would do these talks. And I did that for years. And uh, and I was a classroom teacher before that, so I had sort of the presentation mode refined. But doing those presentations sort of gave me the understanding of, okay, number one, what do people want? And number two, if that's what they want, how can I provide it?

J. Thorn (16m 13s):
Or how can I find someone who can provide it? So I think there is this middle ground where you, you really have to kind of find tune your chops. And one of the ways you can do that, going back to our previous point is you could reach out to people who are organizing events and offer to speak for free and say, Hey, I'm, I'm getting, you know, experience and speaking. I love your event on, uh, you know, I've been following you. I would love to S I would love to present for free to your audience if that's okay with you. And you know, some people are going to ignore you and some people won't. But I think getting your feet wet and really getting experience presenting, especially on a stage live in front of people would be really important before you kind of go all the way to that point where you're going to be the organizer of the event.

Zack (16m 54s):
I think another, I think another step you could even take is not think this is kinda gonna depend on where you live. Um, but I almost feel like running some kind of really small event locally could be really good. And even if you don't charge anything, you know, go rent a room at like a local coworking space or something. And obviously you know, you, if you're probably gonna want to be in a city where there's like gonna be a lot of writers that could come, but there's a whole other level of complexity of planning event and risk when you're talking about go like, you know, and for instance, in September we're going to Seattle and we live in Cleveland and Nashville and Seattle is a like fi five or six hour plane ride for each of us.

Zack (17m 34s):
So like to plan an event in Seattle and not live there is like, there's a lot of complexity around that and you know, J and I both have a background playing music and I know me personally, I know he has some, like I used to plan like a festival on stuff. Like I'm a small music festival and so like I have some event planning background and um, and I mean there's a lot of little logistical things that you may not think about whenever you're playing an event. And you know, we're still learning as we go and learn along the way.

Zack (18m 4s):
But I think that doing something locally small, maybe you get, try to get 10, 15 people or something to come show up and you do like a lecture type thing. Or maybe you guys do like a world building, I don't know like, but I think that can kind of help you start to see kind of the logistics of putting something together and getting people to show up as well, which is kind of a step ahead of like having a library organized, something you showed up in speaking, which I also think that's a great, great way to get started on that too.

Jesper (18m 30s):
Yeah. And it is a great point around getting a bit of practice with people or speaking in front of people because even for an introvert is certainly doable, but, but you sort of need to to get used to it a bit and then you can, uh, you can make yourself do it, so to speak almost. But, but I want, I mean I, and I think it's a good point too, to sort of work your way up to it and, and do some of those smaller events for four. I started if that's what you want to go, but, but at the same time I also know that it's pretty important for you guys that the event doesn't grow too big.

Jesper (19m 2s):
So I'm wondering how do you balance this side of, okay, you, you're of, you'll have some costs into it because you have to rent a place and probably get some food and drink and whatnot. And then at the same time, if you don't have enough people come in, then I guess either you can have a very, very high ticket price, which I don't think you guys are doing either, unless I'm mistaken. Or you can have a ton of people at a lower price, but what but how do you balance it out? Because if you're doing, I mean if you're just doing it for fun, then it's fine. But if you're doing as a sort of supplementary income, then you need to learn a bit from it.

Jesper (19m 35s):
Right? So what are your thoughts on that?

J. Thorn (19m 38s):
Yeah, I think it's really important to be completely transparent and honest and say that anytime you're organizing an event, you're taking a risk, uh, financially, mostly financially, but you're, you're risking your reputation as well. I mean, I, I don't think we're at this point anymore, but I remember we had conversations of like, what if we went, if we roll out an event and no one shows up or no one's interested like that, you know, there's a cost that's involved there. Um, and at a certain point, but, but more importantly, you know, the, the events, you know, for, for authors on the train, we're renting a mansion in San Francisco.

J. Thorn (20m 14s):
Well, we had to put 50% down on that before we put up the landing page. And for the career author summit, we had to secure the, the, the conference center before we put the landing page up. And, you know, so part of that is you need some savings. You need to have some money set aside that you're willing to risk. I mean you can mitigate your risk, but at the end of the day, anytime you're putting money up before you're selling tickets, you are taking risks. So I think it's important to recognize that. And uh, and we've been, we've been willing to do that.

J. Thorn (20m 44s):
And you know, we've been successful. We haven't lost a ton of money doing and we've made money in most cases, but you do need to have many willing to sort of put up and to secure those. As far as the event themselves are concerned. Our wheel house, our specialty is really these small sort of intimate gab world-building gathering since. So authors on a train and am PSI Phi Seattle and vampires in new Orleans, these are events, we're really taking a dozen people.

J. Thorn (21m 14s):
So we know that we don't need to have, you know, $100 in Facebook ads. Are they running to drive traffic to that landing page? Cause cause we're, we're going to sell them out. It's only 12 people and we charge enough that we're going to make some money, but it's not so exorbitant that people can't afford it. So that's sort of the, the one style of event that we really like doing. The career author summit, we kind of kind of fell into our lap. Um, it wasn't something we had planned on doing. Uh, summer book show, Bryan Cohen decided he didn't want to do that summit any longer and we had such positive energy momentum for that event.

J. Thorn (21m 47s):
We didn't just want to let it go and so Zach and I went to Jim Kukral and said, all right, well Brian doesn't want to want to do this anymore. And it was all good. In fact, Brian is going to be speaking at the career author summit, but we said, what if we continue it? We'll rebrand it as the career author but we made a very hard, definitive decision, very public decision and said, we're not growing it. It's at 120, 115 hundred 120 years about the match. Yeah, that's about the number of seats we're going to sell. And we're not growing it past that. I will not sell out those sell out. We could, we could buy, you know, we're, we're very close to having that sold out now and it's 11 months away, so it's not, and that's not a slight against events that grow larger become larger.

J. Thorn (22m 29s):
But we find in our own experience that, uh, once you go above 115, 120 people, it's, it starts to feel more like a trade show and less like a conference or a workshop. And that's just not what we do. We, we'd like to be able to walk around and interact with everyone. We like people to have the opportunity to meet all the other people there. And once you go North of one 25, it's hard to do that,

Zack (22m 51s):
I think. I think going back to kind of swing back to your original question too, is, you know, it's, it's very risky and J will tell you like what we kind of laugh because we joke that when we're coming up with these things, J always starts with yes. And I always start with no. So J comes to me with the super ambitious ideas and I'm always like, no, no, we've got to pare it down. And we ended up somewhere in the middle and it really works out. But I think that not getting too ambitious and trying to knock it out of the park so hard the first time when, if, when you're not really sure what all the costs are going to be in stuff, uh, it's, it's really important.

Zack (23m 26s):
So don't, you know, you obviously want to put on a good event, but you know, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to take all your attendees to the fanciest restaurant and have the fanciest venue. And we've made that mistake. I mean, we, we had, uh, one of our events, you know, we, uh, we're going to try to make it a little bit bigger and we rented a bigger type of, who ran a whole theater, you know, and, uh, we, we did a lot of different things and that event, as awesome as it wasn't as fun as we ended up having on it, uh, ended up losing money for us. So, and it's because we kind of went, we got too ambitious and we learned a lot from that though and and realized, you know, we, we'd rather deliver these really cool experiences.

Zack (24m 5s):
The problem was is that we were trying to get more people than we really should have and we really realized then like for our smaller well billing events like 15 people, max is kind of like that's really worse. Sweet spot is. And with that, you know, we can still make enough money to like be at the rock and roll hall of Famer at the Mo pop museum and see like we could still do really or rent a mansion. You know, we could still do this really cool stuff and still have room for us to make money as well.

Jesper (24m 33s):
One element is around the venue that you are reserving are paying for, but the other part is also how what type of event you're running. And by that I mean if you're running something like, like you're talking about here, like a willpower thing event where it doesn't take much prep in the way that, okay, maybe have some initial idea for a world that people then come to the UN and and basically the work is done, they're in the oven. But if you have more like a presentation type of event, either you would need to run the same presentations every time so that you don't have to prep too much or you what because if you do want to create a new presentation every time at the end of the day that his time away from writing and unless you are really earning money on that event, if you're just covering your cost or earning $1,000, you know, my question would be is that really worth it?

J. Thorn (25m 26s):
I I think that's a very legitimate question. I think the answer is going to be really dependent on on the individual situation Zach and I need to make enough money to make it worth our while. We sort of, we know between us what that is and that that's got to cover our own costs of, of getting there. The cost of not writing during that time, I think, I think that's an an another cost factors into it. And I think it depends on the event. So if you're talking about something like the career author summit, preparing to present at that, a lot of the work comes ahead of time and then you present and it's kind of over.

J. Thorn (25m 59s):
But world-building is kind of the opposite of that. So there's not a ton that we do leading up to it. But then once it's over, we published an anthology and Zach's right now is going through all the stuff from, from rocket park in Cleveland and that's, that's a full on anthology publication, revision, editing. It's a lot of work. So you know, and like that's, that's work that we're not quote unquote getting paid for. That was part of the ticket for the event. So that's just stuff that we're obligated to do that we enjoy doing. So I think it really, it really comes down to the person as far as like what type of event do you want, do you want to put on, what do you hope to get out of it and, and what sort of resources do you have to spend on it?

J. Thorn (26m 40s):
And that's both time and money.

Zack (26m 41s):
And I think too, I think, I think it is important to mention too that there's two of us, which are best, not obvious, but for people who don't know, you know, we do these events together, but we also write fiction together. So even when our fiction production doesn't necessarily have to stop you because J might go do be working on a presentation, but I might be working on our fiction. So I do think that's important to bring up cause, but that's not to say that one person's still couldn't manage this stuff on their own and still run their fiction business and do events. There's nothing that says that by any means.

Zack (27m 12s):
But, uh, I just think that's important to bring up for this conversation to those.

Jesper (27m 16s):
Yeah, true. Yeah. And I certainly don't think that this is anything, you know, the, the starting out author should really worry about or try to do. But even if you're not collaborating with somebody else, you know, if you're a bit further down your career path, you might have a virtual assistant who can help booking stuff and whatnot. So, so

Zack (27m 34s):
of course you're probably gonna need some help to do an event. There was no doubt. Yeah. Depending on the size and scope, what you're trying to do that you're probably gonna need some help. But like you said, you can definitely hire people out to help you or stuff. So

Jesper (27m 47s):
is there anything else we should cover around organizing events to say anything that I should have asked you that I do?

J. Thorn (27m 56s):
I mean, as far as organizing an event goes, I think it, you know, really the big takeaway, what Zach mentioned is is if you're, if you're really interested, do something very small and local for free. And that's the best way to get a feel for a lot of this. Everything from logistics to, uh, the type of people you want there to, the presentations or the workshops that you want to do. And maybe depending on where you live and who's near you, you can just invite a few of your friends and just say, Hey, come for free. You know, let's all do this together.

J. Thorn (28m 26s):
I'll, I'll sort of run it and I'd love to just get your feedback on it. And I think starting small and starting locally is probably the best way to do it. Because the last thing you want to do is to, is to think planning something like the career author summit sounds awesome. And you'd love to do that. And then you start to do it and realize it's not something you enjoy or it's, or it's something that you don't want to spend time on and then you're kind of stuck. So I think if you start small, then you're going to have a much better, uh, you'll have much, uh, a much better idea for yourself as to what, whether you can do something more grandiose in the future.

Jesper (28m 60s):
I think that's very good advices. And, uh, it's all, it's always good to get some advice to somebody who has actually done it, you know, rather than people speculate to be good on that. So I very much appreciate that. Sure, absolutely. I did mention the Korea author podcast in the beginning and I will put a link to that. So if you're watching on YouTube, it's going to be right below this video. And if you're on the podcast, just go to the show notes, but is there anything else, guys you want to mention where people can find your, or is this just the curiosity podcast you want to point people?

Zack (29m 31s):
Yeah, I mean, everything's over@thecareerauthor.com you can get the podcast there. Uh, if all our events are there. So if you're interested in attending one of our events, um, you know, we're, right now, we are, uh, all our 2019 stuff. Well, the only thing we have left to by Seattle, it's sold out. Our 2020 stuff is almost sold out. So, um, we, we have the career author summit in Nashville, Tennessee. That's a in may of 2020. We've got some great speakers will be there. We've got Joanna Penn, Lindsay broker, Brian Cohen, Jim Kukral, Mark Leslie, the fade, a honorary quarter.

Zack (30m 7s):
We've got some really good speakers lined up for that. Um, and we're getting really close to being sold out for that as of this recording. I don't know what it would be when you guys, when you air, but we're, I think we have like maybe 12, 15, 20 tickets, 15 tickets. Um, so we've got that going on. We have a authors on a train, California dream and is what we're calling that am. So we'll be taking a trip, we'll be taking a train from Los Angeles, California to San Francisco, uh, with a group of authors. And we will be doing, we'll be staying in a mansion for a few days and we're gonna build out an anthology together, write stories, collaborate.

Zack (30m 43s):
That's a collaboration event. Um, that has like one or two tickets available as of right now. Um, and then we also have vampires of new Orleans, which, uh, will be taking place Halloween weekend, which if anyone who's never been in new Orleans, that's like a the best time to go to new Orleans. The weather's really good. Um, and, and there's so much cool stuff that happens there during Halloween and, uh, we're going to be doing, we got some really cool stuff lined up. We're gonna be doing more. We're there, but then we're going to be writing vampire stories, publishing anthology. Um, and that is, we don't have any treats left for that either.

Zack (31m 15s):
I don't think so. And again, yeah, so this is all for 20, 20, so you can check all that stuff out. I mean, if you're someone, again who's interested in may rain events, you can, it's got all the stuff there. You can kind of see what we're doing and um, you know, maybe, maybe that will spark some ideas for you as well. So yeah, but everything's at the career author.com

Jesper (31m 33s):
yeah, and I don't take just anybody within this, a fantasy author audience here who doesn't like vampires. The only thing you need is you. You're missing the dragons, so you need to put them out there. We'll get there eventually. One a 21 maybe we'll come closer where you live and I will get a castle somewhere and dragons. Yeah, exactly. All right. Thanks a lot for coming onto amwritingfantasy guys. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you for having us. We appreciate it. All right, and to your opt in, see you next Monday.