Join us next Saturday, April 6 for our monthly meeting. Please note that this is the FIRST Saturday of the month, not the second!

Our business meeting will begin at 1pm, followed at 2pm by a presentation by our own Lucinda Race on taglines, promo and presenting your brand.

We look forward to seeing you there!

We have an exciting program coming up this month! Join us February 9 at the East Greenbush library. Our business meeting will begin at 1pm, followed at 2pm by a Skype workshop with the founders of Book+Main

An Introduction To Book+Main
Meet Tracey Suppo and Melissa Saneholtz, the brain power behind Book+Main. A content-based social media community, Book+Main is the next-generation platform for how readers find books and authors find readers. From debut authors to #1 New York Times bestsellers, Book+Main Bites is where the book world comes to connect. In this workshop, you’ll discover Book + Main’s custom-built platform and statistics proving Bites sell books, find out how to get started, best practices for posting Bites and promotional ideas to kick-start your exposure. You’ll also get a sneak peak on what’s to come from Book+Main!

Tracey Suppo | CEO
Prior to co-founding Book+Main, Tracey held the position of vice president of marketing at a national commercial real estate company for 18 years. Clients included GE, Sunoco, BP, 7-Eleven, and more. She built and managed a nine-person marketing team during her tenure. Tracey also owns a romance book blog and reader group with more than 20k romance readers, authors and industry professionals. In 2016, she published her first romance novella, which reached number one in her category on Amazon.

Melissa Saneholtz | CMO
Melissa comes to Book+Main with over 10 years in sales and marketing, four of which have centered around the publishing industry. Having owned and operated a successful PR and marketing company dedicated to romance authors since April of 2014, Melissa has built a strong network of publishers, authors, bloggers, and other industry professionals. Under her guidance, many authors have hit lists such as USA Today, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and countless Amazon bestseller lists.

Happy New Year, Capital Region!

Join us this Saturday, January 12 for our first meeting of 2019. Our business meeting will begin at 1pm. At 2pm, jump start your year with an interactive goal-setting workshop led by our own Jeanette Grey. Bring your hopes, your dreams, your crushing disappointments and a notebook!

January 12th, 2019 – Jeanette Grey – Goal-Setting For The Chronically Disappointed Writer
Self-help gurus and life coaches will tell you to think positively and success will fall into your lap. But if that worked, would they still have jobs? If thinking positively hasn’t gotten you on any best-seller lists, maybe it’s time to try something new. In this hands-on, interactive workshop, multi-published hybrid author and experienced self-re-inventor Jeanette Grey will challenge you to probe your darkest depths for the sources of your disappointments and resentments in your writing career. Then, we’ll tackle those issues head-on, discussing the fallacies that keep people barking up the wrong trees, and strategizing how to both harness and silence the Debbie Downers that live in all of our heads. Participants will leave armed with new areas for improvement, refreshed serenity to accept what they cannot change, as well as actionable, concrete goals for how make progress and find more joy in their careers—and their lives.

Our monthly meeting is just around the corner! Join us this Saturday, November 10, 2018, at the East Greenbush Library at 1pm.

We will be continuing our ongoing discussion of diversity in writing and publishing with special guest speaker Adriana Herrera. We will also be voting for our new executive board for 2019. This meeting is not to be missed!

November 10, 2018 – Adriana Herrera – Better Writing Through Empathy -Building Community
Empathy–understanding other people’s feelings–is the cornerstone of good writing. In this workshop, we’ll discuss strategies for understanding the experiences of people who may have very different lives than you. We’ll talk about the places people get stuck and how to be aware of them as we work toward being more empathetic as writers. We’ll also take a close look at our own community and discuss ways that we can build empathy as a group.

Adriana Herrera was born and raised in the Caribbean, but for the last sixteen years has let her job (and her spouse) take her all over the world. She loves writing stories about people who look and sound like her people, getting unapologetic happy endings.

When’s she not dreaming up love stories, planning logistically complex vacations with her family or hunting for discount Broadway tickets, she’s a social worker in New York City, working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Her debut novel, American Dreamer, will be out in March of 2019 from Carina Press. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and at her website. 

Join us this Saturday, October 13, at the East Greenbush Library for our monthly meeting. Our business meeting will take place at 1pm, and will include a discussion of our upcoming election. At 2pm, our own Jean C Gordon will lead us through her interactive synopsis-writing workshop.

Jean Gordon – Gone In 60 Minutes
A hands on synopsis-writing exercise that can turn your idea into a fully developed story. The workshop opens with a short introduction and then goes through nine steps, giving attendees 3-5 minutes to jot down information for each step.

For Amazon bestselling inspirational and sweet romance author Jean C. Gordon, writing is a natural extension of her love of reading. From that day in first grade when she realized t-h-e was the word “the,” she’s been reading everything she can put her hands on. A professional financial planner and financial writer, Jean is as at home writing retirement- and investment-planning advice as she is writing romance novels, but finds novels a lot more fun.

She and her college-sweetheart husband tried the city life in Los Angeles for college, but quickly returned home to their native Upstate New York. They share a 175-year-old farmhouse on 12 acres just south of Albany, NY, with their daughter and son-in-law, two grandchildren, and a menagerie of pets. Their son lives nearby. While Jean creates stories, her family grows organic fruits and vegetables and tends the livestock de jour.

Registration for our special, all-day workshop with Gwen Hayes closes on September 3! We must have a final headcount for the venue at this time. If you’re planning to attend, please register as soon as possible!

Need more info? Check here!

We hope to see you there!