I had the pleasure of attending the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference on Saturday, August 12, 2006. Although this was a three-day event, I only attended for one day. After staying Friday night in the nearby Radisson hotel, I started Saturday off early with breakfast in the campus dining room of Philadelphia Biblical University. The food was bland, but the fellowship was great! I met a table full of wonderful women, and one lady in particular spoke with me a long time. We connected since both of us were targeting the same publishing house. I was able to tell her a few little-known facts about this publisher, and the news I was able to relay to her made her happy. She hopes to publish soon, and I told her that I hoped she did too. Since I spent a great deal of time socializing Saturday morning, I missed the Worship and Prayer and the Bible Study in the campus Chapel.
The first session I attended was a Book Editor’s Panel in the Chapel. A group of book editors answered a variety of questions from attendees, including: Why does it take so long for you to respond to submissions? If we submit something to you, can we say that it’s requested material since we’ve met you here? Does it help to have an advanced degree in order to get our manuscript published?
Since I did not take notes during this session, I can only paraphrase the responses. Most of the editors agreed that they are NOT overstaffed, so it will take awhile to get a response to the myriad of submissions they receive. Also, they are working with their contracted authors, which takes a great deal of their time.
A few of the editors and agents did agree to allow us to submit to them as requested material since we’d met them at the conference.
One of the editors/agents responded that he only had a high-school education and a VERY low GPA, so having an advanced degree wasn’t necessarily required to submit to him, or to make it in this business.
After the Book Editor Panel, I had an editorial appointment with Cynthia Ballenger of Moody’s Lift Every Voice imprint. Since my submission had already been received by the publisher, we spent time talking about the changing Christian market in general, and about Moody as a publisher.
I had lunch with a group of other attendees in the cafeteria. We talked about our writing, and although the food was bland again, I did enjoy the delicious cookies they had for dessert! My favorites were chocolate chip and peanut butter!
After lunch I attended a workshop called What’s Love Got To Do With It given by Jennifer Peterson. Jennifer Peterson is part of the Peterson Ink group, which consists of her mother(Tracie Peterson), and her father(Jim Peterson). Up until recently, Peterson Ink handled the acquisitions for Barbour’s Heartsong Presents line. She gave a basic course on what consists of a romance novel, and she also gave examples of great works of fiction, and we had to tell her if we thought the examples could be considered romance novels or not. Although the workshop was basic, I felt it was perfect for those who are very unfamiliar with the romance genre, especially the Christian romance genre.
The next session I attended was a Continuing Session. Since I did not attend the conference Thursday and Friday, I can only comment on the last segment of the continuing session that I attended. I chose to attend Book Proposals That Sell given by W. Terry Whalin, editor of Howard Books, a division of Simon and Schuster. He basically focused on marketing tactics that authors can use to promote their books. It was interesting, and someone even asked if he could give an amount as to how much a book earns out. He said he could not since it varies from author to author. Someone else also asked what could be considered great sales numbers for a novel. He said if a novel sells about 25,000-30,000 copies, it could be considered a decent selling book.
The last segment of the day was the worship and awards. There was also an inspirational sermon given by Cec Murphey entitled Living and Proclaiming The Way, the Truth, and the Life. Afterward, there was prayer, and we were told to make our commitments, write them down, and place them into the basket in front of the chapel.
Overall, I was quite pleased with the one day that I attended this conference. I’d highly recommend the GPCWC to all, and sometime in the future, I might go back for the entire three days.
Stay blessed,
Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com
www.blackchristianfiction.com
