Today, I’ve uploaded my second favorite lecture from the San Francisco Writer’s Conference.  It’s not a lecture but a panel of literary agents from fiction to non-fiction, from Christian literature to inspirational.

We were allowed to ask questions on what they wanted to see in books, how to submit queries, synopsis, and they talked about platforms and self-publishing.  All of it will give you a glimpse into what they’re looking for.

I do want to warn you that a hyena sat next to me who didn’t have the most pleasant of breath.  Imagine me sitting, and every time you hear him laugh, his fiery breath singed the left side of my face.  However, it didn’t take away from what I learned.

The surprising thing about the whole experience is that the answers to some of these questions varied widely.  Amazingly, agents are just like people.  So finding the right agent is just a matter of sifting through all the wrong ones.  For most successful authors, they tend to stick with their agents for a long time.  Again it’s just a testament that perseverance is vital in the achievement of our dreams.

And the other thing that I learned from the whole conference is how much of an author’s success rests in the author’s hand.  One person went as far to state that 90% of our success sits with us.  If you’re curious to how, go to my posts on Brenda Novak and Branding.

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The San Francisco Writer’s Conference was my first writer’s conference. I didn’t know how things worked, but the conference was held over three days full of lectures. The crappy thing about it was several lectures were going on within each hour session. So I had to make a decision on which lecture to attend. Because this was my first conference, I really wanted to focus on the business aspect of publishing.

Over the next week or so, I’m going to post a lecture for you to listen everyday. So come back and check on what I’ve uploaded. Each one is about 45 minutes long, giving the attendees enough time to go to the next lecture.

The first one I’m going to upload is a lecture by best selling suspense romance novelist Brenda Novak. Her trilogy, The Last Stand: Trust Me, Stop Me, Watch Me, has become New York Time Bestsellers. She talks about strategies she’s used to make her more visible and credible before her first book was published.

Please feel free to download these. I apologize for the quality of the audio, but there was a lot of ambient noise. The format of the file is .caf, but you should be able to play them using Windows Media Player or Quicktime. Tell me what you think, and come back as I will upload others.

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What you can expect in future audio uploads from the conference:

Key Note speeches from best selling authors

Body Language

How to write plot summaries

Self-publishing

Branding tactics

Q&A with Agent panels for both fiction and non-fiction

Lecture from a top agent, Donal Maass