Attending conferences and exhibitions

alext262

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Next year me and the boss (who's the writer) want to attend conferences and exhibitions, mainly in the UK. As she writes on a huge range of topics these could cover almost any topic.

Does anyone have any tips on getting commissionings for conferences? Also, are there any good websites for knowing what conferences are planned?

We attended wikimania last year which was great.

Happy Christmas :)
 

Cathy C

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First you need to decide what you're hoping to get out of the experience. Do you want to:

1. Sell books to readers?
2. Sell books to other writers (on writing related topics or research topics?)
3. Become a panelist (so perceived expert) on a topic?
4. Mix and mingle with other writers?
5. Mix and mingle with other readers?
6. Learn about writing or research topics?
7. Get paid for a speaking gig? (I ask this because you said "commission")
8. Find an agent or publisher?

Before you say, "Yes, all of these!" understand that some of them are mutually exclusive goals. There are writer events, where the goal is to educate and advance the careers of writers, and there are reader events where the goal is to talk to authors about their topics. Reader events have authors talk about takes on topics already written about. Writer events focus on improving and/or marketing future works. Payment seldom exists. The money tends to flow to the con, not away from it. The only exception, at least as far as fiction, are the convention guests, who have their room and food comped and sometimes travel and a stipend. But it's seldom much money. Think in the tens or hundreds, even for large cons.

What are you hoping to achieve?
 

alext262

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Hi Cathy,

Good point what is she hoping to achieve. She's not actually the author of books, although she does have a specialist one in press on the Inuit. However, it was commissioned by them for them.

She's more of a factual author of articles for magazines, covering cats to nuclear reactors etc. I guess she wants to make a name for herself within this format whilst also hopefully at least to cover her costs. Also it would be good to cover fun events that are at least a bit of an experience.
 

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If your friend wants to speak at conferences she needs to pitch herself to the conference organisers and demonstrate to them that she has the ability to give an entertaining, informative talk and that she has the reputation and expertise to attract an audience.

If she has a solid reputation in her field, a good history of publication if she works in academia, and a few books under her belt for the conference to make money selling, she shouldn't find it too difficult to get a lot of requests to speak.

If, however, all she's done so far is write articles on a series of unrelated topics, she's going to struggle with that one.

Note too that speaking at conferences is not very lucrative when you consider the time spent preparing and then presenting your event, and the time spent travelling to and from the event. If your friend is doing well with her writing she might well make more money from that than she'll make from speaking at events.

I've spoken at several conferences and writers' events in the UK and although it was fun and I met some great people, it was very hard work and not terribly lucrative.

I'm not aware of a central website or resource which lists all the ongoing conferences: I think Google is your friend here.