How about a Bookstore Instead? Dannye Romine Powell
CHARLOTTE—At the North Carolina Writers' Network 2018 Fall Conference, Dannye Romine Powell will serve as a panelist on Saturday morning's panel "All Stories Connect: Does Place Still Matter?", sponsored by the Arts & Science Council.
Dannye Romine Powell is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent from Press 53, Nobody Calls Me Darling Anymore. She has twice won the Brockman Campbell Award, as well as the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition in 2011. She has won fellowships in poetry from the NEA, the NC Arts Council, and Yaddo. She has served as book editor and local news columnist of the Charlotte Observer and is the author of Parting the Curtains: Interviews with Southern Writers.
This year, NCWN has been celebrating publishers based in North Carolina, so we asked Dannye to answer the following prompt:
Here's what Dannye said:
"I've inherited a large fortune. Hooray! I'm opening a bookstore.
"Here's what I want to carry.
"Lots of cookbooks, which allow me to carry dozens of poetry collections, especially those of NC writers.
"Lots of mysteries, particularly John Grisham, which will allow me to carry such literary treats as those of Ron Rash, Travis Mulhouser, Kim Church, David Payne, Kathryn Schwille, David Joy, Raymond Barfield, Angela Davis-Gardner.
"For every Jan Karon and Pat Conroy, I could include a shelf of NC history books.
"I would keep a pot of coffee brewing. I would include couches and wing chairs, and I would cater to neighborhood cats."
During the panel "Does Place Still Matter?", participants will discuss whether or not, in our global, hyperconnected world—a world with satellites and Google Street View—a sense of place still matters. What does "place" mean when people are more mobile than ever before? Four Charlotte writers—Julie Funderburk, Patrice Gopo, Dannye Romine Powell, and Kim Wright—each of whom took a different path to the Queen City, bring their perspectives to the question.
Holistic Publishing: Betsy Thorpe
CHARLOTTE—At the North Carolina Writers' Network 2018 Fall Conference, Betsy Thorpe of Betsy Thorpe Literary Services will lead the business track session "Understanding the Players in the Book World" and serve as a reviewer for Manuscript Mart.
Betsy Thorpe has been in the book publishing business since graduating from college. She has worked as an editor at Atheneum Publishers (Simon & Schuster), HarperCollins, Broadway Books (Random House), and John Wiley & Sons. She opened up her own literary services company in 2000, where she has guided many authors to publication, and ghost-written many books, some of which have appeared on Oprah, People magazine, and The New York Times. Betsy lives in Charlotte with her two teenage daughters and rescue dog, Charlie.
This year, NCWN has been celebrating publishers based in North Carolina, so we asked Betsy to answer the following prompt:
Here's what Betsy said:
"It's my dream to start my own publishing house, as well as open a bookstore. I work with so many talented authors, many of who have come this close to getting a publishing deal, so I tell them, 'When I win the lottery, I will publish your book.' (Of course it would help if I actually played the lottery, but my mom raised me to be very thrifty… .) These books are so worthy of a larger audience and more review attention.
"I would call my house The Writer's Cottage, and would publish pretty much everything a large house publishes: memoir, fiction, nonfiction (health, parenting, cookbooks, self-help), YA, middle grade, and the occasional picture book. I would hire a great staff, and we would have such amazing things like health care benefits, paid vacation time, and 401K matches (freelancers dream of such things).
Oh, and so long as we're working with a large fortune, I would hire an on-staff therapist, because book publishing is such a stressful business for authors, to not only create books but then to sell them, that we would walk them through the process and encourage good mental health along the way."
You want to get published but have no idea how the industry works. How does a book get picked up by a big publisher? Do you need an agent? What happens if your book is not right for a big publisher—are there alternatives? Regional publishers, university presses? What about these "hybrid" book publishers you might have heard of—what does that even mean? Betsy Thorpe has played a role in many of these places—from working at four out of the five "Big Five" publishers, to working ever-so-briefly as a literary agent (who still gets queries fourteen years later) and helping out regional publishers as well as with self-publishing. Please join her as she gives you an introduction to the industry.
Manuscript Mart provides writers with the opportunity to submit their manuscripts and get feedback from an editor or agent with a leading publisher or literary agency. A one-on-one, thirty-minute session will be scheduled for those who pre-register.
A Diehard Band of Rogues: Amy Rogers
Make a Small Fortune: Gail Z. Martin
Hats Off! to Sally Thomas whose book-length poetry manuscript, Motherland, was a finalist for the 2018 Able Muse Book Award and is forthcoming in 2019 from Able Muse Press.
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