The writing conference is already paying off! I’ve gotten in touch with a couple of agents who I only know about thanks to the meetings I had at the conference. Hopefully my query letters and the pages I sent out get a good reception. It would be nice to finally make some progress on the publishing front, especially after my tantalizing, narrow miss on a big payout from the Writing Battle. I was only one round away! I would be lying if I said it didn’t sting, but at least it’s good motivation. I’m sure if I keep trying I’ll get a big story (or maybe even a book) published eventually. Right? Right!?

The biggest benefit of the conference though was in the confidence boost I got from talking to a few agents. One point that several of the agents stressed to us at the conference was that agents need authors more than an author needs an agent. They might reject hundreds of submissions on a regular basis, but if they weren’t getting any at all, they wouldn’t have a job. One of the agents even pointed out that self-published works account for something like 40% of the entire book market nowadays, which I found kinda hard to believe honestly. Maybe the total number of books published are self-published, but somehow I seriously doubt they make 40% of the total profits from the market. Still, the fact that any rejection might just add to that huge percentage of self-published books is a big incentive for agents to consider their options carefully.

Moreover, the pitch I gave was received very well despite it being my first time pitching. It really felt like they were just there to talk to me about whatever I was working on rather than the job interview I was expecting. That’s probably cause I was paying for each pitch, but I can’t imagine a regular conference pitch would be too different. Everybody was friendly and encouraging even if it was obvious they didn’t want to represent my story for one reason or another. I guess I’ll find out soon if that’s how most pitches go since I’ll be on the lookout for any conferences nearby for the foreseeable future. There are already a couple on my radar!

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley