Meet the publishers, join the network: A local publishing forum (part 1)

In an earlier post, I wrote that Preetam and I were teaming up to give a talk. We were among the six speakers at the "Meet the Publishers" session organised by MDA and NBDCS titled, "Meet the publishers, join the network - a local publishing forum" held at the National Library on 21 Jan 2006.

Ours was a joint presentation on "Ways to get published the Non-traditional way" (i.e. we're the odd balls there, heh heh). The other speakers included a publisher, a magazine editor, a novelist and a local author. For programme outline and speaker's bio, see here and here.



The organisers said there were 189 registered participants. I estimated the actual turnout to be around 170 to 180 (could see that the extra seats were filled and some were sitting on the floor). Average age of participants seemed to be around the early 20s to 50s. Maybe slightly more younger people under 35.

I asked for a show of hands how many people blogged and saw maybe 4 or 5 hands (the rest could be shy...). I couldn't resist making a remark that "Blogs aren't dangerous; only Stupid People are" and that got some laughs.

Seems like a very good session, for Preetam and myself and for all the speakers, right down to the Q&A (every topic in the session had a question asked). Was a good chance for the participants to meet a real-life publisher, editor, and authors. I had two enquiries about becoming a librarian, and a grandmotherly looking lady who wanted the blog address of Preetam and mine (Cool! Wonder if she'll start blogging).

BTW, Mr Brown and Mr Miyagi showed up, together with a "blogger who didn't want to be identified".

I sense a strong interest by Singaporeans to be published. Judging from the Q&A, most questions were directed towards the publisher and the self-published authors, and about the processing of getting published. Certainly nothing wrong with that, although I wondered why there weren't any questions on "Writing Well".

Granted that I'm in no position to talk about writing (on "rambling", that I can do). But if anyone cares to listen, I say we should first think about writing well and developing our abilities to "Tell A Story", before we talk about getting published.

I'll post more about the session later. Took down lots of useful notes.

Preetam and I promised the participants that the sites and resources covered in our talk would be posted online. Here's what Preetam posted.

I was up till 2 am trying to upload the presentation slides when the application crashed and I didn't have a backup. So will try and get a copy from Preetam and upload the slides later.

Tag: meet the publishers