October 10th Meeting

October 10th: Valerie Bowman & Mini Break-Out Sessions

Glen Allen Library

10501 Staples Mill Road

Glen Allen, VA 23060-3242

10AM—Coffee Talk & Set Up

10:30AM: Valerie Bowman presents her workshop, Romance Novel Marketing 101

Valerie Bowman is an award-winning author who writes Regency-set historical romance novels (a.k.a. Racy Regency Romps) with a focus on sharp dialogue, engaging story lines, and heroines who take matters into their own hands!

Valerie’s first Regency series from St. Martin’s Press has garnered acclaim including a nomination for Best First Historical from RT Book Reviews, a BookList starred review, and a Publishers Weekly starred review. She is also a 2014 Kirkus Prize nominee for fiction. Her work has been called “Too delightful to miss” by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Kleypas and “Everything a romance should be” by New York Times bestselling author Sarah MacLean.

Valerie grew up in Illinois with six sisters (she’s number seven) and a huge supply of historical romance novels. After a cold and snowy stint earning a degree in English with a minor in history at Smith College, she moved to Florida the first chance she got. Valerie now lives in Jacksonville with her family including her rascally rescue dog, Roo. When she’s not writing, she keeps busy reading, traveling, or vacillating between watching crazy reality TV and PBS.

Romance Novel Marketing 101, blurb: Congratulations! You’ve sold your first manuscript to a publisher or made the big decision to indie-publish for the first time! Which means you’ve probably spent the last several years learning craft, craft, craft. Now what?

Multi-published author (both New York and indie) Valerie Bowman, a self-described ‘marketing junkie,’ will step you through the many things new authors need to know as they take off their craft hats and put on their marketing ones.

In this workshop, you’ll learn what an author can and should do in regard to marketing and promotion to help give her new book the extra push it needs to make it in the competitive market. Valerie will present her top marketing tips, the best venues to use, the best contacts to make, and what she does to prepare for a book launch. She will also present her own marketing plan.

This workshop consists of everything a first-time author wished she’d known before she started down the path of book promotion and marketing.

PM: Mini Break-out Sessions There will be multiple stations where you can brainstorm 1. Query-writing, 2. Marketing, and 3. Synopsis-writing.

Bring your drafted queries, synopses, and marketing plans to the break-out sessions. Stations will be set up to provide positive, constructive feedback to make your queries, synopses, and marketing plans really shine. Don’t be shy!

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