What an amazing weekend!
It’s Wednesday as I write this and I’m still feeling in recovery mode from Sydney Supanova 2018.
It was so worth it.
This was the first time I’d returned to an interstate event (SydSupa17 was my first). I knew there were some readers who had kept in touch over the last 12 months, so I was hoping to see some of them again as well as launch my latest title: Apocalypse: Diary of a Survivor 3. It seemed fitting to do so, as book 2 launched so successfully there last year.
PREP
In the lead up, I’d taken two weeks off my day job to prepare Apoc 3 for the event. The cover had been bugging me, and that went through a number of tweaks and changes before I felt it was ‘at the level’. I also had two edits with my amazing editor, Lisa Chant. When you add in page layout, ISBNs, blurbs, barcodes, uploads for various formats, then off to the printers… well, time goes fast. Once that was away, I turned my focus to preparing for the event, as well as an awesome talk I gave at Campbelltown Library to aspiring authors and a market at the Sea & Vines festival in McLaren Vale on Queen’s Birthday Monday.
In the days leading up to the event it became clear there was a chance the books might not make it to Sydney. That turned my prep on its head, I couriered every last copy of everything I had to Sydney and crossed my fingers.
EVENT
After catching the red-eye up from Adelaide with fellow indie author KE Fraser, we hit the Showgrounds just before 10am on Friday. The next three hours were a mad scramble of bumping in, sorting accomm and trying to find a way to get my shipment of Apoc 3, plus other top-up books, to Sydney, having discovered they were still in a warehouse in Melbourne.
The latter never happened.
Yep, after exhausting every reasonable angle to get my new book to the event, it wasn’t going to happen. Sigh. Swearwords. You get the picture.
I’m sure I went through the five stages of grief that night but, after a couple soothing reds, I had reached acceptance before retiring.
Once that happened, I was able to enjoy the rest of the weekend for what it was – and it was great. I got to meet a bunch of amazing people and sold books to people who didn’t even know who I was before the event (this is a satisfying feeling). But the best part, was the people who I met last year, who came back to buy another one of my books. That is the highest honour I can think of for an indie author and it was greatly valued. To have people buy your work is one thing – one amazing thing – to have them enjoy the experience, then my words such that they want to do it again, is everything (like Natasha, pictured)… and there were many of you… and I’m very thankful.
Oh, and I put Apoc 3 up for pre-order.
So, when all was said and done, my weekend in Sydney was even better than last year, and last year (first interstate con) was far more than I could have imagined. While I didn’t have my new book and sold out of Apoc1 and War&Quel prematurely because the top-ups never arrived, it didn’t matter as much as all the positives did.
THANKS
So, to everyone who stopped by and listened to me gab on about my work, to everyone who purchased a book, to everyone who came back for a second year, to the indie authors I went to dinner with Saturday night, to travel partner, adjacent exhibitor and friend KE Fraser, to the fantastic Lisa Chant, to Candi who helped my deal with the five stages of no new book grieving and to anyone I may have missed that helped along the way… a big thank you x
Oh, I when I rocked up at work this morning, the AWOL print run was waiting by my desk – including Apoc3 and a bunch of top up books. At lunch time, I mailed out the books to those who had pre-purchased over the weekend. Hopefully they’ll be landing with purchasers by Friday.
Bring on SydSupa19