Program Schedule

Speakers Joining us for the 2019 PLANNING FOR SUCCESS Conference

 

 

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Sarra Cannon

Planning For Success: The Writer’s Guide To Getting It All Done
Gone are the days when writers can just write. In order to find success in today’s market, we need to be social media gurus, advertising executives, administrative assistants, strategists, art directors, and more. How we can we possibly get it all done? In this workshop, Sarra will show you a proven system that will help you get more done, faster, and with less stress. If you’re ready to take control of your time and stop feeling overwhelmed, this workshop is for you.

Planning To Thrive
In today’s publishing atmosphere, many people seem to be in survival mode, constantly hustling just to keep their head above water. But what if you could thrive as an author? What if there was a way for you to prosper and grow a long-lasting career without feeling as though you could drown at any moment? Join author Sarra Cannon as she gives you practical tips and strategies to help you develop a long-term plan that focuses on joy, balance, and building the career of your dreams.

Sarra Cannon is the indie author of more than twenty-five Young Adult contemporary fantasy novels, including her bestselling Shadow Demons Saga. Her novels often stem from her own experiences growing up in the small town of Hawkinsville, Georgia, where she learned that being popular always comes at a price and relationships are rarely as simple as they seem.

With close to three-quarters of a million books sold, Sarra is also passionate about helping fellow authors learn to self-publish in a way that puts joy and creativity at the forefront. She is the host of the successful YouTube channel and blog Heart Breathings, where she talks about everything from productivity to plotting. Sarra lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her supportive husband and her adorable red-headed son.

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Dave Chesson

The Advanced Fiction Keyword Strategy that Impressed Even Amazon
Learn the secrets behind a fiction keyword strategies that is so good that even Amazon promoted it and changed they way they discuss keywords to authors. With this strategy, you'll learn how to generate keyword ideas for fiction books that buyers not only use, but aren't competitive and can help get your book in front of more readers. This workshop is a deep dive into proven strategies for increasing sales and getting discovered on Amazon.

Mastering Amazon's A9 Algorithm and Your Book's Rankings in the Market
Ever wonder why Amazon shows someone else's book over yours in the search results? Or why you can't seem to be found for a keyword you've targeted?  In this session, we'll take a deep dive into Amazon's A9 algorithm, how it functions, and how you can make simple changes to control you book's discoverability...and no, this isn't about keyword stuffing or hacking the system.

Dave Chesson is the guy behind Kindlepreneur.com, a website devoted to teaching authors about book marketing and the digital world. His works on keywords and sales optimization have been featured and promoted by Amazon itself.

Dave is also the creator of KDP Rocket, a software that helps authors see what's really going on in the book market, and thus pick better keywords and categories to help them sell more books. Having been a consultant for multiple publishing companies and NYT bestselling authors, he’s seen both sides of the writing world.

When he’s not running Kindlepreneur, he’s usually lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, and sipping tea with princesses.

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Tom Colgan

Analysis of the Thriller: How to Break into and Conquer this Lucrative Genre
Learn the inside scoop on thrillers with Berkley Editorial Director Tom Colgan as he discusses what publishers look for and what readers crave—the premises, settings, and concepts that drive sales, how pacing and characterization can make or break your book, and what you may have in common with Lee Childs and James Patterson. Bring your questions: this workshop is designed to answer your specific questions on one of the hottest genres in fiction.

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Mark Dawson

Advertising--The Best of the Best, part 1: A snapshot of what is working best in advertising in September, 2019 and the most effective tips & techniques to use these marketing strategies.

Advertising--The Best of the Best, part 2: A snapshot of what is working best in advertising in September, 2019 and the most effective tips & techniques to use these marketing strategies.

Mark Dawson is the bestselling author of the John Milton series and the founder of the Self Publishing Formula.

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Chris Fox

Write to Market Masterclass
Your novel’s success is tied to a single question. Who is your audience? This seminar will teach you to locate that audience, and to tailor your book to their expectations without sacrificing your creativity.

Relaunch Your Novel
Learn to formulate a plan for your backlist, one that will allow you to produce income for the rest of your life. From omnibuses to full relaunches we’ll cover ways to put your backlist to work.

Chris Fox firmly believes that talking about yourself in the 3rd person makes you sound like a giant jackass. He’s written over 20 novels, but is best known among authors for his Write Faster, Write Smarter series. From 5,000 Words Per Hour to Plot Gardening to Write to Market Chris has engineered a road map to take any writer from hobbyist to professional. Chris spent many years in software and data analysis, and has used this model to sell over 300,000 books through Amazon and Audible since 2015. He resides in Marin, California, which can be found by following the scent of entitlement until you reach the town with teens driving Teslas.

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David Gaughran

BookBub Ads Masterclass
In this deep dive into BookBub Ads, you will learn advanced techniques to improve your campaigns on the hottest advertising platform: testing tips, optimization advice, and killer strategies — everything from nailing down your true author comps to the cheapest day (and time) to run your ads. We’ll look at how to run cost-efficient, large-scale campaigns that can really move the needle, ways to take advantage of the very latest changes to the platform, and some surprising uses for BookBub Ads to give your promotions extra oomph.

Turbocharging Series Sales on Amazon
Learn a variety of methods for boosting sales across a series, including how to dominate your niche on Amazon via a range of marketing and advertising strategies to promote an entire series. Discover ways to improve readthrough, optimize metadata, seduce the ever-capricious Amazon algorithms, make Kindle Unlimited page reads soar, and get readers on the hook so they jump on your series right away instead of it languishing on their Kindle forever.

David Gaughran lives in Dublin, where rain comes up from the ground and everyone has pints for hands. He writes historical fiction and science fiction, and has helped thousands of authors publish their work through his workshops, blog, and writers’ books: Let’s Get Digital, Strangers to Superfans, Amazon Decoded, and BookBub Ads Expert. He has also created marketing campaigns for some of the biggest self-publishers on the planet.

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Houston Howard

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story, Part 1: The Bigger Picture
Learn the foundational principles behind not just writing a story, but building a Super Story — one that can survive in an age of distraction and harness all the tools available to you.  Discover the secrets behind creating a 21st Century brand that can go viral in a hashtag world.

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story, Part 2: Practical and Tactical Strategies
You know WHY you need Super Story in today’s viral world; learn HOW to identify and utilize the various multi-platform creative strategies all authors should be implementing. These extremely practical approaches will allow you to not only better engage audiences in an over-saturated market, but also to create a growth plan for multi-platform scalability.

As the Chief Storyteller and Co-Founder of One 3 Creative, Houston Howard is a recognized producer, author, speaker and thought leader in the entertainment and branding communities because of his unique and proprietary transmedia approach to story. Advising entities such as Mattel, Disney Imagineering, Reliance Media Works, West Coast Customs, Samuel Goldwyn Films and Harper Collins Publishing, as well as designing a number of transmedia-focused projects for Fox, the CW, TNT, Slinky and the writers of Toy Story, Houston has an impressive amount of of experience designing projects that are primed for the 21st Century.

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Danielle Marshall

Danielle Marshall is the Editorial Director of Lake Union Publishing. Notable acquisitions include the #1 Amazon Charts and USA Today bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan, The first of the million-selling Everything Series, Everything We Keep by Kerry Lonsdale, and the bestselling Leftie and Agatha Award–winning title, In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen. Danielle has held a wide range of book retail and publishing positions, starting as a bookseller. Other positions included book buyer and promotions manager for Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, and marketing and public relations director at Simon & Schuster. She joined Amazon’s publishing team in 2012 and helped launch the imprint now known as Lake Union.

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Alex Newton

HARNESSING MARKET FORCES TO SELL MORE BOOKS
If you are an indie, hybrid, or traditionally-published author who wants to learn how to use market forces to your advantage, this is for you. In this workshop, Alex opens his data vault of market monitoring results to share the latest news about Amazon market trends and developments. He will cover main genres as well as selected "hot niches." This is not just for write-to-market enthusiasts but for anyone who wants to see one's creative efforts find "hungry" audiences instead of "beating dead horses." Join this session to stay ahead of your competition and gain market knowledge that even your own publisher does not share with you.

USING BIG DATA INSIGHTS FOR HIGHER ROYALTIES
Some book marketing strategies work better than others. Imagine you could cut through the results of hundreds of thousands of books to see the highest-yielding ones.  Alex will bring fact-based insights to questions concerning bestseller lists, category optimization, ranking factors, best price levels, format strategies, serialization, KU penetration, Kindle deals, ads, book covers, and more. Don't worry if you are not a numbers person. Alex has a unique talent to convey seemingly complex matters in an easy-to-understand and fun manner that lets you walk home with actionable insights.

Alex Newton is the founder of K-lytics.com, a leading provider of book market research. His Genre Reports and Amazon category performance database have brought the power of "Big Data" to the indie publishing world. Alex's research from analyzing millions of books over the last five years has helped thousands of authors to spot opportunities, sell books in attractive market niches, and optimize their book marketing.
Alex spent more than 20-years in top management consulting for Fortune 500 companies. He lives in the southwest of Germany with his wife and daughter and looks forward to joining us in sunny Florida at NINC to share his latest insights.
Learn more about genre trends, book market analytics, and Alex's tools at: => http://k-lytics.com and http://k-lytics.com/blog

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Liz Pelletier

Growth Hack a Bestseller Part One: WRITING A BESTSELLER
The next book you write should be a bestseller. Sounds easy, right? In this two-hour workshop, learn the key elements in most every bestseller and how to ensure your next novel is the right idea, at the right time, written specifically to maximize best-selling traits. You’ll also walk away knowing how to recognize the pitfalls that keep most books from going viral and how to tell a story guaranteed to engage readers. Plus, learn to use an easy system to measure your novel’s viral load before you write even your first word!

Growth Hack a Bestseller Part Two: MARKETING A BESTSELLER
You’ve got the right story written in the best way to become a bestseller, but now what? In this one-hour workshop, learn how to evaluate the market, leverage the right social media platform in the right way, pricing decisions, and how to position your release in a saturated market to quickly rise above the rest. From the psychology of promotions to evaluating the viral load of publicity strategies to the psychology of ad composition by targeted demographic and platform, we’ll cover it all. Plus, learn to use social media like a pro with just an hour a day!

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Carol Saller

Everything Writers Don’t Need to Know about The Chicago Manual of Style
“Chicago style” is the style overwhelmingly preferred by US publishers. But CMOS is nearly 1,200 pages long! What does that mean for the writer? Aren’t creative writers allowed to break all the rules? This introduction to CMOS by one of its editors covers the essentials—including what you can ignore and what you need to know before you break the rules. Learning some of the top preferences of copyeditors will help you submit your work with confidence to agents and editors.

Acts of Submission
Each year readers submit thousands of grammar and style questions to the Q&A page at The Chicago Manual of Style Online, and for more than twenty years Carol Saller read every single one. To her, the number of standoffs between writers and editors (“My editor insists . . .”) began to present a theme: that in editorial battles, the reader is the one who loses. Saller’s book The Subversive Copy Editor arose from her search for win-win strategies, laying out what makes a writer “difficult” and how not to be that writer. This session presents the advice behind the book that Publishers Weekly called “practical, relentlessly supportive and full of ed-head laughs.”

Carol Saller is a longtime contributing editor to The Chicago Manual of Style and author of The Subversive Copy Editor. Her posts on language and writing can be found at The Subversive Copy Editor blog as well as at CMOS Shop Talk and the Lingua Franca blog. As a creative writer, Carol has written books for all ages of children, mostly recently the YA novel Eddie’s War.

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Damon Suede

Character Building
Bestsellers start with fascinating people. Go beyond looks, persona, and boilerplate traits with a simple, powerful technique that will strengthen your plots, your hooks, and your voice so you can build the perfect cast to dazzle your readers without gimmicks or hiccups. Whether you like to wing it or bring it, you’ll leave with a new set of tools to populate your pages and lay the foundations of unforgettable fiction.

Star Turn
Today’s readers have no time for cookie-cutter casting. What makes a main character sparkle? How do you identify the best lead to navigate your story? Unforgettable protagonists anchor blockbuster books and steer your writing process. This hands-on character class will teach you to embrace and expand popular tropes to craft a cast that showcases your voice, sets your story's hook, and creates leads worth following.

Damon Suede as earned his crust as a model, a messenger, a promoter, a programmer, a sculptor, a singer, a stripper, a bookkeeper, a bartender, a techie, a teacher, a director… but writing has ever been his bread and butter. Though new to romance fiction, Damon has been a full-time writer for print, stage, and screen for over two decades. He has won some awards, but counts his blessings more often: his amazing friends, his demented family, his beautiful husband, his loyal fans, and his silly, stern, seductive Muse who keeps whispering in his ear, year after year.

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Geoff Symon

DEAD RIGHT: autopsies for authors
Corpses pop up in every genre, from family funerals to violent crimes to creatures that won’t stay buried. Forensic investigator Geoff Symon walks you through the real of the morbid. This workshop introduces authors to the specifics of the postmortem, from time of death estimates to Y-incisions. Get the facts for your fiction – we’ll cover it all from cadaver to slab!

FORENSICS FOR FICTION: make your crime pay