Chicon 7 Panel Reports – Part 1

The 70th Science Fiction WorldCon – Chicon 7 happened from the 30th of August till the 3rd of September 2012 in Chicago’s Hyatt Regency Hotel at the River Walk and was the fourth worldcon that I attended after Nippon 2007, Denvention 3 and Anticipation in Montreal.

There is a wide variety of panels at worldcons ranging from “fanish panels” (e.g. Firefly had several panels) over “craft panels” where writers talk about their tips and tricks, over let me call them “academic panels” like discussions on magic realism or genre bending, “business panels” (how to get an agent, etc.), to “science panels”, since we had two former astronauts and NASA staff as guests at the convention.

Five days of worldcon and 17 attended panels are too much for one blog post, so I will divide them into five posts, one for each convention day.

Let me start without much ado with day 1, Thursday the 30th of August 2012.

I skipped the opening ceremony and jumped right into the first panel slot which was about how to moderate a panel This has even some practical dayjob implications for me, since I do a lot of moderation at the company I work for as well, though I usually moderate workshops there and not panels.

Much of the issues covered were how to stop over-eager panelists from getting out of hand (= talking all the time), how to deal with weird questions from the audience and so forth. A fun panel to start with and I especially liked the anecdote of one of the panelists who once wrangled the microphone out of David Brin’s hands in order to give other panelists the chance to throw in a few words too

Actually none of the panels throughout the five worldcon days that I attended went out of hand.

As a side note: the panelists heftily went off on young (and not so young), aspiring (and pro) authors building up “Stonehenge” in front of them on the panelists’ table, showing off their latest (or all of their) titles. They were quite vocal about that and despised it all, saying it was shameless self-promotion taken a bit too far. They especially ranted about some new author who was so bold of putting up an iPad and showing a slideshow with his titles. I will come back to that issue later, after the taxes panel.

Next, I went to a very business-like panel – the writer and taxes.

Joshua Bilmes from Jabberwocky agency and lawyer Howard Rosenblatt, who happens to be the husband of romance writer Darleen Marshall, were giving tips on what to watch out for in contracts with agencies and publishers. Another point was what to deduct for taxes and the interesting topic of estate management. One should see to it that the people one wants to benefit from one’s royalties after one dies are indeed getting that money. Something I have admittedly never wasted a thought on yet.

Some points for writers to look out for in contracts with publishers:

North American publishers usually only “need” English language rights in the USA and Canada.

The second level are English language rights for the whole world, the final level is all language rights for the whole world. The message here was, beware of the latter scheme, since other language rights might be worth renegotiating should the issue of translations come up.

The gentlemen’s advice was, never give a publisher merchandising, calendar, TV or film rights, those are always worth renegotiating if the need or rather the opportunity should arise.

Your contract should also include some ending date, which is especially important in POD (print on demand) cases. You need to define with your publisher when a POD book, which is technically never out of print, is out of print, so that you can get the rights to your work back.

One word of advice concerning agents. A good sign for a scam agent is when he wants a commission on every book you sell. That’s a complete no-no. Agents get money for a book deal, never a chunk of your royalties.

The last panel I went to that day was a discussion among authors about whether to indie or not to indie, meaning to self-publish or not.

Interestingly, the five authors all built up nice little “Stonehenges” in front of them and one of them showed off his iPad with the title slideshow One of the audience members (maybe he had been in the “how to moderate a panel” discussion as well) mentioned that to the authors and their universal answer was: we don’t care, people need to see that we are authors and need to know what we have written.

Throughout the convention I have seen both sides of the coin: some established authors showing off their latest book title, some aspiring authors doing it, some not. Everyone has to decide for him or herself how far he or she wants to go in the self-promotion department, I suppose. I actually find the iPad quite okay, that way you don’t need to drag your books around, which, coming to the convention via international flight is quite appealing to me.

Anyway, before I get into details one general, very important observation that I will stress a few more times throughout the five planned blog entries:

I skipped worldcon for two years (mostly for dayjob reasons), that makes my last con before Chicon 7 Anticipation of Montreal from 2009.

In 2009 everyone still told you: don’t even think of self-publishing, it’ll be the death of your career!

That attitude has completely changed and it pleases me greatly, I must say. This is the power of the people. Enough people doing it, has made it respectable. Enough people doing it, has shaken up the traditional publishing houses. The good news is that self-publishing is no longer a stigma, the bad news is, too many people do it now.

The market is definitely in the very middle of a big shakeup, or, more softly said, a transition phase. More on that topic throughout the upcoming worldcon blog entries, too.

Back to the “to indie or not to indie” panel on day one:

The interesting thing about this particular panel was that all five authors were published traditionally as well as indie.

It has become even a new agent business to help people putting their blacklists, meaning out of print older titles, out on Amazon by themselves.

Other authors have managed to generate some clout somehow and are jumping from self to traditional publishing.

One important message that I heard several times during the con was that you need to have a critical mass for self-publishing. One book is not enough (depending on what you want of course, in all of the blog entries that I am going to make about this topic the assumption is that you (I) want to be a professional writer one day).

If you want to succeed you need to have a critical mass of books out there. Something like 6 books (and that means novels) seems to be a sort of tipping point from where the stuff might develop a life of its own (if you are lucky). The guy with the iPad had 13 titles out there for example.

Another point mentioned during this panel was reviews. Reviews, even by famous sites, don’t seem to do that much for you. The iPad guy had a review in Boing Boing and his sales spiked for a bit, but two days later, the hype was gone.

There were some extreme opinions stated in this panel: A year ago it was – self-publication is your last resort; now traditional publication is your last resort. I personally wouldn’t go that far, because: don’t underestimate the traditional publishers, they do this for a long time already and should know what they’re doing.

Nevertheless, the market is in turmoil at the moment.

So much for the panels on day 1 of Chicon 7. More will follow soon.