Writing the Future Conference 2010

The Writer's Center hosted the Writing the Future conference on March 20, which I attended after a kind invitation from the center.  Sorry for the poor quality of my photos; I had no idea the lighting would be so somber -- I would have brought my SLR otherwise.  Unfortunately, I missed most of the first panel thanks to the Metro system and its track delays all morning, which was not fun -- sitting in dark tunnels for 20-30 minutes on end without any updates.  But, I digress.

The second discussion, which started at about 10:45AM, touched upon how technology is changing and how writers can take advantage of those changes and latest tools.  The panelists included Jay Ogilvy, Lee Gutkind, Richard Nash, Sandra Beasley, Lauren Cerand, Sarah Courteau, Jack Sallay, Dan Sarewitz, and Jeff Kleinman, with jobs as literary agents, writers, poets, publishers, and academics.  These panelists talked about how to improve match-making between writers and readers by creating communities in which they find one another, which would cut out legacy publishing --  a term used to describe traditional publishers like the Random Houses and Simon and Schusters.

The traditional thought about holding a mass market inventory of books to supply to readers is fading into the distance, which is why writers need to find new ways of reaching their audiences, either through social media or their own Websites.  Social media is making it easier to highlight small presses and lesser-known authors in a sea of millions of writers.  One mistake many writers and publishers make is that they view paper as something more than a vehicle through which to express their writing, ideas, and tell stories.

One of the major highlights of the panel was the information provided by Jack Sallay about his small start-up business, Vook that combines multimedia with the written word.  He discussed a wide range of multimedia combinations from music to video embedded with the written word.  Some of the videos are done with the help of filmmakers and authors, while others are cute videos of bunnies or other items and tied to books, like The Velveteen Rabbit.  Sallay noted that the project has been more successful than expected.

One surprise at the conference was the presence of the New York Times' Nick Bilton, who writes for the Bits Blog and has written a new book, I Live in the Future & Here's How it Works.  He discussed the wave of the future in technology and the creation of flexible screens that will eventually replace paper books and maybe even Kindles and other devices.

I think the main takeaway from the conference is that the publishing industry continues to be in transition, especially in terms of how readers are matched to writers and how those relationships are sustained.  Writers will need to understand their writing, what audience it is best suited for, and create a platform through which they can reach out to audiences and readers alike.  Writers will have to become business people and look out for the best ways to market themselves and their work by using the latest technology.

I'm going to leave you with a bit of video from the final panel on ethics in nonfiction and memoir, which got pretty active between audience questions and discussion among the panelists.  Also if you want to see the rest of the shoddy photos I took, go here.



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