Working Titlez

All my authors know I’m a huge fan of speaking engagements as one of the very best ways to market books and build an author’s audience. Speaking opportunities abound for the author who is personable and offers a useful, educational, or inspirational program. Guest blogger Amber Stidham’s article offers some very practical tips. CHU

Making the most of your workshops and speaking gigs

By Amber Stidham

Dare I say that there is an upside to the economic downturn? Yes.

Rapt audiences are the goal of many a book author (Library of Congress)

Any professional out ‘n’ about knows there is a new information sharing environment that exists as a result of the new economy. Professional development seminars, industry-specific discussion panels, mixers, luncheons – the list goes on. There is an overabundance of information for the person willing to spend a bit of time learning something new – often at no cost, making attending these events very attractive.

For those of us searching to learn more, protect our business and increase sales, these events are an opportunity to do so. More importantly, for the sake of this blog anyhow, it’s an opportunity for businesses to gain added exposure.

If you are a business looking to maintain and grow your market share, please pay attention. Take advantage of speaking opportunities. Your audience is searching for advice (The kind of advice that cannot be gained from Internet searches alone.), personal interaction and relationships with businesses they trust. There is no better way to achieve these goals than to be the “expert” providing the information to them.

“How do I find a platform or venue to give a presentation?” you ask? Here are a handful of ideas you can start with.

• Host a workshop at your office. Don’t have space? Find a friendly business who will host a workshop at their location for you.
• Contact your local chamber of commerce and offer your presentation for free to their members. Be sure to showcase how your presentation can serve as a value-added member resource to a majority of the chamber’s members.
• If you belong to a trade or professional association, contact their respective representatives and ask if you can host a workshop for members.
• Partner with one to two other like-minded businesses that offer similar, but non-competitive, services to yours and host a joint workshop or presentation for all combined colleagues, clients, vendors and contacts you share.

Critical note: Make certain your workshops are educational and not used as a sales platform for your company. If you provide an educational opportunity to people, they will better trust your expertise, respect you as a professional and will connect with you to do business. Rest assured.

“I have a place and a time. Now how do I get butts in seats?” you ask? Some more helpful tips.

• Announce your upcoming workshop/speaking engagement to your contacts, whether by e-mail, e-newsletter or in person. Do it several times.
• If you’re partnering with a business or organization, be certain they are announcing the event to their lists. Also, offer to submit a short written description or verbal announcement during events taking place before your presentation date.
• Write a press release and send out to news outlets. Many news outlets regularly publish business calendars. Don’t forget to submit to non-traditional outlets such as local professionals who host their own highly-visible Web calendars, like-minded trade/professional organizations as well as those you belong to and to sites such as Craigslist.
• Blog about your upcoming event.
• Post event details your Web site and any social networking profile you have, such as Facebook.
• Use Twitter to announce your event and post a link to your blog or Facebook within your “Tweet” to ensure readers can get event details and how to RSVP their attendance.

Workshops and speaking gigs are a great place to start when you’re looking for new contacts to generate new business. It is a powerful business growth tool – and a low-cost one at that.

Amber Stidham is the Director of Strategic Planning for Imagine Marketing. Contact Amber at astidham@imnv.com

Tony Curtis and Norm Clarke chat before going on stage. Photo by Megan Edwards.

Megan Edwards of Living Las Vegas has written an awesome report on the Tony & Norm show last Sunday. If you’ve not visited Living Las Vegas, now is the time. A bevy of some really fine local writers offer up frequent stories on all sorts of topics of interest to locals. One of my favorites sites and highly recommended.

Carolyn Uber and Tony Curtis (Photo by Megan Edwards, Living Las Vegas)

Presented the long-planned Tony Curtis/Norm Clarke event today at the Flamingo branch of the Clark County Library. Started with a private reception for Tony and invited friends. Tony was so charming, taking the time to chat and give each guest undivided attention. Enjoyed chatting it up myself with many friends including Norm and Cara, Sal and Georgeanne, Mark and Megan, Denny and Pam and many others! Following the reception we adjourned to the theater where 400 Tony Curtis fans (and another 100 watching a live video feed in an adjacent room and the lobby). Oscar winner Curtis (The Defiant Ones)acted in over 100 films during Hollywood’s golden heyday. Norm interviewed Tony on stage, and Tony told each story with good humor and dramatic flair. From his very first film role (as a corpse) to auditioning on set to act opposite Yvonne DiCarlo, Tony shared his experiences with wit and joy. Advancing age keeps Tony in a wheelchair, but when telling the story of convincing the director he could rhumba with DiCarlo, Tony rose and strutted his moves to the delight of the crowd. Asked who, among the many leading ladies he’d kissed, was the “best kisser”, Tony grinned and answered “me”. Cary Grant was the actor he admired most, always a “classy gentlemen” while Marilyn Monroe was his favorite actress, a “real” down-to-earth and sweet person who could, nonetheless, be “as tough as Joe DiMaggio” when needed. Following a standing ovation, a book signing (Tony’s American Prince and Norm’s Sinsational Celebrity Tales) took place with over 200 folks waiting patiently. As always, Suzanne and Julie and the rest of the amazing library staff were here, there, and everywhere, and pulled off another successful event.

The collaborative novel, now titled Restless City, has chapter two posted here. Written by UNLV professor John Irsfeld (Night Moves, Rats Alley), the story moves forward. A project of the Vegas Valley Book Festival and sponsored by CityLife, the entire book has seven sequential authors. The final chapter will be read at the festival in November. Enjoy and speculate what third author, Brian Rouff, will do next.

We’re huge fans of illustrator and author Jorge Bettancourt Polanco — his bright abnd whimsical illustrations grace not only Stephens Press titles like Dreamygirl (which he also wrote) and Granny McFanny, but also local art gallery walls. The Read to Me program recently selected Jorge to read Dreamygirl to kids in Spanish. Go to www.readtomelv.com to watch — and while there, you and your kids can watch other celebrities read some great stories. Read to Me also offers teacher/parent lesson plans to download for each book. These plans offer fun and educational activies related to each book. Dreamygirl’s lesson plan can also be downloaded here

An Afternoon with Tony Curtis and Norm Clarke

It’s Inside the Actor’s Studio, Las Vegas Style as veteran news guy and celebrity columnist Norm Clarke interviews Hollywood icon Tony Curtis.

Recognize Me?

How About Me?

Sunday, July 19th

Flamingo Library

2:00 PM

Join us for some insider scoop on Hollywood and Las Vegas back in the day — and today. Tony will also be exhibiting some of his paintings and signing books. Get out of the heat and into the coooool auditorium as Tony and Norm regale us with stories of Tinseltown and Sin City.

This month, the Friends of Henderson Libraries was awarded the annual Baker & Taylor Award from the American Library Association. Friends of the Henderson Libraries was recognized for its excellence in the category of Friends groups without paid staff. A check for $1,000 was presented to Bethany Lafferty, Green Valley Library assistant manager on behalf of the group at the ALA conference.The Friends application focused on the one of their major fundraisers, Library Tree Lane 2008. Funds generated from the event were used for the collection of pre-school books for the recently opened Green Valley Library.

Stephens Press is pleased to have been involved with Library Tree Lane for the past four years and wishes Friends of the Henderson Libraries continued success as they plan for this year’s event.

Information “wants” to be free — but reporters want to be paid. This is a hotly debated topic these days, especially in the journalistic halls where Stephens Press makes its home. “Free” is spilling over into books. Stephens Press, and many other publishers, have long provided a “free” chapter from our books online, so prospective buyers can sample the wares (we can’t offer taste, touch, smell online). Chris Anderson’s (of The Long Tail fame) newest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, will supposedly be free in certain formats with the “premium” edition being a printed book. How this will sort itself out is anyone’s guess. An author with a huge mega-seller under his belt is in a better position to bet the farm that enough people will pay actual dollars to buy a book when the content is free in other forms. Debut authors and writers of more esoteric or limited-audiences tomes probably can’t make that model work under any circumstances. I can assure you that most book authors do not make their living from their books. Most have day jobs or supplement their income with freelance writing. But certainly they expect some compensation for the year(s) of their life that disappeared into the writing of their book. Here’s an intro to the Publishers Weekly article — click below to read it all and let us know what you think of this approach to “selling” books.

Free-For-All: Anderson, “Free” Book, Sparks a Backlash Online and Among Battered Media Industry

By Andrew Albanese — Publishers Weekly — 7/9/2009

Under normal circumstances, that Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, logged over 17,000 free views in one day on upstart “social publisher” Scribd would be the story. The story, however, might lurk in the comments left on the Scribd web site.

“Well it’s not really “FREE” at all, is it?” groused one unsatisfied customer, complaining the book couldn’t be downloaded, but read only in the browser on Scribd. “False advertising!” screeched another assessment. When Anderson weighed in to tell Scribd readers that there would be free downloads available next week, “why not make an e-book available already?” came the response, which derisively labeled publisher Hyperion as “old school.”

Welcome to Chris Anderson’s world. In the weeks leading up to this week’s publication of Free, the author of the bestselling The Long Tail has seen his latest book assailed by traditional journalists, including the New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell, characterized by reviewers as simple, even dangerous, and at the same time slammed by others for not being free enough. A controversy over passages lifted from Wikipedia didn’t help.

Read entire article.

P Moss, well-known Las Vegas cultural figure, pens dynamic short story collection.

CityLife Books, the new imprint of Stephens Press, has signed its first author, P Moss, a fiction writer and owner of the famous Double Down Saloon. His short story collection, Blue Vegas, will be released this fall.

PHOTO BY BILL HUGHES P Moss in his office. Okay, it's actually the Double Down bathroom.

“Blue Vegas is the perfect book to launch the CityLife Books imprint,” says Geoff Schumacher, editor of CityLife Books and publisher of the Las Vegas CityLife newspaper. “Moss has produced an incredible collection exploring the dark, human stories lurking in the shadows of the neon sheen of Las Vegas.”

The stories, Schumacher says, represent the work of a writer who knows Las Vegas and is a keen observer of its diverse population.

“Moss’ stories are a visceral exploration of the clash between old and new Las Vegas,” Schumacher says. “They shine a light on the hard luck and lingering anguish faced by Las Vegans who’ve been trampled by this single-minded city.”

After working as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, Moss came to Las Vegas in 1992 and opened the Double Down Saloon on Paradise Road. Dubbed a “clubhouse
for the lunatic fringe,” the Double Down soon became internationally famous, drawing a lively mix of tourists and locals. A second Double Down opened in New York’s East Village in 2006, and Moss recently opened a new Las Vegas establishment, Frankie’s Tiki Room, on West Charleston Boulevard.

Despite his success in the bar business, Moss has always envisioned a second career as a writer. “No quality Las Vegas fiction has ever been written,” Moss says. “The soul of the city has never been captured on the printed page. This can be attributed in large part to the fact that writers try to sensationalize the obvious, rather than focusing on the raw human emotions unique to the people who live and work in this unique place. I believe I have done a good job of reversing this trend.”

CityLife Books plans to publish up to four titles per year in a trade paperback format. The books will be available directly to CityLife newspaper readers and at area bookstores and online retailers.

Stephens Press is a division of Stephens Media LLC, and a sister company to CityLife and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Established in 2003, the press publishes primarily regional nonfiction.

“The imprint provides a vehicle to publish quality Vegas-centric fiction with a unique CityLife vibe,” says Carolyn Hayes Uber, president of Stephens Press, “and we’re especially excited to have P Moss’ stories set a high bar for our fiction offerings.”

CityLife Books accepts nonfiction and fiction proposals and manuscripts that speak to regular readers of the alternative weekly newspaper. For submission guidelines and more information, check out the imprint’s website at www.lvcitylifebooks.com.

By Guest Blogger Beth Schwartz

I have recently taken up a new hobby. Well, not exactly new, I am just pursuing it in a different way. Always an extremely avid reader, I have joined, or more like was recruited into, a book club. My mother loves to tell the story that I was so consumed with reading as a child that she would ask me to set the table for dinner and I would try to do it while devouring every word of a Nancy Drew mystery. She would watch in distress wondering, “How did I manage to raise such a little nerd?”

As for my newest bibliophilic pursuit, I belong to a very young book club having only just completed our third book. We started out with extremely high aspirations and read the textbook-like Twelve Caesars – about what else but the twelve Caesars – which was not a favorite of the book clubbers and was universally panned if even nary a cover was ever opened. Next there was the self indulgent opus The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch that is at 730 pages as thick as a phonebook. It was an improvement over our first book, and offered much insight into the Dutch culture, but still was not dearly loved.

This month we finally went for a more mainstream choice that was more manageable in size as well as an Oprah pick – Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was a pretty good read but it wasn’t exactly a page turner. But as I have found in my limited book club experience, that’s really not the point. The idea is that because someone different picks the book each month, we are introduced to reading material and, in turn, ideas we would have never taken the time to pursue on our own.

But even better than opening up our minds to new cultures, reading genres and stories we might have ordinarily dismissed, is the camaraderie created by a group of women who come together each month. Gathering with my fellow book clubbers and discussing the month’s reading material to glean their opinions, comments and interpretations has been a very gratifying experience.

Although at first resistant to joining the book club as I love the solitary aspect of reading, I have found it still allows me to find my escape while at the same time delve into and explore the book at another level. It has even led me to the conclusion that I probably would have enjoyed many a book a lot more had I incorporated group discussions.

But that’s not where the learning ends for this ambitious group of book lovers. We have been called high maintenance because we also insist on broadening our culinary horizons. Based on our chosen book, we also bring a dish along that relates to it. For instance, this month because Eat, Pray, Love takes place in Italy, India and Indonesia, a dish from any of these cultures could have been in the offing. I made an Indian dish that I would have never even considered making before, if not for this activity.

As the dog days of summer ensue, spend some time with yourself. Broaden your world and take up a new hobby or put a twist on one you already enjoy.

Beth Schwartz is the editor of Luxury Las Vegas magazine, also part of the Stephens Media family. She blogs at www.luxurylv.com/truly-scrumptious.