I attended my first webinar yesterday. It was great. Sandra Beckwith of Build Book Buzz talked to SPAWN members about book promotion. Those members who couldn’t listen in by phone, can hear the entire presentation at the SPAWN site. This is just one perk of membership in SPAWN. And don’t forget, our membership dues go up January 1, 2010. So this is a good month to join at the $45/year rate. http://www.spawn.org
Even though I participated in one, I’m a little confused about what a webinar is. It had nothing to do with the web. It was simply a telephone conference call.
One thing I learned more about during the conference was how valuable a “tip sheet” can be. I write tips sheets as part of my blog and my articles alllll the time. But it didn’t occur to me to pitch the tips as “fillers” for newspapers and magazines.
What is a tip sheet? A short list of four to eight tips that are designed to teach, inform or entertain, for example. I could choose a handful of my tips for writing a more powerful book proposal, how to build promotion into your book, ways to get freelance writing work in this recession, how to use your blog to promote your book, etc. and send them out as filler material to newsletters and magazines.
You could create tip sheets related to your book on selling a house in this market, family budgeting, parenting the autistic child, the history of the locomotive or creative photography for new parents, for example.
SPAWN member, Bobbi Floria Graham gave SPAWN a nice plug in her article on “Self-Publishing Resources” published in the Freelance Writer’s Report, December 2009 edition. She tells readers that if you are planning to publish, it is wise to join organizations like SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network). Bobbi is a wealth of information and she participates regularly in our SPAWNDiscuss group. I love it when I see SPAWN in the news. Thank you Bobbi.
Speaking of SPAWN, we’re in need of a new Membership Director. You must be a member-in-good-standing. This means, if you aren’t already a paid member, you must join SPAWN. Your membership dues will be comped for every year you are a board member after that. Talk to me about additional perks of membership in SPAWN. And consider the prestige of being a SPAWN board member.
Patricia@spawn.org or PLFry620@yahoo.com
If you value the enormous amount of information you receive FREE here at my blog site every single day of the year, you will definitely benefit from membership in SPAWN.
Hi Patricia,
I was so pleased to be on the first SPAWN teleseminar! Thanks for thinking of me.
I wanted to comment here on semantics: The call yesterday was a “teleseminar,” not a “Webinar.” A Webinar combines a teleseminar — which is phone only — with a Web component. That Web element is usually the speaker presenting live via video, a PowerPoint presentation, or a combination of both. The SPAWN event had no Web component, so it wasn’t a Webinar.
Webinars are more challenging to present and require a certain amount of practice. I “attended” one a couple of weeks ago that was almost painful because the speakers had so much trouble getting themselves synced with the online slides. It takes skill that many of us don’t have yet!
Hope this helps!
Sandy