Author Keturah Kendrick was our very first special guest our very first year of the book fest back in 2019. She has a new book out titled "And You Know This: Lessons on Living From Young Folx" which Cardyn and Heather will be discussing on The Write Women Book Fest Instagram on Thursday night at 7 p.m. EDT. Hope to see you there!

Hello! Authors, if you would like to be notified when registration for the  book fest opens in March please fill out THIS FORM. Thanks so much!

I've noticed some heated discussions in writer groups on Facebook about paid beta readers. Sometimes you'll see a person asking about hiring one and a flood of comments will come in saying things like, "I don't pay for beta readers," and "Run, it's a scam." 

Can a paid beta reader scam you? Yes! So can an editor, a formatter, or a book cover designer, but it doesn't make them any less legit as a business model. 

What is a beta reader?
A beta reader is a person who reads your book after alpha readers but before ARC readers. Beta reading a book requires labor, and like any labor it can be volunteer or paid. 

Here is a good post by Sarah Kuiken on the Draft2Digital blog about the differences in alpha, beta, and ARC readers. That article leans heavily on the example of volunteer beta readers as the default and doesn't mention paid readers, so I want to cover why you might want a paid beta reader.

Volunteer Beta Readers, Advantages & Disadvantages
Volunteer beta readers are sometimes a friend, or somebody from a Facebook group who enjoys beta reading. They could be part of an author's "street team" who are excited about seeing a not-yet-released version of the book, or they could be somebody who loves the particular genre the author writes in and like being part of the process.

The advantages of having a volunteer beta reader include knowing the person is excited to read the book, they are free, they might want to read your ARC and will leave you a review. Also, if a volunteer beta reader has a big platform and really loves your book, they might hype it a bit.

The disadvantages of  having a volunteer beta reader include not being able to ask them to stick to a deadline because you're asking them to do free labor. Not knowing their ability to catch problems in a full work. If they are not known to you personally, sending an unpublished work is risky.

There are many lovely, trustworthy, skillful beta readers out there who can't wait to help you, but finding them isn't always easy. Fortunately there are groups and other resources to help you.

Paid Beta Readers, Advantages & Disadvantages
The biggest advantages to having a paid beta readers:

• You can vet their background and not feel weird about it
• You can have a checklist or even a form, or they may have a form that covers specifically what they will be checking for
• You can have a contractual and enforceable agreement that they will not leak your book
• You can have timeline expectations as to when they will have the work completed by
• If your content is private or material you are keeping under a pen name due to the subject matter, you have more privacy security
  
  

The only disadvantage is having to pay them! 

Two years ago TWWBF had a video interview with a professional beta reader, so that video is being included here. 

So, if you see people saying that paying a beta reader is a scam, try to normalize paid beta reading as a legitimate profession. Still, know as much as you can about your beta readers either way!

Hello Friends in Publishing!

Cardyn and I (Heather) have had a couple of meetings to kick-off planning for the 2025 Write Women Book Fest. We are excited to build on the lovely experiences of the 2023 event. So many thanks to all of the beautiful authors who have been a part of our event and contributed your talent, and lovely energies to the vision of amplifying women in publishing.

We had a meeting last week, read our notes as well as went over feedback from last year. We wanted to address a few points that came up so we can move forward knowing we have tried to communicate further what we are offering. We of course want to make everybody happy, and sometimes Cardyn has to remind me that that isn't possible. I always want everybody to feel welcome and have a good time so I can tend to expend a lot of energy figuring out how to meet everybody's desires. That's when she said to me, "We aren't offering every possibility, we are offering this possibility." 

I'm going to start with what we offer first, then if you want, you can read on to the part where we address some of the critical feedback we got, which we thank you for providing, good and bad. 

WHAT WE OFFER

• An inclusive, supportive, diverse, LGBTQ-friendly event that lifts up the voices of women authors.
• The opportunity for authors to table, sell, and sign books and promote their work.
• Vendor spaces at a rate we researched and deem in-line with other similar events.
• The opportunity for authors to be on panels and attend workshops.
• The opportunity for new authors to table alongside more seasoned authors in a safe and helpful space. The same with panels. It's a great event for newer authors.
• An event space that provides rooms, an adequate sized ballroom, and ample free parking on the premises. We aren't subject to the whims of weather and wheeling your things into the space will be fairly painless with the parking lot being right there!
• We will be providing vendors with light breakfast items, coffee and tea on Saturday, lunch on Saturday, lunch on Sunday, and an after-party on Sunday.
• The opportunity to enjoy whatever perks we can provide via partners - in the past that has been a Barnes & Noble partnership and a Prince George's Community Library partnership.
• A small thank-you note and bag from Cardyn and me. And truly, we are thankful.

If all of that sounds like your kind of event, we are so happy we've found each other!
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CRITICAL FEEDBACK RESPONSE

We often get conflicting messages since the experiences can be so varied based on a variety of factors related on a vendor's past experience. We don't take the feedback personally, we use the bits that we feel we can absorb and improve where we can because we want this event to be a positive experience for you and we want it to be the best work that we do, too.

Below is some of the feedback, paraphrased, and our responses.

You should have the event at a venue with more passerby foot traffic.
One factor outside of our control is weather. That's the biggest reason we moved indoors, and thankfully we did because while we lucked out with beautiful weather the previous years, in 2023 it was pouring. We have people fly in or drive a long way from all over for this event. We know the effort and expense involved with attending one of these events, being authors ourselves. Hotels in the city with more foot traffic are over double the cost of the hotel we are at now, which in 2023 was about $13k for just Saturday. Also, having a location with more people walking by does not necessarily mean more book buyers, and if it's raining or too hot, or too cold, then we've paid all that extra money for nothing. And while Cardyn and I paid for the event the first couple of years, that was not a sustainable model for us as we moved to a hotel. We are working on getting sponsors to cover the expected increased costs of 2025, and if you know of anybody who wants to sponsor the event, please send us a note at t[email protected]. Sponsors help keep it affordable and allow us to get day-of staff and pay for things like storage, office supplies etc.

We also chose the location for 2023 and 2025 because they had experience hosting book events in the past and have ample free parking right next to the hotel. If you've ever had to wheel your stuff from a dark garage two blocks away and pay $40 a day for the privleged, you'll understand why this was one of my priorities. The Comfort Inn is very close to BWI and not all that far from DC. It's a location we likely will stick with for a while based on it meeting our top priorities in a venue.

You should make the tickets free.
We have found that having free tickets does not equal more attendees. We also feel the price for tickets isn't so high that it would prevent people who have a book budget from buying books. We were free for four years. In addition we offered multiple discount opportunities - I sent out coupon codes several times to share with readers and followers. In some cases it busted the prices down to $5 and I shared all of that through email and the vendor blog I set up just to keep communication with the vendors nice and flowing. We had multiple ticket sales from authors sharing those codes. It was very cool!

The vendor fee is too high.
We researched the vendor fee, then took into consideration our expenses such as storage, office supplies, domain name, signage, marketing, day-of assistants, decorations, swag bags, printing, and of course the hotel fees--and settled on a price that helped us cover most of that and made up the difference with a couple of sponsorships and ticket sales. We couldn't have the event at all if the vendor fee were any lower.

The tables are too narrow.
We made sure everybody knew in the registration form that these tables, while six feet long, were not as deep as the tables some people are used to. These are the tables the hotel provides to us at no extra cost. If we had to rent tables it would have cost a good bit more money. I don't recall the amount, but I considered it quite high, plus delivery fees and having to get the tables back to the rental company. It was not something we felt we could afford or manage our first year at the hotel, which is why we put the notification in the registration so people would know they were getting an 18" deep table.

You didn't advertise enough.
We advertised as much as we could afford to, mostly in the form of Instagram boosts and Facebook boosts. You also can look back at our social media to see how many times we posted. We sent out newsletters, we sent out information to the local press to try and get features, we invited city council members and Cardyn even reached out to the Lt. Governor's office. We truly did our best with what we had. We don't have big bucks for advertising just yet. The best money in my opinion is the money we spend using Eventbrite because so many people use it to find events. We will continue to make our best effort to market the event. 

You shouldn't expect us to market the event.
We don't have direct access to your fans, your readers, and potential readers. When we market to book lovers in the area, we might miss out on people who want your motorcycle sweet romance, or your non-fiction tale of growing up in London. Yes, we expect people to market  to their followers, fans, and readers to let them know where they can find you live and in-person. We were honestly a little perplexed by this particular sentiment and we feel like if Beverly Jenkins is posting about all of her events on Twitter, then we are being reasonable in the expectation that those who participate with our event will also let their readers and followers know about it. We understand if this isn't something you want to do, but it's something we would like our participating authors to do.

We hope all of you will have an amazing 2024 and we hope to see you in 2025 at the fest! Y'all are the best!

​Heather & Cardyn

We were lucky to have the personable and professional author, editor, and podcaster Erin P.T. Canning do a round of mini-interviews for her podcast at The Write Women Book Fest 2023.
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Erin's charming personality and genuine interest in helping authors comes through in her podcast and in just about everything she does. 

If you're an author or want to be an author, if you need author services or just a cheerleader, you should visit Erin's Facebook page and group where she often does a "write in tandem" to help you get those words on the page! 

In addition to the very busy day of Saturday interviews Erin taught classes on our Sunday author development day! With publishing professionals like Erin the book fest grows and evolves, and we are so glad for that!

As a busy parent she knows how hard it is to pursue your passions while also shaping the lives and taking care of little humans. But you don't have to be a parent to appreciate the writing advice and encouragement. 

I think her mission says it all:

Parents Who Write is a safe space for parents to rediscover and reconnect with your whole self through writing.

Be heard. Feel validated. Our voices and stories matter.
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Parents Who Write Website
Parents Who Write on Facebook Page
Parents Who Write Facebook Group
​Parents Who Write Podcast

This year we are trying out pre-orders for some of our Featured Panelists. Please select the form under the author's image and fill it out. Don't forget to pick up your ticket for Saturday October 14th! GET TICKETS HERE

Mariah Ankenman Pre-Order Form - Deadline September 20th

Leslye Penelope Pre-Order Form 

As we get closer to year five - YAY FOR SO MANY AMAZING WOMEN AUTHORS - we want to give an announcement about year six. We will not be having The Write Women Book Fest in 2024. 

We have found it more and more difficult to plan our event in September and October. September so many mothers and grandmothers are very busy and we have a lot of women authors who fit those categories. And October is chock full of local book events - two of them we very much don't want to hinder in any way or make people choose, so we are moving our event to July. Now that we are indoors we don't have to worry about the summer heat and that means summer opened up as a possibility. We have not solidified a date yet, but it will be one of the last two weekends of July 2025. Due to the timeline being moved forward, and it taking a full year to plan this event, we are just moving straight into planning 2025 instead of rushing to plan 2024 and possibly not doing the best we can. We'd rather just take our time and keep leveling up and evolving the quality of the event.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED in being a participating author, publishing professional, or book-related vendor please fill out this interest form and you will be notified FIRST when registration opens.

Love books? Meeting authors? Buying books for yourself or for gifts? Getting books signed?
Get your tickets for Saturday October 14th - an event where you can meet 100 women authors in a variety of genres from romance and fantasy to self-help, history, and spirituality. Your new favorite author could be at this event! Tickets are only $29. The event will be held at the Bowie Comfort Inn and Conference Center in Bowie, Maryland.

​https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-write-women-book-fest-author-expo-reader-event-tickets-572092844097

This year the Maryland Romance Writers (MRW) will be in attendance with some of their membership authors. Due to the nature of the controversies surrounding Romance Writers of America (RWA) we wanted to post this statement from MRW:

One June 1, 2022, Maryland Romance Writers (MRW) submitted notification to Romance Writers of America (RWA) that its membership voted to disaffiliate from RWA as of July 1, 2022. References to RWA have been removed from MRW's website, and we are in the process of establishing ourselves as an independent non-profit organization in Maryland.

The mission of Maryland Romance Writers is to promote excellence in romantic fiction and advance the professional interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy, dissemination of information, professional education, and other appropriate activities, and to provide continuing support for writers within the publishing industry.

To learn more about MRW and how to become a member, visit their website.

We are continuing the conversation about fat representation in fiction! This edition is moderated by Mary Warren, author and founder of www.fatgirlsinfiction.com.

You can find her on TikTok @marywarrenwrites and Instagram @fatgirlsinfiction sharing the news about fat representation in books. ​