BSAB – Panels Day One
2024 Book Links Story Arts Brisbane – A Look Back on the Day One Panels
The biennial Book links Story Arts Brisbane conference broke in a new venue this year. The Edge Auditorium at State Library of Queensland with views of the Brisbane River were a welcome backdrop to this year’s conference.
Jenny Stubbs welcomed everyone and introduced Dr Robyn Sheahan-Bright to announce Yvonne Mes as the winner of the Book Links Mentorship for 2024. Robyn’s feedback to the audience was that a strong voice was the common aspect of the finalist’s manuscripts. Robyn will engage with Yvonne for approximately 12 hours in order to offer advice regarding the development of her manuscript, Novaraptor. She will offer advice not only on the manuscript but also on publishing prospects and avenues.
This year author Dave Lowe offered some extra support to four of the shortlisted JF authors, providing each with a 90-min mentoring session.
Read more about the mentorship including additional support to shortlisted writers by local author Dave Lowe.
Opening of Book Links StoryArts Brisbane (Photo credit Victoria Ellen)
Publishing with Passion Panel
The day then started with a panel discussion, chaired by Dr Robyn Sheahan-Bright around Publishing with Passion. The panel comprised of Annabel Barker (agent), Cathy Vallance (UQP), Meg Whelan (Affirm Press), Marisa Pintado (Hardie Grant) and James Layton (Larrikin House). James shared that his first question when receiving a manuscript was always – what’s the buy in for the kid?
The panel was then asked what they were looking for? Annabel was looking for a range of categories but, in the creator, she was looking for ambition, professionalism and an interest in pursuing a long-term career in the industry. Cathy’s interests were currently based on sales trends but let on that she has a love for verse novels, Meg was looking for a great voice, Marisa was looking for humorous stories that she connected with, and James was looking for a quirky original voice which made the books fun to read. All panellists shared the sentiment that “you don’t always know what you are looking for until you find it”.
Dr Robyn Sheahan-Bright continued the discussion with leading questions around submissions (check out the publisher’s websites for guidelines), upcoming projects the publishers are excited about working on, trends and whether they influence what is being published. Graphic novels are on trend right now, but the feeling was that they would establish themselves as a lasting format with society’s current thirst for sharp fast and engaging reads. This is also having an impact on reducing acceptable word counts. Numbered series are out and stand-alone books with shared characters that can be read out of sequence are in. The accessibility of metadata is positively impacting publishing as a book’s specific themes are more discoverable, however this means the books are delayed in being released so the data can be available 9-12 months before the book hits the shelves.
The panel then shared their best insights to promoting your books – know your audience, communicate with schools and bookshops, support others in the writing and illustrating community. The panel gave us logistics of the ‘behind the scenes’ of book publishing and highlighted things in the process to publication that the creators may be unaware of. The session wrapped up with the Top Tips to getting Published (according to the publishers):
- Know your audience
- Know your market
- Know the space you want to be in
- Make friends in the industry
- Target specific publishers that suit your style, themes and genres.
The panel was very informative and a great insight into walking in the publisher’s shoes.
Publishing with Passion Panel (Photo credit Victoria Ellen)
Writing and Illustrating with Passion
The second panel of the day was from the other side of the story. Dr Robyn Sheahan-Bright chaired the panel of book creators through a range of topics which resonated with audience members. We went on a creative journey and discovered what sparked their writing passion. For Amie Kaufman she began writing from a young age for fun and as a way to entertain her friends, Briony Stewart started out studying creative writing and fine arts but it was the last subject on creating for children that sparked her imagination, Peter Carnavas was a primary school teacher who submitted a paper manuscript bound with purple cardboard and had a publisher chase him all over the country to pursue the manuscript and Katrin Dreiling was a teacher in Germany who moved to Australia and was teaching German grammar when one day she decided that wasn’t what she wanted to be doing.
The panel then elaborated on what they had found useful on their creative journeys and ‘finding your tribe’ was a strong theme. Their reflection on challenges and pitfalls covered isolation, money, burnout and periods of lull and imposter syndrome. In the end all you can do is offer the best version of yourself.
Top Tips from the creative panel:
- Do what you like, what your heart and soul is invested in
- Keep up with who’s who in publishing
- Put everything into now but be open to potential opportunities
- Just keep going
The openness and honesty of the panel made this an affirming and relatable session.
Writing and Illustrating with Passion Panel (Photo credit Victoria Ellen)
First Page Pitches
The last panel of the day was one of the favourite panels of every BSAB festival. In this session first pages of manuscripts are submitted and read out anonymously by Mia Macrossan. The audience and panel is provided with the title, word count, form and theme. The congregation then enjoys the start of the story and eagerly awaits the panel’s thoughts.
Green card – Send me the manuscript!
Blue card – I’d like to see more
Yellow card – Hook me in a little more
Orange card – Intriguing, but no
Red card – This manuscript isn’t for me
There were twenty-five fabulous entries this year – a couple which had the room in fits of laughter and, as always, great feedback from the panel.
The results were impressive. By the conclusion of the session 39 yellow cards had been raised, 32 blue cards and 6 green cards – where publishers wanted the manuscripts sent straight through! A great result for taking the brave step to have your manuscript read aloud to a room full of people. Congratulations to all those who sent manuscripts in, it made for a great end to the formalities of day one of the 2024 Book links Story Arts Brisbane festival.
First Page Pitch Panel (Photo credit Jenny Stubbs)
Victoria Ellen
Book Links Member
Book Links SoryArts Brisbane is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
