By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson
Ether Exclusive: Charleston’s PubSmart Joins Conference Row
[dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]T[/dropcap]On the whole, our conferences are either industry-facing or writer-facing. Sure, sure, sure, you can call entrepreneurial authors “small publishers” if you want to. But if, in fact, we take this phrasing at its word, this new addition to the archipelago of conferences stretching from one end of a year to the other has an important and welcome distinction to offer.
PubSmart may be creating something we’ve needed to see much more of: a conference in which not only business-conscious authors but also smaller publishing companies can start doing the logical networking they’ve needed: with each other.
If this new conference is any indication, the strategy in these things is shifting—subtly, not outlandishly, and in the right direction.
Jane Friedman
Start with the two keynoters mentioned in the opening. We can hardly do better.
There’s Ether host Jane Friedman, the opening keynote speaker.
Friedman is currently doing great things at VQR as its digital czarina. She’s formerly the publisher of Writer’s Digest, and has recently launched Scratch Magazine because she has so much extra time on her hands,
Notre Dame sneaks into a shot with Hugh Howey.
And there’s the shockingly productive Hugh Howey, who’ll give the luncheon keynote.
This is a homecoming for Howey, as it is for me. He worked in a bookstore there, went to the College of Charleston, and his mother and sister live there.
Howey has a NaNoWriMo effort under way called SAND, even as he continues tearing across the Continent on his WOOL World Tour, throwing off great photos and thoughtful POV posts on the industry every time he catches a wi-fi connection.
Read the full article at JaneFriedman.com