Thursday at the #NINC2025 (Novelists, Inc.) writers conference began with a hearty breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Needing to walk off the calories, my roommate, Janice Hardy, and I headed to the beach for a stroll and to collect seashells for my grandson. It was relaxing to squish our feet in the sand and to listen to the waves swishing onshore.
We cleaned up and headed to the two-hour MOSHH event in The Pavilion. This was like speed-dating with industry sponsors. We had a passport booklet to fill with stamps from each vendor and then to exchange for raffle tickets. This frenzy didn’t allow us a lot of time to speak with each person, but it was enough to learn what each site offered for authors. I learned about new programs and met relevant contacts. Specifically, I wanted to learn more from InAudio, Spotify, Chirp and Kobo regarding audiobook promotion.
Many more sponsors were available to discuss their sites such as ACX, Audio Sorceress, BookBub, BookFunnel, Bookvault, Curios, Draft2Digital, Dreamscape, IngramSpark, Podium, Reedsy, Tantor, Written Word Media and more. We could also make individual appointments with these reps. In my opinion, meeting these key industry personnel made the entire conference worthwhile. This was my prime purpose in coming, aside from learning the latest marketing tips and tricks from other multi-published authors.
We had to stand in place while the raffle winners were called, which would have been more tolerable with chairs. The items in the baskets were donated by the sponsors. Mimosas were complimentary along with a selection of sliced cake and wrapped candy bars. Overall, it was a fun albeit frantic event that left me exhausted.
I plopped my bag of swag in our room and then went to lunch, which was a Mexican-style buffet.
Then it was off to a series of workshops and more meetups with industry reps. I attended a session by Chirp on Maximizing Your Audiobook Revenue, met with one of the reps above, and hung out to meet people. Not familiar with Chirp? Owned by BookBub, it’s a similar concept but with Audiobooks. Sign up free for their daily newsletter and get a list of bargain audiobook titles sent to your Inbox.
In the networking suite off the main hall, Happy Hour every evening included a free daily drink and a selection of bagged pretzels or peanuts. An open bar was also available. This evening, Janice and I headed to dinner at Snapper’s Sea Grill. Janice had the coconut curry snapper, and I had coconut-cashew crusted mahi mahi. It was delicious but too much for me to eat. I took leftovers back to the hotel to eat for lunch on Saturday. How nice that we have a kitchen with a fridge and microwave. It’s also fully stocked with dishes and flatware. Then we went back to our room to unwind for the evening.
