Literary Conventions (With an Emphasis on SF Conventions)
By request, I'm going to use tonight's (very long) segment to talk about literary conventions. As a writer and editor, I'm less interested in the highbrow (and high-priced) literary conferences aimed at new writers, since I think your chances of learning your way around the field at them are significantly worse than the genre conferences. And I'm very skeptical of for-profit conventions.
But in terms of breaking into the field, meeting people, and maintaining publishing connections, I think there is no better place than the nonprofit genre conventions run by fan groups. (Think YearlyKos for specific groups of readers, with a lot more programming and about the same level of intellectual discourse and liberal focus.
Lunacon, a medium-sized convention near NYC every March that I've run the program for over the last few years has about 20 simultaneous tracks of programming at peak hours for its 1,500 attendees - including about 200 pros - and programming running until 2:00 a.m.) The ones I'm most familiar with are science fiction conventions (so I'll be using them as a metaphor to talk about genre conventions in general), but there are conventions for mysteries, romances, true crime buffs... you name it.
The Basics
Science fiction conventions have been gatherings for writers, editors, artists, and fans for several generations now, and a breeding ground for new writers. The idea of writers hanging around in hotel bars with fellow writers and kicking ideas around - one of the main things that goes on at conventions if you're a pro - is at least as old as Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe hanging around in bars and doing the same thing, though most of us hope for a
better end than Kit. (We don't always get it: Writer Paul Edwin Zimmer fell dead of a heart attack at
Albacon in Albany a few years ago.) Don't believe the media image of lots of people running around in Star Trek costumes. (The typical media depiction of SF fans is only slightly less condescending than the Lieberman camp's view of bloggers.) Not all conventions include costuming at all, and in the ones that do feature masquerades (which sewing fanatics from around the world who also like science fiction spend months preparing to compete in, sort of like figure skating competitions) typically only about 5% of fans wear costumes. (
Readercon's costuming policy, for instance, was something on the order of "while Readercon has no costuming policy, no one at a Readercon has ever worn one."
What do people do at conventions? They go to panels on books, media, science, fandom and its history, gaming, costuming, etc.; they hang out in the bar or Con Suite and talk to old friends who they only see once or twice a year at conventions; they go to art shows (where they can also bid on paintings, sculptures, and other artwork); they buy hard-to-find books or DVDs, jewelry, and crafts in the dealers' room; they listen to readings by their favorite writers or new writers who they've never heard of; they watch movies or anime; and they participate in all sorts of other activities that go on. (Occasionally the other activities get out of hand: Disclave had been running every May in the D.C. area for nearly 50 years until a bondage enthusiast in the convention hotel decided to tie his girlfriend to the sprinkler head, with predictable results. A more low-key convention called Capclave - which I'll be a guest at for the first time this year - eventually returned to D.C., and now runs every October.)
There are conventions going on somewhere pretty much every weekend. Each of them tends to have a different focus, and some are much more useful to new writers than others. I go to about five a year, usually including some of the following:
Arisia - a general-purpose con held in Boston every January, with a mix of books and other media, and a younger feel than a lot of other cons. Something of a party convention.
Boskone - a book-oriented convention with a lot of tech, art and media panels as well (but no costuming), held in Boston every February, typically on President's Weekend.
Lunacon - the New York City regional convention, with a general focus but an emphasis on developing new writers and artists. Held near NYC every March. (Full disclosure: I've been organizing the Lunacon program on a volunteer basis for the last 4 years, and will be doing so for the conventions 50th anniversary this year as well before turning the program over to a former student of mine.)
Philcon - A general-purpose convention held in Philadelphia in November or December, with an emphasis on the history of genre fiction and early fantasy and horror.
Readercon - a small but very intense convention held near Boston every July, with a focus on literature. Readercon draws alot of canadian writers, and focuses more on literary "highbrow" SF. (And baseball... I was a panelist on this year's baseball panel at Readercon, and one of the con organizers does some consulting for the Red Sox.)
Connecticon - A raucous convention held in Hartford every July, with more of a focus on games and anime than books... lots of 13-year-old girls running around in anime costumes and squealing, but still a fun convention as a once-a-year thing. (I write roleplaying games, too... remember?)
Capclave - a smallish convention held in D.C. every October, focusing on short fiction.
Some of the biggest conventions travel every year, such as Worldcon every Labor Day weekend (In Anaheim this year and in Japan in 2007) or the World Fantasy Convention held every Halloween weekend, this year in Austin and next year in Saratoga. The Hugo Awards (voted on by the fans) are presented at Worldcon every year, while the World Fantasy Awards are presented at WFC. Worldcons are enormos, drawing 6,000-8,000 fans and pros, while WFC is much smaller (with a membership cap), but draws a disproportionally professional attendance.
These conventions are mostly run by nonprofit fan groups or science fiction clubs, such as NESFA (the New England Science Fiction Association) which runs Boskone, as well as publishing editions of classic SF authors who have fallen out of print. There are also slick for-profit conventions which tend to be more media and gaming oriented and have less book content.
What's in it for Writers?
Most conventions tout the panels and workshops as a terrific thing for writers, and to a certain extent this is true. There's a lot to be said for attending panels where editors tell you what they're looking for (and what they never want to see again), or workshops where writers work with you on specific problems, or discussions of trends in the field. While those panels will be useful, and especially at your first couple of cons you'll probably attend a lot of them, there are other parts of the convention that will ultimately prove more useful to you as a future publishing professional.
To a certain extent, there are two conventions going on at the same time. There's the convention of the panels and art show and dealer's room and various shiny things where fans (and that includes you until you sell something or land a job in the field) can go to hear their favorite writers and artists and editors and agents speak, and can interact with them more closely at meet the pros events, coffeekatsches, readings, and autographings. But there's also the convention where those same writers and artists and editors and agents hang out together with fellow pros who they only see a few times a year (except online), kick around ideas, make deals, hang out at the bar, and go to parties.
The parties can be just as important to you as the panels. Most pros in the field will be very helpful if you're polite, friendly, reasonably well socialized, don't interrupt, and in general don't give off a creepy vibe. Conventions are where a lot of future pros learn how to interact with other pros, make friends with the people who will eventually mentor them in the field, and get a chance to connect both with working pros and with the kind of support group it takes to be successful as a writer. Nancy Hanger of
Windhaven Press - one of the best copyeditors in the field, incidentally - has a theory of what she calls the nexus: that as you break into the field, 80% of the people you know were introduced to you through one or two people (directly or indirectly). John Betancourt of the Wildside Press was the first nexus for me (and I met a lot of folks through Nancy as well, when I was in my first editing job at the late Byron Preiss Visual Productions). Nowadays I suppose I'm a nexus for a lot of people.
Conventions can be a sort of minor league from which a lot of future editors and writers emerge - both directly, through contacts made at cons, and indirectly through the socialization process that they encourage.
As you may have gathered from the first two segments of the series (and the comments) genre fiction is incredibly gossipy and incestuous. The line between employer and employee is very fluid, especially in a field where many people cobble together an income from several freelance jobs, and where people depend on word of mouth for information, support, and livelihood. Plus, as professional communicators and people who aspire to it, conventions are filled with great storytellers, and people for whom communication and ideas, rather than establishing a pecking order, is the most important part of conversation. (Seriously, in fandom,
language is used differently.) I tend to come back from a convention filled with new ideas and very energized to write.
What do Conventions Cost?
The entry fee at conventions is fairly nominal (since they're nonprofit, and staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers), typically about $30 for the weekend if you buy ahead or about $50 at the door. (One-day memberships are usually available as well.) Except for the very largest conventions, most cons are held in hotels (which make function space available to the con for free in return for having a full hotel on what would be an otherwise dead weekend). If you're a starving college student, there are lots of ways to do cons on the cheap: cram lots of people into a hotel room or commute from a friend's house nearby to cut costs, bring your own food instead of eating at the hotel restaurant, etc. If you volunteer to help out at the con they'll feed you, and if you work enough hours they'll comp your membership.
Assuming you don't want to starve or share your hotel room with anyone you're not sleeping with, you'll probably spend $400-500 for a convention within driving distance. Don't pretend you won't buy books or
jewelry in the dealer's room, or artwork from the art show (ranging from $5 prints to paintings costing thousands of dollars... these conventions are for artists as much as for authors.)
Incidentally, other than the guests of honor, all the pros who you meet have paid their own way to the convention as well. Usually if you speak at a con they comp your membership and sometimes a guest, but you have to pay for meals, hotel room, etc. And you never come close to selling enough books to cover your costs, no matter how much you try to rationalize it. So be nice to the pros you meet - they're being helpful to you because they genuinely have a desire to make the field better, not because they're being paid for it.
Conventions tend to be very conscious of accessibility, and any established convention is likely to be designed with the needs of disabled fans in mind. (Disability isn't an abstraction in fandom... cons are designed to be accessible because the people designing them have specific disabled friends who attend the con in mind.) Conventions also tend to be very tolerant of alternate lifestyles, a wide variety of religions, personal quirks, and differences in general. You may find people who are politically conservative at conventions (though likely libertarian, and most fans are very liberal), but you're unlikely to run into people who are socially intolerant. If you have issues with gay couples or transgendered folks or outspoken disabled folks, or kids running around in packs looking for their favorite writer, or old-style southern libertarian rants about the Civil War, or late-night parties, or people bringing their dogs to the hotel with them, you may have problems with conventions - because all of those things coexist at most of them. Conventions are about conveying ideas, and there's a decided intolerance for intolerance.
A Few Tips for Surviving at Conventions
Stay at the hotel if at all possible. A lot of the important stuff goes on late at night, either at parties or in conversations in the lobby or hallways, and you won't want to have to miss that to drive back and forth.
Teresa Nielsen-Hayden of Tor Books - and the wonderful Making Light blog - first taught me the rule for surviving conventions (which may not have originated with her: two meals a day and five hours of sleep - don't reverse them.
Bring fruit and vegetables or something nutritious and snacky to keep in your hotel room. There's a ton of free sugar around (in the Con Suite and at parties) and a fair amount of coffee, chocolate, and alcohol, and it's easy to binge on sugar and caffeine... especially since you won't be sleeping much. Don't get so excited by the ideas being kicked around that you forget to eat (or shower, but I hope I don't have to tell y'all that.)
Feel free to come up and introduce yourself to me (or other writers you meet at a con who you may have encountered online), ask whatever questions you want, but be socially aware. If you're talking with me at the end of a panel, don't block the next panelists from setting up; if I'm talking with someone else, don't interrupt. (I won't ignore you if I see you're there, but give it a minute... I'm not going to blow off the person I'm talking to.) I'd love to meet you, but if you come across like one of those creepy "you're a real writer, can I touch you..." kind of fans, I'll avoid you. (Most fans are very friendly, but I have two different writer friends who have been stalked, and had to get protection against credible death threats.)
Update
The series so far:
Part 1 - Why bad things happen to good books.
Part 2 - Avoiding publishing scams.
Part 3 - Literary conventions (with an emphasis on SF Conventions).
Part 4 - Book packagers.
Part 5 - Submitting a manuscript.
Part 6 - Publishing lists.
Part 7 - Literary agents.
Anyway, way overlength, and the scene I'm working on still isn't written (I spent most of today working on a database for Lunacon and spreading the word that Joe Lieberman has decided to show up to the strongly pro-Lamont event the DTC I belong to is sponsoring on Tuesday night). I'll write a bit while I stick around for questions, then be around tomorrow afternoon (meeting on campus in the morning, sorry).
Segments in the works soon: how publishing lists work, how to submit a book, finding an agent, writing book proposals. Let me know in comments if you have a particular topic you'd like me to concentrate on first.