ROBUST discussion

Last week, I was contacted by the Australian Society of Authors to say that a meeting was being organised for those authors in WA who had self-published an e-book, to help and support each other. That's now been scheduled for a couple of weeks' time and I'm really looking forward to it.

Then today, I found that my children's book has been featured on this page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Writing... . I'm surprised because I haven't noticed any other ebooks on there before.

I'm wondering if this is a sign that self-published books are being taken slightly more seriously than before? It's certainly a step in the right direction!

There was a time when the ASA wouldn't let the self-published belong. Maybe they're catching up to the times.

I managed to get a children's story published in the education market, so I became a 'published' author and thereby worthy of the extra fees!

I did notice, though, in the last newsletter, that a few of the 'new books by members' had Smashwords as the publisher. I can imagine a few eyebrows rising at that, but it's good to see.

WOW! That does sound like good news - for you and for a lot of Aussie Indies.

It might, if the ASA actually amounted to anything, or did anything.

But even the most powerful author's body in the world, the American Guild, meekly folded when Google committed wholesale theft of their members' copyrights.

Well, I'm off to the city this afternoon for coffee and chat with four other ebook authors (there were more, but that's all who could meet today). I'm looking forward to it, even though I hate city driving and am not great at walking into a meeting of people I don't know. In this case, we'll have plenty to talk about, so it should be good. Hopefully we'll be able to give each other some ideas about getting noticed.

Katie wrote: "Well, I'm off to the city this afternoon for coffee and chat with four other ebook authors (there were more, but that's all who could meet today). I'm looking forward to it, even though I hate city..."

I hope that it was a good time for you Katie. I know with that group you probably went home ready to go like a house afire.

Thanks, Margie. It was a good meeting, with lots of exchanges of experiences and ideas. I came back with a whole list of things to look into.

Very cool, Katie!