The next RMMWA monthly meeting will be held April 13, 2023 at the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association (290 Speer Boulevard in Denver) and we’ll also broadcast a live, interactive hybrid meeting via Zoom. Please join us in-person or via Zoom for a panel on Independent Publishing

The meeting at CADA will start at 6:15 p.m. (MT) with drinks and networking, and dinner will be served at 6:30. Zoom attendees may sign on shortly before 7:00 for the start of the program. See the full agenda below.

To register to attend in person, please use the link below. Please sign up before Monday, April 10th to reserve your spot.

Zoom attendance is free and there is no need to register. Members will receive the meeting link via email. Non-members, please send an email to chapterpres@rmmwa.org to request access.

Dinner menu:

• To Be Announced

Note: Please contact our Caterer Director directly if you have allergies or specific food issues. We will try to accommodate you if we can. 

Meeting Agenda:

• 6:15 Networking and drinks
• 6:30 Dinner
• 7:00 Introductions and Member News
• 7:30 Mystery Minute
• 7:40 Program

Meeting Program:

Independent Publishing Panel

Fifteen years ago, the only way to publish a book was through a literary agent and atraditional publishing house. It was a highly competitive market, saturated with thousands of query letters and writers hoping their bulky piles of paper manuscripts would stand out from the crowd.

Today, we have more options–the current major ones being:

• traditional agent and publishing contract through the Big 5
• traditional publishing via an array of indie presses (some require agents, others do not, buyer beware)
• self-publishing which usually means doing it all yourself
• hybrid publishing which includes sub-contracting out aspects of editing and production. Writers who to both traditional and self-publishing can also be referred to as hybrid authors

95% of the book market is self-published with about 20M books in print (40x more than 1990) but only about 30K volumes are in bookstores at any given time. 90% of the self-published books are sold online. Adult non-fiction is twice the market of adult fiction, by the way.

Looking further into the future, we can follow an author on Twitter or Medium or Substack, then go read their book on Royal Road or Wattpad or Kindle, then review it on Amazon or Goodreads. We can interact with an author on Discord and support them via Kickstarter or Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee. Okay, maybe too much information to digest, but keep these options on your radar.

Join RMMWA authors, Lori Lacefield, Tom Farrell, Jodi Burnett and Sue Hinkin to hear about their publishing journeys and answer questions as to the pros and cons of choices and surviving and  thriving in the publishing fray.

Presenter Bios

Sue Hinkin
Voted Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Writer of the Year for 2021-22, Sue Hinkin was raised in Chicago and is a former college teacher and administrator, TV news photographer, and NBC-TV art department manager. She was also a Cinematography Fellow at the American Film Institute. Her thrillers, featuring Los Angeles TV news journalist Bea Jackson and photographer Lucia Vega, have been recognized with multiple awards including the Colorado Book Award for Best Thriller, The Colorado Author’s League Best Thriller and The Foreword Indies Best Mystery. Book 5 in the Vega and Middleton series, The Rx for Murder, has recently been released. See more at www.suehinkin.com. Sue Hinkin now lives in Littleton, Colorado where she is the new grandmother of twin girls who already love a good book.

Tom Farrell
Tom Farrell is the author of Wager Easy, A Sports Betting Mystery Thriller and Wager Tough. Both books received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews. Wager Tough was selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Indie Books of 2021 and one of the Best Indie Mystery Thrillers of 2021.

Jodi Burnett
Jodi Burnett is a Colorado native and a mountain girl at heart. She loves writing Mystery and Suspense Thrillers from her small ranch southeast of Denver where she dotes on her horses, complains about her cows, and writes to create a home for her imaginings. She is the author of the three series: Flint River, FBI K9 Thrillers, and Tin Star K9, and this year Jodi is starting a new US Marshal Thriller series. Her books are available in paperback, eBook and audiobook formats. Inspired by life in the country, Jodi fosters her creative side by writing, watercolor painting, quilting, and crafting stained-glass. She is a member of Novelists, Inc. and Sisters In Crime.

Lori Lacefield
Lori began her writing journey at the age of 14, making up stories about teens navigating the precarious world between childhood and adulthood. Her inspiration was S.E. Hinton and the troubles Ponyboy and the gang encountered in The Outsiders. Those troubles seem tame compared to the entanglements her characters find themselves in now. Whether hunting serial killers, taking on outlaw motorcycle gangs, or facing a threat from the Russian mob, her characters are guaranteed to bring you hours of suspense.

Lori attended her first writing conference more than twenty years ago, and since has studied the art and craft of fiction writing through reading many a book, picking the brains of best-selling authors, and of course, a whole lot of writing and editing. Lori is a lover of coffee, books, music, yoga, pilates, wine, travel, and most of all, dogs. She lives in Centennial, CO with three adorable Pomeranians.