The national conference of the Romance Writers of Australia took place on the sunny, sparkling Gold Coast on the 16-19th August. It was a jam packed four days with special international guests NYT bestseller ELOISA JAMES, multi-published novelist and screenwriter ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF, HELEN BREITWEISER (Cornerstone Literary Mgt), MONIQUE PATTERSON (St Martins Press), and JOANNE GRANT & BIRGIT TODD-DAVIS (Harlequin).

Eloisa James wowed everyone with her candid and insipiring keynote which opened with ‘I write for money’. But she went on to qualify that, talking about how many different ways (and despite her many, many accomplishments) she had been made to feel shame for writing romance instead of ‘real’ books. She ended the key note urging us to tell people we write for the money if it helps us to manage the shame we’re made to feel, but to know—in our hearts—that it is the joy of writing romance that will ultimately overcome the negative feelings that go with our chosen profession. Feel the joy, embrace the joy. Let go of everything else.

Alexandra Sokoloff was massively popular, both in terms of her all-day workshop about fiction writing and screen writing but also for her contribution on various industry panels. It wasn’t hard to see how she has become so successful as a fiction writer, screenwriter, self-publisher and businesswoman—she worked like a Trojan, was generous with her knowledge and experience (and her time) and was fantastic with media. Totally fearless!

Joanne and Birgit did a session on Harlequin’s coming So You Think You Can Write contest (which launches in a fortnight) and how it’s all going to work. The biggest news? It’s open to published as well as unpublished from most English speaking nations. “We’re keeping it simple,” Birgit Todd-Davis said “because the definition of ‘published’ is so blurry now.”

We ran two ‘speed dating’ panel sessions with Australian publishers and asked them ‘why should we come on a speed date with you?’  The responses were hilarious but frank and we all got the sense how much the Australian industry (and the power) is shifting. They wooed us. They had to pitch us for our business.  How refreshing! Three new digital-first lines are now up and running in Australia (Pan MacMillan’s ‘Momentum’, Harlequin Australia’s ‘Harlequin Escape’ and Penguin Australia’s ‘Destiny’ line) and they’re hungry for content and looking for new and diverse voices and stories. And senior editor for Momentum, Joel Naoum, was thrilled to have his first twitter hashtag named for him (#WeHeartJoel) after he successfully flirted with an entire ballroom of women during his speed date.

This year we partnered again with the Australian Romance Readers Association to conduct a huge booksigning event  (image courtesy Elle Fynllay. A fantastic chance to connect with new readers (or re-connect with existing). And, yeah, that’s Alex Sokoloff stretched out in the front like a champion.

The beautiful and gracious Helen Bianchin was awarded the inaugural RWA Hall of Fame award for her many, many years of fabulous books and characters. And recent RITA winner Fiona Lowe also took a RUBY for her Carina Press book ‘Boomerang Bride’ alongside ROBYN GRADY (The Fearless Maverick), BARBARA HANNAY (Molly Cooper’s Dream Date), and HELENE YOUNG (Shattered Sky).

We were delighted to have Google amongst our sponsors and they helped us to carry out a live ‘Historical Hangout’ with Eloisa James, Anne Gracie and Christina Brooke…

as well as bringing a pre-recorded ‘Rural Romance’ hangout to our delegates and to everyone via YouTube  There was a lot of interest in Google’s ability to actually generate real conversations between authors and fans using their free Hangout tool which let you have smaller ‘private’ hangouts or larger public ‘hangout on air’ and the ease with which either one can then be uploaded to YouTube for public consumption.

The other noticeable trend this year was the increased talk about self-publishing, led by a special panel discussion in the published author forum which looked at how the already-published can leverage their profile to help with self-publishing sales, how to work a backlist and how to diversify your ‘product’ to maximise income stream.

A few useful conference takeaways for me and, not surprisingly, mostly related to social media which I still struggle to find a happy place with:

• Stay off review sites. They’re. Not. For. You.
• Social media – do less better.
• When you blog, blog about what makes you unique as a woman. Being a woman is the only thing you can guarantee having in common with your readers.

I also favourited all my tweets from the conference on my twitter profile – http://twitter.com/readnikkilogan/favorites There are some real pearls of wisdom there. And the conference hashtag was #RWAus12 if you want to scroll back through for other wisdom bites.

So thanks very much Gold Coast and Romance Writers of Australia. See you in Western Australia next year!