Conversation with Wena Poon (Plus Sharon Bakar!)

THE VENUE HAS CHANGED!!!

I just wanted to say that. It is too amusing not to. Anywho, yesss. The event got an upgrade since apparently there was a lot of response for it. Bad, bad me. I didn’t rsvp so I signed in right then. They’re popular ladies, you see. Hence the bigger location.

Thank goodness there’s no book bouncers (no, I have no idea what those are either) or invited list or something, thus I did get to attend it. I’ve been at the Play Den before with Raven Silvers for attending a talk by Gail Simone so thus, I managed to get the seats at the front since even if the sides were “closer”, the lights would blind you somewhat.

Actually, the side seats are good when you want to squee over said speaker and hide in the darkness so you wouldn’t be too obvious when you go “OHMAHGODOHMAHGAWWDOHMEGOD” in the corner there. Not like we’d know from experience.

Really.

This time, besides Raven Silvers, Raven Azure was with me! That’s a lot of ravens, I know.

Wooshy hand gestures! The lighting there made it difficult to get clear shots anywho. The whole talk was pretty fun and yes, entertaining. Especially when Wena did impressions of people writing reviews of her stuff. Basically, the talk was about writing books, the marketing, the impressions of what normal people think about novelists and the publisher’s side and all.

Summary of talk can be like… ARGH PEOPLE, WRITE STUFF but know that besides writing you need to know how to market yourself! Also, a lot of traditional print versus print on demand. Actually P.O.D is pretty cool and in a way saves the environment besides money. But yes, the future is nooow. A more note based summary can be found on this blog.

Basically though, in the process of writing a book, know that isn’t the only thing you need to do. You need to know your market, your audience, the work you need to do after you’ve published a book such as publicity and the stuff that goes with it.

It is vaguely reminiscent of what social media experts are talking about Twitter too regarding the engaging the audience and marketing bit.

Meanwhile Sharon Bakar has a blog here and she talked about how Malaysia and Singapore writers could join forces or something. For example, they’re pretty close to each other and writers could go have book launches in both countries and you know, network more! Which is pretty logical since we’re not that different from each other.

There was a point in during the answer and question bit that she asked some printer or publisher in the audience if there was P.O.D technology here that could be brought and apparently he HAD! Only you know, we don’t know who he is or where he’s from. I’d go email her to ask if so but since she wanted to blog about it anyway, I’d wait.

At the end of it all, we got our books signed. Wena got her P.O.D book, Biophilia there sold along with the traditionally published Lions in Winter. In any case, she’d be back in October for the Singapore Writers Festival!

Here’s Raven Azure’s take on it. The other Raven will post soonish too, I figure.

EDIT: Raven Silver’s take is here.