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April 2003

Possibilities and Inspiration:
ASJA's upcoming conference and new Web site

By Jim Morrison

Last year, ASJA's annual conference at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan was the most successful in our history, attracting a sold-out crowd of 700 writers for the main Saturday sessions. But you won't find us sitting back and taking it easy if you attend this year's conference from May 2-4.

We've made several changes we hope will make those days even more valuable, as well as less frenzied and crowded.

Once again, we have a wide variety of panels headlined by successful writers and editors. On Saturday, for instance, you can sit down for a discussion on business journalism featuring James Surowiecki, the finance columnist of The New Yorker, and Rick Green, the deputy business editor of Newsweek. Or you can hear Burkhard Bilger, a senior editor at Discover, and Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Weiner discuss writing exotic stories from exotic locales. And those two panels occur in just the first hour.

The conference includes editors from Good Housekeeping, Gourmet, House Beautiful, Men's Health, Self, Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin, The American Lawyer, AARP: The Magazine, Metropolitan Home, TV Guide, Glamour, Esquire, The New Yorker and Premiere. But we don't just rely on editors to tell you how to thrive in today's market. You'll hear from a variety of writers, including a handful who crack the six-figure mark in income annually.

At lunch, Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the bestseller, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, will add a little spice to the meal. (For the complete list of Saturday panels, go to www.asja.org/wc/2003/2003sat.php.

Don't think the conference stops with drinks and a raffle on Saturday night. We'll also offer seminars in writing essays, memoirs, queries and book proposals during smaller, more intimate Sunday sessions. Staying another day may cost you a hotel room, but just one sale resulting from any of those sessions will make it a wise investment. For more about the Sunday sessions, go to www.asja.org/wc/2003/2003sun.php.

For the first time this year, we're also offering a new benefit at no extra cost, something we call "The Idea Marketplace." During the day, writers and editors will be able to browse tables set up by exhibitors offering information to help them develop story ideas. It's something common at conferences for beat reporters like health and fitness writers, and we think it will help you go back home and match ideas with markets.

That's what the conference ultimately is about—your bottom line. So let's talk dollars and cents return.

Mary Mihaly, an ASJA member from Cleveland, says that every year she has attended she's begun profitable ("fattened my wallet by $1,000-$20,000") relationships with editors based on hearing them at the conference. Last year, she scored a bonus: she met her agent.

Janine Latus met a Woman's Day editor at the conference. The result? More than $6,700 in assignments in the past year. At another panel, she congratulated an editor she knew on her new job. They caught up and the result has been $15,000 in work from More magazine.

Leah Ingram attended the session on literary agents last year on a whim. She was so impressed by one agent, that she introduced herself, then went home and FedExed her latest book proposal. A day later, she had a new agent.

Even more than the dollars, the conference is a sort of two-day Gipper speech. It's a reminder of all the possibilities open to writers as well as an illustration of the good, inspiring work done by our colleagues. As Bob Bittner, who came in from Michigan last year, says, "This shot in the arm is powerful—and ultimately a major factor in whatever freelancing success I have."

On another note, let me encourage you to check out ASJA's redesigned Web site. There is a remarkable wealth of information there for members as well as non-members.

For members, of course, there is also the new ASJA online forum, that you can access either on the Web or through an e-mail list. As I write this, the forum has been operating for about two months and it's proven to be an efficient place to ask questions and offer advice.

The Books Forum already has more than 700 messages on topics as diverse as developing a national platform, pushing your publisher's PR department to work for you and writing a book proposal. In the Magazine and Newspaper Writing forum, there are more than 1,500 messages about everything conceivable, including markets as diverse as USA Weekend, The Atlantic Monthly, Lifetime, American Way, AARP: The Magazine and Maxim. And in The Writing Life Forum, the topics range from fellowships to database software to the question of who owns the rights to an interview.

It's available only to members. For more information, go to www.asja.org/members/forum/forum.php.

I hope I see you on the Forum. Stop by one of the interest areas or cruise into the Inside ASJA section and tell us what we're doing that you like—and don't like.

And if I don't see you online, I hope we can share a drink after the conference in May.