Billtown Blue Lit Series
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To get literary writers paid & noticed, to enrich my community, and to eventually fund a scholarship, workshop & online journal.
The Problem
As the publishing climate changes, literary writers (and the art they produce) run the risk of becoming even more underrepresented. I want to make literary writers more visible first to my community, by hosting and advertising readings that are free to the public.
See below for 12 goals for Billtown Blue Lit. Some of them are underway, some of them are a bit down the way. All of them are attainable, with your help.
Literary writers are generally invited to read at places like universities and libraries and oaccasionally book stores. These readings are often poorly marketed, and/or meant to cater to a very specific, small audience. Unless the reading is given by a university with massive funding, the writers are often inadequately compensated.
Our Solution
The project is to start a reading series. The aim of this project is to provide a venue with an intentional marketing campaign where good writers can get paid to read their stuff. There will be increased community awareness, and people who might not have otherwise heard about these books will.
I want to offer the series for free to the public.
For the first few months of the project, I'm focusing on sophomore/junior authors. We're hoping to get one Superstar, and have one PA writer tentatively booked.
This series will enrich Williamsport's cultural presence, which is presently heavily weighted in the musical and visual arts.
Here are some of the things we'll do/ways we'll benefit:
1. Bringing the writers to town will provide an opportunity for Blue Lit to contract with local hotels/B&Bs to board the writers. Blue Lit will ONLY feed the authors at local, independently owned eateries.
2. There will be an opportunity for folks in the community to hear these authors read their work, get exposed to new authors, and to meet them and ask questions at the reception and Q&A that will follow each event. Literary fiction will gain visibility.
3. Blue Lit will work with The Pajama Factory (local artists' haven) to start a writer-in-residence program which will provide an opportunity for a writer to work on her stuff in a place that's designated to artists.
4. Blue Lit will host a writer's workshop (like the one Tin House does, that's what I've linked), and provide more culture and commerce to the independently owned businesses in the town.
5. Blue Lit will consistently fundraise to provide a scholarship fund for deserving, gifted writers of single mothers.
6. Bule Lit will employ local college students as marketing interns, and eventually as office personnel.
7. Blue Lit will work with Otto (independent book seller) to feature the books by the visiting readers, and with the community library to feature the same books.
8. Advertising is key. Blue Lit will run print and radio campaigins for each reading the 30 days prior.
9. Blue Lit will provide a stipend that's on the high end for visiting writers ($1,000), and we will allow the visitng author to sell her books at the event.
10. Blue Lit will work to give writers additional venues by launching an online literary journal, and contests that award cash prizes to new writers (a la Glimmer Train), and my eventually launch a small publishing house.
11. Blue Lit will contract with local freelancers with whom I already have a working relationship to put together the marketing materials (brochure, flyers, website, etc). These will be printed at the local print shoppe.
12. Blue Lit will do a book group focusing on the most recent work of the visitng writer. This will generate hype, and will also raise funds.
Our Story & Why You Should Support Us
My team has grown! Now, it's me, my sister--a nonprofit intern at Trinity Repertory Company in Rhode Island-- Ellen, and Jo Steadman, a small-business owner in Williamsport.
Too, Marc Schuster is guest blogging on alternating Mondays at www.billtownbluelit.wordpress.com.
I'm a writer: a literary writer as well as a freelance journalist/copywriter/blogger. I had a short story published in Sou'Wester back in 2005, and then I spent some time mashing together ends and being bleary-eyed busy with no intellectual energy left after the stuff of day-to-day. I am (was) a single mom. So before I lived with my present partner, I didn't have time to focus on the literary aspect of my life goals.
I'm passionate about this project because there's too much junk to consume, and I am worried that these (amazing and exciting, but scary too) changes in publishing and the way the web is reshaping our world and how we consume entertainment will lead to a greater overload of garbage writing and a more serious rarity of good, smart, well-crafted, marvelous things to read. Just because anybody CAN publish a book now does not mean they should.
Here are some of the better-suited-to-making-this-project-go excerpts from my resume:
My first and second years of college, I helped to run Folio, the literary journal, in both logistical and administrative contexts. First as Associate Editor, then as Managing Editor. I developed the reading series that Folio hosted from being a barely attended thing that few people knew about to being a well-attended event with a band and art on display.
In short, I know how to manage a grassroots/young/developing venture, not just how to find and contact authors who I want to read.
I have always had an entrepreneurial streak. Among many other little money-making schemes that littered my childhood, when I was in middle school, I made stress balls with balloons, flour, and a funnel and sold them on the bus.
When my daughter was very, very small, I learned enough about designer clothing to scalp Salvation Army for (MSRP: +/- $300) jeans and sell them on eBay, sometimes for 10 times what I paid.
I have held a few retail sales positions which acquainted me with long, irregular hours and some of the rhetorical rules of selling. I expect that this awareness will be handy in pitching the value of the series to haters and in garnering new support.
I can expect to be successful in this venture because I'm crazy about it, and have a lot of energy for Making it Work. I have already started laying the groundwork. I've reached out to most of the published literary writers I know, and they have shared insight and wisdom, and are excited about the project.
I've talked to some local business people, the library, the Pajama Factory, etc, and informally secured their support.
I've been studying bloggnig and leveraging social networks, effective tweeting, and advertising on facebook by reading blogs on these topics and taking advantage of Facebook's Advertising Bootcamp that they're offering for free right now.
My freelance writing and editing business, April Line Writing, has been holding its own for almost a year. Part of my desire to develop this reading series is to broaden my reach as a solo professional, and to replace some of the work I've been doing that does not match with my long-term goals for the business.
Every successful nonprofit is run, at least partially, like a business. It is my goal to do good, but I recognize my responsibility to be a good steward of both the donations I get and of my own time and resources to perpetuate this project. We won't be able to go in the long term if we're only giving money awway. We need to make it, too.