Recap of the Rocky Mountain Writer's Summit on January 16, 2010 - it was a fantastic event

The Rocky Mountain Writer's Summit was hosted by Books to Believe In, a publishing house in Parker, Colorado. It was intended to be an event to teach authors what they needed to know about publishing their book by providing them direct access to those types of publishing service providers they were going to be hiring during the publishing process and encouraging them to ask those service providers their questions. The service providers in turn educated those authors about specific terminology, different levels of service available, benefits of using their services and at what point in their project their services would be needed.

By all accounts, it was a great success. The room starting filling about 1/2 hour before the opening time of 9:00 as authors from as far away as Utah began to arrive at the Lone Tree Golf and Country Club. The break out rooms filled to overflowing as the speakers prepared to give their talks. First on the docket was Othniel Seiden, Colorado's most Prolific author with over 40 titles to his credit and millions of copies sold. Othniel, spoke about "What he wished he'd have known before he published his first book." Half an hour later, the teaching publisher - EJ Thornton, took the stage in the lower breakout room and talked about "Who you'll need to hire, when and why." Jonathan Manske talked about how to "Eliminate the Blocks Keeping you from success" - also to an overflow crowd! Joe Sabah and Diana Hall did a team presentation demonstrating how important the radio media is to an author's publicity plan. Larry Rimbert gave the 'Layman's view of Intellectual Property". Kathy McKnight, a world-renowned graphologist talked about 'graphotherapy' or how to change your handwriting deliberately to achieve deliberate goals. Patti Thorn educated the crowd about Editors; how and when to hire them and what to ask them to do. Capri Brock, an award winning graphic designer explained the nuances of book cover design. Adam Craig, designer of the much talked about logo for the Writer's Summit, taught about graphics arts, branding topics, and touch points for authors such as brochures, business cards and so on. Thubten Comerford, a social media expert explained the "Top 10 Mistakes Authors Make Online" and explained his TwicheYourself program. Finally, first-time author Gayla Wick, whose book "The Character of TRUE INTIMACY" launched at the Rocky Mountain Writer's Summit, gave a speech entitled, "Lessons learned from a first time author". All of the speeches and speakers were very well received. The two breakout rooms were Emceed by two of the 'League of Extraordinary Author' members, Robert Case and Jake Jacobs, who wrote Daedalus Rising and the Idiom of Oz (respectively).

More service providers were in the trade show area of the conference, they included two outstanding area printers, Kimco On Demand Printers, and Power Imaging Printers. Both of the printers answered questions about the printing trade all day long, be it books, brochures, business cards - no matter. The  most frequently asked question of the day however, was "What is the difference between a printer and a publisher?" This will be the focus of an upcoming examiner article.

John Craig introduced a new concept to authors called the FORESITE - "your web site for your book before your book is a book". Amy Casey of Text Clarity and  Pet Health Focus (and author of the upcoming book, "Your Diabetic Dog") filled the Technical Editor role.

Other volunteers that enabled this great event to run as smoothly as it did included: Scott Greenlee - the vendor and sponsor liaison for the Rocky Mountain Writer's Summit, Michelle Becker - proof reader and calligraphy artist, Robert Cassady - author of Fractured Allegiance, Deb Estes - author of Apollo's Creed, Tad Griffith, author of the upcoming book 'The Bull Truth', Beth Rimestad, Kyleah Brock and JaShawn Thornton.

Corporate sponsors included StickySheets, LLC, and LucidLights, LLC. StickySheets are an innovative pet hair clean-up product as seen on The View, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Home Shopping Network. LucidLights award winning products garnered a lot of attention when they were used to announce the speeches. Their LucidBrake product, to be launched in 2010, will revolutionize bicycle safety.

The admission was free to all authors after they donated $5 to Food Bank of the Rockies. This event raised more than $700 for the Food Bank along with 5 jam-packed boxes of food.

Rave reviews of the Rocky Mountain Writer's Summit have been streaming in to the organizers from the author-attendees since the minute the doors closed, expressing gratitude for the event, accolades for the willingness of the service providers to teach and every one of them asking "When are you going to do this again?"

The event was such a great success, it will be repeated possibly in six months, possibly in the fall. The organizers are still catching their breath and assessing the comments. Stay tuned. One thing is for certain, there will be another Rocky Mountain Writer's Summit!