Authors Access - Where Authors Get Successful

Irene Watson and Victor R. Volkman spoke with greeting card and gift industry maven Kate Harper. Kate Harper started her line of humorous greeting cards from a hobby of making greeting cards for friends as gifts. Over the next 15 years, Kates turned her hobby into a business, manufacturing and shipping cards to over 2,000 stores, including Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods Markets and the Papyrus chain. She informed us on key areas of getting started as a writer or self-publisher of greeting cards, including  Card trends: research, seasonal cards, occasional cards, and publishers What subject areas and categories to focus on, how to stay organized Test marketing your cards and card verse. Seven most common mistake card writers will make Why competition in the card business is vastly over-estimated

Tyler R. Tichelaar and Victor R. Volkman spoke with Toronto-based educator and print, radio, and TV journalist Donna Kakonge about how any writer can successfully refocus their work into the freelance journalism marketplace. She believes that you CAN break into the journalism business without having to have a specialist bachelor's degree in the subject. Donna has been involved in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Radio Canada International (RCI) on and off for 15 years at the local, national and international levels of both television and radio. She has also worked for the Discovery Channel and Discovery Channel International, Vision TV, the BBC and various publications around the world. Key talking points of tonight's talk were: How can I educate myself to start a career in journalism? What important trade associations can help me on my journey? Besides book writing, what other kinds of journalism are out there now today? Should I establish some sort of business identity? Can I make money just from my blogs? What about rejection, how do you deal with it?