Tupelo Press Marketing Conference

Announcing a Zoom-Based Book Marketing & Publicity Conference from Tupelo Press

Fall 2021: October 23rd – 24th




Join our Marketing /Publicity Conference where together we will design a powerful multi-part book marketing and publicity plan and strategy for your current or upcoming publication.


Our New,  Zoom-Based Marketing Conference from Tupelo Press

Register


Whether you’re working on your first book or tenth, whether poetry, prose, hybrid, or academic, benefit from three of the leading experts in book marketing and publicity: Jeffrey Levine, Founder, and Publisher of Tupelo Press, Kristina Marie Darling, Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press, Tupelo Quarterly, and owner of Penelope Consulting, a marketing and publicity company, along with Cutter Streeby, who serves on the Board of Directors of Tupelo Press and is the founder of Grayling Agency, a leading marketing company. The faculty are the authors of the recently released Open Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your Book (Tupelo, May 2021).

Together, they are offering a dynamic two-day conference that will show you how to make the very best strategies for understanding the marketing/publicity landscape work for your own book(s). Whether you have a new book on the way, just out, or coming in the future, you will leave this conference with a plan for a successful marketing/publicity campaign for your book, no matter whether your publisher is an independent literary press, a university press, or a commercial publishing house.

Tupelo’s online conference model offers a powerful window inside the world of book marketing, offering poets the chance to learn from some of the most experienced and innovative book marketing and publicity strategists in the business. 

Bring your book or manuscript this October. 

Together, working with your individualized Author’s Questionnaire—supplied to you prior to the conference, along with your own free PDF of our marketing handbook—we’ll work together to generate an effective marketing/publicity plan tailored to your particular situation. 

Using Zoom (no app need, just click a link), we will meet as a group for critical information sessions, talks, exchanges, daily, break-out sessions, where cogent and effective advice for marketing your book will take place. 

FAQs and Detailed Schedule Below

Fee $950

FAQ’S

Who are these conferences for?

  • Writers, whether of poetry, prose, hybrid, or academic work, whose work has been accepted for publication; AND/OR
  • Writers whose work has been recently published;
  • Writers who have previously published books which were not marketed successfully;

What will happen in advance of the conference?

  • Soon after registering, you will receive a set of expertly designed, pre-conference exercises geared toward developing your understanding of your book’s potential audience, along with an “Author’s Questionnaire” and your free copy of Open Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your Book.
  • Guidance for developing a contact list;
  • Exercises to help you understand your book from a marketing context;
  • All poems and manuscripts will be submitted and shared electronically, as WordDocs;

What will happen during the conference?

  • We will meet online, but face-to-face via Zoom, an easy-to-use platform that’s gotten a lot of positive attention and use during our months of sheltering and teaching from home. There’s nothing to install. Just click on the emailed link you get from us five minutes before each meeting; 
  • You will need a good WiFi connection and a dependable computer;
  • For some sessions, we will meet as a full group: panels and Q&A sessions; and the final wrap-up: real world strategizing about how, when and where to send not only your manuscripts, but packets of poems.
  • You will also meet in small groups for intensive conferencing with each faculty; every participant will have time with each of the three faculty.
  • See detailed, two-day schedule below.

DETAILED SCHEDULE OF CONFERENCE

(NOTE: All times are EST, geared toward accommodating most time zones; all meetings are synchronous, via Zoom):

Saturday and Sunday: Morning sessions will run from 10:00 am to 1:30 pm, and afternoon sessions will run from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pmNOTE: There will be several built-in breaks, including generous time for lunch and snacks. You will have assignments to work on in the off-hours.

Enrollment and Logistics 

Each two-day conference will:

Meet daily Saturday and Sunday for workshops from10:00 to 1:30 pm, and from 3pm to 6:000 pm.


When

October 23rd – 24th, 2021


Fee

$950

Editorial Reviews of Full-Length or Chapbook Manuscripts

Participants may sign up separately (in advance) with Jeffrey Levine for an intensive, poem by poem review and annotation of your full-length or chapbook manuscript. All manuscripts will be returned, fully edited, in advance of the conference. Those who opt for a manuscript review will have a half-hour, one on one, Zoom discussion of their work with Jeffrey Levine. Cost: $400 for chapbook-length manuscripts, (up to 32 pages) $800 for full-length manuscripts, (up to 54 pages) manuscripts.


Work Plan & Pre-conference Assignment

Work plan and pre-conference assignments will be emailed to registrants upon confirmation.



Jeffrey Levine  as Artistic Director and Publisher of Tupelo Press, has published, publicized and marketed more than 300 books. He himself is the author of three books of poetry: At the Kinnegad Home for the Bewildered, (Salmon Press, 2019), Rumor of Cortez, nominated for a 2006 Los Angeles Times Literary Award in Poetry, Mortal, Everlasting, which won the 2002 Transcontinental Poetry Prize. Levine’s many poetry prizes include the Larry Levis Prize from the Missouri Review, the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the Ekphrasis Poetry Prize, and the American Literary Review poetry prize. His poems have garnered 21 Pushcart nominations. In addition to his own writing, he is the translator of Canto General, Pablo Neruda’s epic work of poetry. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and he also serves as Director of the esteemed Tupelo Press Writing Conferences. Also an accomplished musician, Levine is a concert clarinetist, jazz guitarist and pianist.

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of thirty-six books, which include Look to Your Left:  A Feminist Poetics of Spectacle, which is forthcoming from the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics at the University of Akron Press; Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Womens Poetry, forthcoming from Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group; Daylight Has Already Come:  Selected Poems 2014 – 2020which will be published by Black Lawrence Press; Silence in Contemporary Poetry, which will be published in hardcover by Clemson University Press in the United States and Liverpool University Press in the United Kingdom; Silent Refusal:  Essays on Contemporary Feminist Poetry, forthcoming from Black Ocean; Angel of the North, which is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry; and X Marks the Dress: A Registry (co-written with Carol Guess), which will be launched by Persea Books in the United States.  Penguin Random House Canada will also publish a Canadian edition.  


Her work has been recognized with three residencies at Yaddo, where she has held the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency for a Poet and the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry; a Fundación Valparaíso fellowship to live and work in Spain; a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, funded by the Heinz Foundation; an artist-in-residence position at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris; six residencies at the American Academy in Rome; two grants from the Whiting Foundation; a Faber Residency in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities, which she received on two separate occasions; an artist-in-residence position with the Andorran Ministry of Culture; and the Dan Liberthson Prize from the Academy of American Poets, which she received on three separate occasions; among many other awards and honors. Dr. Darling serves as Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press & Tupelo Quarterly.  Born and raised in the American Midwest, she now divides her time between the United States and Europe. 

Cutter Streeby is an entrepreneur and holds an MA in English literature from King’s College, London and a Master’s in poetry from the University of East Anglia. He has poetry and translations in many journals including LitMag, The Cincinnati Review, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review and more. He is founder of Grayling Agency, a leading marketing company, and is the Director of Marketing at Tupelo Press.


Contact Information

Email: conferences@tupelopress.org
Phone: 413‐664‐9611


Refund Policy: Refund up to 4 weeks prior each conference, less 15% processing fee.