Imagine a writer’s conference with no pitch appointments, no breakout tracks, and no recordings. If you read that description on a conference website, you’d probably think the organizer forgot to book agents, ran out of rooms, and the AV equipment broke.
Despite having none of the regular writers conference features, the 2026 Novel Marketing Conference sold out, and when we surveyed attendees afterwards, 100% of respondents said they were glad they came.
Every single respondent was glad they attended! In fact, many of them have already purchased tickets for the 2027 conference, and the super tickets, which include a pre-conference workshop, have already sold out.
Every one of those missing elements is missing on purpose. I didn’t forget to include them; I removed them to improve the conference.
No Pitch Appointments
Pitch appointments are the centerpiece of most writers’ conferences. You sign up for a 10 or 15-minute slot with an agent or acquisitions editor and try to sell them on your book.
Expense
But flying in enough agents and editors to fill a pitch room is expensive, and that cost gets passed on to every attendee, including indie authors and established authors, who don’t need to pitch agents. So while inviting a lot of agents and editors might seem good for authors, it actually discourages experienced and indie authors from attending.
Hierarchy
Pitch appointments also create a caste system. Attendees focus on networking up to the faculty rather than networking across to each other. The agent becomes the prize, incentivizing authors to follow agents around like ducklings and view other authors as competition for time slots. This caste system really interferes with author networking.
Distortion
It also distorts the conference teaching. Conferences that offer pitch appointments tend to give most of the teaching sessions to agents and editors because they’re already there. A good acquisitions editor isn’t necessarily good at teaching writing or book marketing. Very few agents or editors are good at teaching.
At the Novel Marketing Conference, I have personally selected every speaker. Every single one has been a guest on the podcast. They’ve run the gauntlet, and I only select people who know what they’re talking about. I have very high standards because there are many impostors in this business.
As a result, the conference attracts professionally-minded authors who see themselves as responsible for their own success. Without agents there to wave a magic wand and grant you success, the conference attracts fewer beginners or hobbyists.
Beginners want to pitch agents, and professionals want to learn wisdom.
There’s nothing wrong with pitching an agent or an editor; I simply don’t offer it at my conference.
No Breakout Tracks
Multi-track conferences force you to choose whether you go to the email marketing session or the book launch session. You pick one, miss the other, and tell yourself you’ll watch the recording, but you never get around to it. Even if you try, the recording is never great.
Creating a good recording and creating a good in-person experience are at odds. The best in-person experiences often make for the worst recordings. Recordings of in-person sessions tend to have lots of silence while people in the room write in workbooks. In-person Q&A sessions often have dialogue that doesn’t get picked up on the mic and make the recording much less valuable.
At the Novel Marketing Conference, there’s one room. Every session happens on the same stage, and every attendee attends every session. I select the topics and the sequence, then find the best speaker I know for each topic. Each session builds on the previous one. Since there’s only one track, every session has to be keynote quality. There’s no B stage where a weaker speaker can hide.
No Recordings
When cameras are rolling, attendees behave differently. They show up late, hang out in the hallway, and tell themselves they’ll catch the recording. They’re on their phones. They learn less, accomplish less, and hold back from asking questions because they don’t want to be on camera.
Turn the cameras and microphones off, and everything transforms. People take notes. They raise their hands. Sessions become conversations instead of lectures, and speakers feel comfortable sharing numbers and details they wouldn’t share on air or in a recording.
You end up getting information you literally couldn’t get online.
If you want recordings of me teaching book marketing, listen to the Novel Marketing Podcast, where I teach every week for free.
The conference is different in that it’s live, and if you miss it, you miss it.
What replaced all those traditional elements?
With all those traditional elements removed, you might be wondering what will replace them.
Writers Groups
The biggest replacement is writer’s groups. Before the conference begins, every attendee is placed in a small group of similar authors. I assemble these groups personally with my team. It’s the most difficult part of planning the entire conference.
We look at your website, research you, and try to match you with similar authors by genre and many other factors.
The groups have been the element that gets the best reviews. Past attendees consistently say the writers groups are the most valuable part of the conference. Many groups stay in touch and continue meeting on Zoom or in a special Discord long after the conference ends.
You might say this is the conference that launched hundreds of writers groups.
Coaches
Each small group also has a coach, who is a more experienced author I’ve handpicked to guide the sessions. Many of these coaches are authors I’ve personally been coaching for years in my mastermind groups. Others are previous or current conference speakers.
Having a coach in each group means you get expert-level feedback during the breakout exercises, not just during the main session. Your coach knows the materials, knows book marketing, and can apply what I’m teaching to your specific situation in real time.
The coaches also help make the conference feel smaller. You’re not in a room with 100 other authors. You’re in a group of six to eight people plus the coach. You’ll still get chances to meet everybody else, but that home base writers group makes the event much more approachable, particularly for shy authors. I hope to provide a conference experience where a shy author can come away with several author friends and colleagues.
Workbook
Because there’s just one track, we offer a 60 to 100-page workbook that every attendee receives. You write on the workbook paper with ink! Remember that relic of the past? The workbook is filled with guided notes, blanks to fill in, questions to answer, and workshop activities to complete.
With each session, you fill out your workbook, and when the conference is over, you’ll have a personalized strategy guide in your own handwriting.
One attendee from the first conference told me she’s still going back to her workbook years later. The goal is for this workbook to become an artifact, a treasure you put your effort into. You can even write your name and phone number in it because losing the workbook is really tragic.
Shuffling
During lunch, we reshuffle everybody. The lunch tables are themed around topics like podcasting, cover design, and crowdfunding. Sometimes our speakers host a table based on the content of their session. It’s a great way to kickstart a conversation and meet strangers.
What’s the difference between the red and blue years?
Many attendees from last year wanted to come back this year because every session is different from the prior year.
I’m managing a tension here. I don’t want the conference to get more advanced and impenetrable every year. I want it to always be approachable for first-time attendees. I also want authors to have a reason to come back.
That’s why we take an alternating red year and blue year approach. Whether your first year is Red or Blue, the next year will be completely new material. If you come a third time, that third year will “rhyme” with the first one. Think of it as two semesters of college where it doesn’t matter which semester you do first, but unlike college, it’s not $25,000 a semester, and it won’t take up three months of your life.
Though every session in the alternating year is different, the final session is always about productivity. The conference is in January on purpose. Flights and hotels are cheaper, and Texas is pretty nice most days in January. But the main reason we host it in January is so you can be inspired and plan for your year. The annual productivity talk is always presented by a different speaker. In 2027, you’ll hear from Marine Sergeant Jonathan Shuerger.
The ideal approach is to attend the conference for two days and then book a third day alone in your hotel room with your workbook to plan the rest of your year. You’ll enter the rest of 2027 with a written plan customized for you.
We do update the topics from year to year. Book marketing changes fast. Two years on the internet is like a decade in the real world. In the third year you attend, you’ll get updated versions of the topics we covered during the first year. As technology changes and you become a more advanced writer, the topics will apply to you in different ways.
2027 Schedule & Speakers
Thursday Pre-Conference Workshop (SOLD OUT)
Thursday is the pre-conference workshop, but tickets are completely sold out for 2027. On red years, it’s an advertising workshop, and in blue years, it’s a website workshop. These are incredibly popular and always sell out first. Patrons and previous attendees got early access to these tickets, and they snapped them all up.
On Thursday, I will also host a patrons-only ice cream social as a thank-you to my patrons. It’s a fun social activity for Austin-area authors. It’s open to all patrons of the Novel Marketing Conference, whether or not you’re attending the conference.
This year, we’ll also do a live recording of Author Update for a live studio audience. Doing it live is much more complicated technologically, and it might be a glorious disaster, but whatever happens, it’ll be fun.
Friday
Opening Keynote: Seth Ring:
Seth Ring delivers the opening keynote. Seth is a YouTuber, podcaster, and author of over 40 novels that have collectively sold over a million copies. He’s also teaching a later session on how to create a profitable writing business, which I’m personally excited about. We want to help attendees who want to make money with their writing and are more than just hobbyists.
How to Craft a Sales Pitch for Your Book (Thomas Umstattd, Jr)
This is one of the highest-rated sessions the conference has ever had, and it’s unique because it’s so interactive. Having a great pitch will help you with in-person sales, your back cover copy, and your advertising. Being able to articulate in just a few words not just why somebody needs to buy your book but why they need to start reading it right now changes everything.
How to Rapidly Grow Your Email List (Kelly Jo Wilson)
Kelly Jo Wilson has done this herself, growing her list rapidly even before her first novel came out. This is advice you can use right away, regardless of where you are in your career.
Email Onboarding Sequence Workshop (Thomas Umstattd Jr.)
We’ll map out how to create a drip sequence. You’ll draft your onboarding sequence in your workbook before the end of the first day.
Faculty Q&A Panel
We’ll close Friday with a faculty Q&A panel. I’ve been experimenting with different Q&A formats, and this schedule is tentative, so it’s subject to change.
Saturday
How to Create a Frenzy with Marketing Psychology (Thomas Umstattd Jr.)
I offer a course on marketing psychology, but it’s much cheaper to get the content at the conference because it’s included with everything else. Marketing psychology is a real unlock for authors.
Few authors understand reader psychology. Marketing psychology allows you to connect with a reader’s preexisting desires with your book. When you’re doing this right, marketing is easy because you’re finding people who already want your book, and you’re presenting it in a way that resonates with them. Marketing becomes less antagonistic, more friendly, and much more profitable when you approach it this way.
How to Kickstart a Book (Karyne Norton)
Kickstarter is always a popular topic. We only cover it every other year, and Karyne has had incredibly successful campaigns, even for her debut novel. She’s now kickstarted four novels and is very fluent in how to raise money to indie publish a book before the book comes out.
Kickstarter, when used correctly, can help you raise thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, before your book is published. If money is the challenge that’s kept you from indie publishing, crowdfunding could be the way to unlock that.
This session is a little more valuable for indie authors. All the other sessions are useful for both indie and traditional, both fiction and nonfiction. Traditionally published authors can kickstart their books, but the process is a little different. Not all publishers are Kickstarter-friendly, but some are.
Bestselling Book Launch Tactics (Thomas Umstattd Jr.)
I only teach my book launch method in the red year of the conference. It’s a proprietary method I’ve developed over the years, and I don’t give it away on the podcast.
Historically, I only taught it in a course I did with James L. Rubart called The Book Launch Blueprint, but that course is no longer available. Currently, the only way to learn my book launch method is to come to the conference. You can’t even learn it by joining somebody else’s launch team, because a core part of this method is not allowing other authors on your launch team.
By the end of the day on Saturday, you’ll have a written book launch plan in your workbook for your next book.
Productivity in 2027 (Jonathan Shuerger)
Then Jonathan Schurger closes with his session on productivity. It’ll be practical and funny. He’s exactly the right person to send you off fired up for the year ahead.
How do you get a ticket?
Visit NovelMarketingConference.com to purchase your ticket.
When you sign up, you’ll be offered a discount to get the Author Email Academy for 80% off. This is a great way to prepare for the conference, and the discount alone offsets a big chunk of the ticket price. If you’ve been thinking about the Author Email Academy, it complements this year’s conference.
If you attended the 2026 conference, we’d love to have you back. Every session will be new, your writer’s group will be different, the speakers will be different, and you can get that second “semester” of teaching. If you came to the 2025 conference, this year’s conference will rhyme with that one, but you’ll get updated content and learn from new speakers.
If you’ve never been, remember that 100% of surveyed attendees last year said they were glad they came. January is a great time to visit Austin, Texas. We have a great food scene. We purposefully don’t schedule evening events so that you can visit one of our amazing Austin restaurants with your new author friends.
While the super tickets are already gone, we still have standard tickets and gallery tickets available. They’re selling fast, but there’s a live count at NovelMarketingConference.com. When the tickets are gone, they’re gone because the space is limited.
I’d love to see you there!
Visit NovelMarketingConference.com to purchase your ticket today!
Featured Patron
Brandon M Wilborn, author of The Treasure of Capric
The Treasure of Capric is a fantasy adventure where witches wield dark magic, monsters stalk the wilds, and young monks wonder if miracles still exist.
Kurian’s troupe must battle deadly enemies, unravel ancient mysteries, and confront a bandit king to reclaim their sacred treasure. To survive, they must discover the truth about their land and become the heroes their legends promised.
Check out this epic fantasy that captures “a fantastical feeling of genuine awe,” according to Lorehaven Magazine.
