Wow. What a conference!
It has been an amazing (and exhausting) week. Ali and I are very grateful to everyone for participating and making this conference another, kick-butt success!
When we started IndieReCon as a free online conference three years ago, it was just me and Ali along with a few indie authors from our support group, the Indelibles.
Last year, when the conference had over 25,000 visitors, we knew we would need extra support from some of the Big Guns in the industry. So we stretched over the pond and begged/bribed/coaxed/begged-
Therefore, we have tons of people to thank, so bear with us.
First, we want to thank all of our wonderful speakers . Without their time, brilliant knowledge, and wonderful giveaways, this conference would be a total bust!
We want to thank our partner in crime – the Alliance of Independent Authors and team – for their unbreakable energy. A small army of volunteers worked quietly in the background to help manage the event, keep our website Gremlins at bay, and provide undying emotional support (and trust us when we say we needed that!).
We want to give a loud shout out to ALLi Director Orna Ross for late night chats (we are actually convinced there are 8 of her because how does she do it all??) and our project manager/website man, David Penny. Special thanks to our social media team including Christine Nolfi in US, Jay Artale and Ian Sutherland in UK and Karen Lotter in South Africa and the ALLi press team, Nerys and Valerie, who all helped spread the word about IndieReCon.
We want to thank our brilliant Press and Media Sponsor, Miral Sittar from Bibilocrunch. She went way beyond her duties of press releases and marketing support to become our U.S tech guru backed by her sidekick, Samantha Warren, who also helped organize all the generous giveaways.
Lastly, we would like to thank all of our sponsors including Ingram Spark (Gold), Bublish (Silver), Draft2Digital (
Thank you also to our giveaway sponsor KOBO for providing our grand prize!
Note from Orna in London re Live-streamed Event (THE LONDON BOOK FAIR INDIE AUTHOR FRINGE).
“All our sponsors were so generous in their support, not just monetarily, but in understanding our mission and wanting to support it. A huge thank you to Jacks Thomas and Orna O’Brien at The London Book Fair (LBF), who enabled us to bring the first LBF Fringe Festival to the fabulous and rather famous Foyle’s of Charing Cross Road. And to the events team at that bookstore, most especially Gavin, the invisible engine who kept the day running and who, along with colleagues Andy and Alex, managed to save our live-stream at the 11th hour.
To the tech team who filmed and streamed the day to six continents: Henry, Charlie and Nick, you rock!
Thanks too to the wonderful Triskele collective who organized the 2015 Indie Author Fair, to the indefatigable Porter Anderson who advised on programming and grounded the second half of our conference — not to mention bringing news of our doings to Futurebook and beyond.
Our speakers were fantastic — entertaining and thought-provoking, providing us with so much food for thought. Our thanks to them and in particular to our panel chairs, Porter again, Toby Mundy, Joanna Penn and Debbie Young. To CJ Lyons and Steena Holmes, who crossed the Atlantic to be with us. And to Dan Holloway for his poem, “Because”. Because what’s a writers’ conference without a little poetry?
My personal thanks to Jay Artale, David Penny and Yen Ooi… where would we have ended up without your dedication and drive over these past weeks? (I reckon I’d be in a home for the bewildered!)
Our gold sponsor, Ingram Spark, has been a rock of support throughout IndieReCon and especially for our live-streamed London event — feeding and watering us between events and in the evening sponsoring a wine reception to enjoy, as we met readers and sold our books. They also printed off free copies of our guide, Opening Up To Indie Authors for all delegates and their generous sponsorship allowed us to keep the London day-conference free to ALLi members, and the online conference free to all.
Finally my thanks to those members, here in London and all over the world, who make ALLi the truly global, hugely supportive network that it is. Watching you working together for each other makes going to work each day a pleasure and privilege.
And now back to Ali & Shelli…
We’d also like to join Orna in thanking everyone who helped make our first London LIVE event a total success and fun to watch!
And we want to thank YOU – the attendees – for your patience, support, tweets, and retweets. As with any conference (especially virtual online ones), we had technical glitches and sneaky Gremlins. We really appreciate you hanging on as we worked through the hiccups. This was the first year we tried some new Google Hangouts and Website tools. As you know, virtual conferences are definitely a challenge, but we think it is the only way to go.
Please take time to visit the web sites of our wonderful sponsors and speakers when you get a chance. You can show your appreciation to them (for donating their information and time for free) by seeing what they have to offer in the way of books or services!
As always – the 2015 information will remain on the site as well as all of our content from previous conferences.
Next week, we will be posting the giveaway winners as well as an exit survey. Please fill it out for us! We use that feedback to shape the next conference.
Until then, “Make indie publishing your mission—possible!”
Thank you! We hope to see you next year.
SR (Shelli) Johannes and Ali Cross
