Tracey Adams of Adams Literary gave a great talk titled "Contract Basics: The Art & Science of Publishing Agreements.
I love this kind of thing at SCBWI conferences since it has the effect of reinforcing the fact that SCBWI is a "professional" organization. Plus Tracey obviously enjoys and is very good at her job. Her enthuasiam for the business side of children's books is infectious.
Arthur Levine of Arthur A Levine Books was part of a panel discussion which also included Mark McVeigh, Krista Marino and Elizabeth Parisi. The discussion was about "Professional Criticism:How to Receive It and What To Do With It". This was a pretty serious topic handled in a really fun light-hearted way. It was nice to hear that editors and art directors are as nervous about giving critiques as we all are to recieve them
Rachel Griffiths headlined a breakout session titled "How to Catch and Editors Attention". This was great fun because I know Rachel best from my trips to NYC to do portfolio drop-offs when she was Arthur Levine's assistant. Our meetings are typcially quite brief, involving Rachel handing me back my portfolio with a nice note or comment. Since it's a bit tougher in recent years to schedule face to face meetings with editors and ADs these interactions were often the highlight of a day spent running all over the city. So attending Rachel's session was an opportunity to get a clearer sense of who Rachel is both as a person and as an editor. Turns out she's a really funny and engaging speaker.
More sketches from the conference to come . . .
