We invited four Galatea authors to spend the weekend in Berlin for Inkitt’s first Author Summit.
Over the years, we’ve built relationships with so many of our authors and have watched them evolve, grow, and achieve new heights of success. Recently, we invited Galatea authors S.S. Sahoo (The Arrangement), N.K. Corbett (Chasing Kiarra), L.S. Patel (The Lycan’s Queen), and Danni D (Broken Queen) to attend our inaugural Author Summit in Berlin. We exchanged so many hugs and congratulatory words that were long overdue!
The weekend kicked off on Friday afternoon at our company offsite. We invited the authors to participate in an Author Panel where we played a trivia game, hosted by Kylie Koews (Author Relations Associate), followed by a Q&A session where Inkers could ask the authors questions.
On Saturday, we fuelled up at a Greek restaurant, Hummus + Friends, to get everyone warmed up and to break the ice. We learned some fun facts about our authors, such as Danni doesn’t usually eat vegetables but was pleasantly surprised by the vegan offering at Hummus + Friends. L.S. Patel flew into Berlin following her family vacation at a dog retreat in the UK. N.K. Corbett is currently pursuing a career in publishing, thanks to her enjoyment of working with Galatea. S.S. Sahoo is interested in engineering and working on getting her Bachelor degree in Urban Infrastructure.
After lunch, we made our way over to Inkitt HQ for the first session of the day. Ali Albazaz (CEO & founder) opened with a speech on Inkitt’s mission & the crucial roles that our authors and readers play in everything we do. It was a really inspiring speech that helped humanize Inkitt in the eyes of the authors.
“I was sitting on that stage when it finally hit me: I’m a real author!” – N.K.Corbett
We spent the rest of the afternoon getting direct feedback from our authors on what our team can do to better support our authors. It ended up being a very creative session where we bounced ideas off one another. Some of these ideas are even going to be added to our product roadmap!
(Stay tuned for the announcement.)
On the final day of the Author Summit, Elana Zeltser (Story Intelligence Associate) hosted a writing workshop. We looked at different examples of ways to help improve their works and the authors participated in writing exercises. They rewrote the opening scenes to their books and strengthened cliffhangers at the end of a chapter. It was so cool to see the authors in their element. The workshop definitely got everyone’s creative juices flowing and was something the authors found extremely helpful.
Then, we had a conference call with an author who’s successfully utilized TikTok to grow their readership. The #BookTok community on TikTok is thriving and influences a lot of the books you see on the “bestsellers” lists and on “popular” shelves at a bookstore. So, we wanted to give our authors the tools to build a community on TikTok and help them expand their reach.
Afterwards, we spent some time picking our authors’ brains. Lauren Burns (co-founder of Galatea) gave a look into some of our current marketing efforts. The authors were pleasantly surprised at how much effort went into marketing each story and see its impacts on the readership of each story. The authors also shared unique and creative ways to advertise their stories that our team hadn’t thought about before.
“This weekend has been so amazing for me, creative-wise! I was in the biggest writers block for such a long time but I finally have ideas and am super excited to start writing!” – L.S. Patel
Sophie Yurkoski (VP Content Strategy & Analysis) took some time after the workshop to thank the authors for participating in the Author Summit. Not only did the authors feel inspired, but their excitement and constant flow of ideas inspired her and the other Inkers. She reiterated the importance each author has on Inkitt and Galatea and thanked them for being open with us.
Kylie then presented each author with a Top Galatea Author certificate, celebrating the success of their books.
The weekend was a huge success! The authors were in high spirits and eager to get back to writing. Our authors are at the heart of everything we do, so it was wonderful to have this time together to show them how much we value and appreciate them.
This is only the first of many Author Summits. If you would like to join our next event, kickstart your journey with us by uploading your story on Inkitt.
