What is Clockwork Dragon?

Yesterday I got to participate in an online launch party for the sci-fi anthology Unnatural Dragons. This was the first collection of stories from Clockwork Dragon authors, and included contributions from Jeffrey Cook, Sechin Tower, Lee French, and myself. I’m also going to get to hang out with my fellow Clockwork Dragon folks tomorrow at Capital Indie Book Con at Evergreen State College. With these and many more shared events in the future, I thought it might be a good time to explain just what Clockwork Dragon actually is.

The short answer is that several local indie authors decided to partner together to help facilitate selling books at Cons, festivals, and other events. As such, we are a co-op, splitting table fees and other costs in exchange for shared display space. This allows us to attend far more events that we could by ourselves as well as having multiple people available to watch the vendor table. But Clockwork Dragon is much more than that.

The philosophy of the group is to use soft-sell techniques to pair the right reader with the right book, whether it’s our own or someone else’s. That means that when someone comes to our table, we don’t act like carnival barkers and aggressively start shoving our books in their face. We let people browse, and if they seem interested in actually shopping, we ask what kind of book they like to read. Based on their answer, we’ll make a recommendation of whatever book on the table would fit their needs the best. I’ve seen this in action, and it’s a lot of fun when everything connects together.

The best part about being in Clockwork Dragon is that it allows me to play to my strengths while relying on others to do what they’re best at. I consider myself very lucky to have partnered together with such terrific authors (including Nikki McCormack, our newest member) and I look forward to continuing to work together to spread the word about our stories.