Worldcon 2025: In Summary
Five years into my author career, I’ve done my fair share of events. I hit the local book fairs, comic conventions, holiday bazaars, festivals, and farmer’s markets. I go to whatever local bookstores will have me. I’ve gotten very used to lugging boxes of books from venue to venue in my book wagon. I’m very much in the “scratching and clawing my way up” phase of my career and have been since Day 1. My readership lives and dies by these events, so when I heard that Worldcon 2025 was to be hosted here in Seattle, I knew I needed to be there. As a vendor. As a panelist. Anything. Please.
I applied, and then I waited. As luck (or perhaps prominent internet presence) would have it, I was accepted as both a panelist AND a vendor for the Dealer’s Room.
I did not get nearly as many pictures and videos of the convention as I’d hoped. From set-up to tear-down, the week was a non-stop whirlwind of panels, pitching, selling, and mingling. My feet are tired, but my heart is full. Five days of vending, eight panels, three afterparties, and countless amazing conversations later, I’m ready to do it all again.
In the Dealers Room-
When I wasn’t on panels, my booth on the Dealer’s Room floor kept me plenty busy. Not only was I pitching my books to new readers, but I was finally meeting long-time readers and peers in-person. Thursday was the only day I wasn’t involved in convention programming, and it was the day where I talked the most. My booth proved a good spot to catch other professionals on their way around the show floor, giving me ample opportunity to catch up with author and reviewer friends as well as chat with bigger name authors like Matt Dinniman, Travis Baldree, Gail Carriger, Becky Chambers, and Holly Black. One gentleman approached because he liked my covers (shout out to artist Maria Mondloch), and midway into our conversation, I realized I was speaking with Howard Tayler (Schlock Mercenary), a host on my favorite writing podcast, Writing Excuses. This was an extra special interaction as I’d listened to the Writing Excuses podcast daily while writing my first book. To have that book’s cover catch the eye of one of the hosts was, to date, one of the most validating moments in my career as an author.
To be perfectly candid, sales weren’t quite what I had been hoping for. To save money, I’d signed up for a half-table booth rather than a full table, and while my table mate (graphic novelist Keezy Young) was wonderful (seriously, Keezy is GREAT—follow them here), many shoppers thought our booths were together and would only stop to speak with one of us before moving onto the next table. Additionally, many attendees flew into town for the convention, and it is difficult to sell potential readers on brick-sized books that they’ll have to fit in their luggage. I made extra effort to push digital copies, but it remains to be seen if the convention helps boost ebook and audiobook sales in the coming weeks.
Panel 1- Class is in Session: Boarding Schools
My first panel of the week was Wednesday afternoon and featured a discussion about Boarding School settings in YA fiction. I sat on this panel with Gail Carriger, Janet Forbes, and Hilary Hertzoff, and while I did my best to offer insight, I spent most of the hour blown away by the wisdom, eloquence, and purse fashion of my fellow panelists (no, really— just LOOK at Gail’s beautiful teapot purse in the picture). I did get to gush about how boarding school settings set stories up perfectly for my favorite character archetype— The Mentor Figure. Overall, we agreed that boarding school stories are well suited to YA because the lack of parental proximity allows us to more easily explore Coming Of Age themes without killing off the parent characters (though, sometimes we still can’t help ourselves on that front).
Panel 2- Social Media Marketing for Indie Authors
Between Emerald City Comic Con and Worldcon, I’ve now been a panelist for this topic three times, and every time I’ve had something new to say. Social Media is an ever-changing and unpredictable landscape, which is part of what makes it so exciting to me. P.L. Stuart proved a wonderful moderator, and I enjoyed discussing different approaches to making social media sell books with fellow authors Jonathan Davenport, Claire Jones, and Valerie Frankel. The biggest takeaway from this conversation was that even if social media is in constant flux, meaningful engagement beats out follower number and viral moments in terms of what sells books in the long-term.
Panel 3- Whose Science is it Anyways?
Friday afternoon saw my return to improv comedy after a nine year hiatus. The “Whose Science is it Anyways” panel featured me and five scientists (who were all much smarter than I am) as we explained real scientific terms with all the confidence of experts but none of the factual truth. I had expected a small audience turn out for this show since it coincided with a big fantasy panel happening at the same time but was pleasantly surprised by our large (and enthusiastic) crowd. Even more pleasantly surprising, I was delighted to discover that even though I hadn’t done improv comedy since college, I was still funny enough to elicit some laughs!
Panel 3- Magic, Machines, and Mental Health
Going from a comedy show straight to a panel discussing mental health representation in speculative YA fiction delivered a bit of whiplash, but this is a topic near and dear to me. My newest release, Skalterra By Nightmare, was especially fit for this topic as the FMC, Wren, deals with anxiety and anxiety-related trichotillomania. The panel also gave me the opportunity to discuss writing about postpartum depression in my short story, Skalbroken, which first published in the Blades for Hire anthology is now available for free to listen to on my website here. Jenna Lee-Yun, Amanda Helander, Shana Targosz, and Victoria N. Shi (moderator) were amazing to sit on a panel with, and we all agreed that no matter what you are going through, you are not alone.
Panel 5- Table Talk
Saturday started bright and early with a 9 AM Table Talk. As a lesser known author, I was excited that one person did in fact sign up to chat with me. Fellow author Amanda Cherry had her Table Talk at the same time, and as she also only had one sign-up, we opted to merge tables. Her sign-up had already read my trilogy, so I loved getting to chat with him about his thoughts on Samantha’s story as we all forged new connections and sipped our morning coffee together.
Panel 6- Skibidi What? How Teens Talk
Anyone who has ever spoken to me about the writing process knows that dialogue is my favorite element to write, so when I saw there would be a panel on writing dialogue for teenage characters, I signed up faster than you can say “yeet”. I felt lucky just to be chosen for the topic, and THEN I found out the moderator was THE Holly Black. I spent most of Saturday with my stomach in knots, but Holly was incredibly kind, gracious, and funny— as was fellow panelist Diana Ma. Despite the goofy name of the panel, we all agreed that when it comes to writing teen dialogue, it’s best not to pander to youth and whatever slang is currently in vogue, but to find the heart of the character and bring it forward through their spoken words.
Panel 7- Building Community as a MG/YA Author
It was a genuine miracle I was at all coherent by the time Sunday rolled around. At this point in the week, I was more than exhausted, but as someone who has struggled to find community as both a YA author and a self-published author, I rallied the last of my brain cells to give whatever insight I could scrape together. It turned out to be a wonderful panel. As introverted as many writers are, we all, to some degree, crave a community that understands the struggles of the craft. Storytelling, after all, is an inherently social exercise. I ended up sharing a deeply personal story about rejection by peers and how it steered me towards the people who mattered, and I tried to emphasize that the value of our work and our careers is not defined by those who look down on our publishing route (or genre!) of choice.
Panel 8- Building Your YA Squad
After a surprisingly emotional previous panel, the end was in sight. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every moment of Worldcon, but with four hours left in the convention, I was a new type of exhausted. However, under Maya Prassad’s panel moderating skills, Fonda Lee, Diana Ma, and I engaged in a lively discussion around the interpersonal connections and character archetypes that make a good “YA Squad”. A big theme was the idea of opposition existing between the protagonists to help build tension and conflict as the plot moves them towards their face-off against the antagonist.
Final thoughts:
As we drove home Sunday night, my husband asked me what letter grade I would give my overall Worldcon 2025 experience. I thought a moment, weighing the conversations I’d had over the week, reflecting on my panels, and quickly calculating how many boxes of unsold books sat in our backseat, and then finally replied with an enthusiastic A+. Sure, I didn’t sell as many books as I’d hoped, but I’d still done decent in terms of profit and one convention-worth of sales wasn’t ever going to catapult me out of the “Scratching and Clawing” phase of my career, no matter how well I’d done. As for the panels I’d spoken on and the connections I’d made, those were priceless. Worldcon 2025 was more than just another convention on my busy vending schedule— it was a career highlight. Part of me isn’t quite sure how I’m going to top it. The other part of me is looking at flights from Seattle to Anaheim for August 2026.
Note: The vast majority of these pictures are courtesy of Chelsea (@_thats.what.she.read_) who you can find delivering book content on Instagram here. It is the people we surround ourselves with that can make or break a big event like this, and Chelsea was an amazing booth helper, photographer, snack-bringer, and unofficial groupie.