The last few months at MiPA have been a bit of a whirlwind of behind-the-scenes activity. The MiPA team has been hard at work shoring up some neglected infrastructure and planning our programming calendar for the year. Some updates follow.
Midwest Book Awards
The timeline for the book awards has shifted this year. Submissions will open on Thursday, January 15, and run through Sunday, March 15. Our gala and awards are still planned for June.
We’re sorry that this process has taken a while. We were conceptually ready to go several months ago, but unexpected problems with themes and abandoned plugins on our website required a substantial rebuild of the site by our awesome administrative coordinator, Allison Hawkins. We didn’t plan for that, and the amount of time it would take us to get ready to launch wasn’t clear until very recently.
Over the next few days, we’re going to double-check some process and judging FAQs and the open to public submissions starting in just one week.
Your patience is appreciated, and I personally apologize that the complexity of the fixes made it more challenging to be transparent about the ultimate launch date.
Heavy Lifting, Lifted
Since the new board of directors took office at the beginning of July, we’ve done a lot of work to bring our association toward a more stable structural footing. A few wins of note:
- We lifted our website from one platform vendor to another. And, accidentally, found a need to complete major changes to how it was designed and configured.
- We dusted off our email servers to ensure they were configured optimally.
- We closed a wonky Dropbox owned by a long-departed president in favor of a modern platform with several administrators.
- We have migrated banks to a modern financial-services platform. This change means we’re doing away with cumbersome PayPal and Google Forms links for thinks like book-award submissions and ordering gold and silver seals.
- We are retiring our MailChimp account, in favor of a blog-to-inbox strategy following a carefully planned editorial calendar.
- We closed a few duplicate/overlapping social-media accounts.
These updates — and a ton more! — are intended to future-proof MiPA for many years to come. The efficiencies we’ve gained helps our staff and board to focus more clearly on serving the needs of our community. That said, they’re not really visible to most members. I wanted to pass along this information so that you know that MiPA is doubling down on our mission to foster community, celebrate quality, and raise the profile of Midwestern independent book publishers.
A More Connected Future
MiPA has historically focused on member meetings and the book awards. As we anticipate a more complex and more financially challenging environment for the indie players in our industry, we’re working to connect the dots with other stakeholders, like indie booksellers, so that we can lift each other up. Part of that future might include ways to connect independent authors and small presses together to share best practices and local news.
If you have ideas or needs about how MiPA can better support you beyond our current programming schedule, please send me your thoughts to president@mipa.org.
Upcoming Events
Don’t forget our upcoming member meet-and-greet conversations:
- The Anatomy of an Anthologist with author and editor Jennifer Brozek — Tuesday, January 13. Please register to receive the join link!
- Archiving and Literary Estates with Jason Aukerman, PhD, director of the Ray Bradbury Center — Tuesday, February 10.
- Public Relations with Sean C.W. Korsgaard — Tuesday, March 10
Our “second Tuesday” virtual meetings start at 6:30p Central with a member meet-and-greet and open Q&A; the program with our featured speaker runs from 7p until 8p or a bit later. You’ll receive registration links for future presentations a week or two before the actual event, so stay tuned for more.
We’re erring on the side of “less is more” regarding our ongoing email schedule; if you need to reference what’s going on with MiPA, you can always read the blog. (These messages are our blog posts, delivered by email!)
Thank you for being independent together with MiPA. We look forward to seeing you at a virtual member meeting soon!
Stay warm and productive, and see you soon!
Jason Gillikin
MiPA President