Executive Vice President, Jan Carrington, called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m.

Minutes from June meeting had been posted to the web site and were approved.

Guests were introduced.

Financial Report

Gail McMillan announced that as of June 1, 2005 our balance was $1,625.48. During the month of June we had $955 of income from dues and $299.92 of expenses. Therefore, the balance at the end of the month was reported to be $2,280.56. Gail also reported that we can boast 65 members.

Announcements

• Augustine Tennant is in the hospital at Hendrick. She had surgery that morning related to her battle with lung cancer and is in CCU. A card was circulated and signed by those present to send to her.
• A reporter from the Creative Pulse visited to cover our meeting for this new publication.
• Annual Contest entry deadline is August 2.
• If you want your writing published on the AWG web site, get it to Barbara Rollins. Let's give our site of fresh look and remove our out-of-date material.
• Mark your calendars for October 22. Michelle Medlock Adams will be here for our AWG Workshop. She is an inspirational writer, the author of multiple magazine articles and children's books, as well as a teacher of creative writing.

Brags and Sags

• Lynn Davidson sold some books during his recent trip to Alaska.
• Jan Carrington submitted two stories to Cricket magazine. Although she received rejection letters, she is to be commended for getting her work out to the publishing world.
• Many of our members are busy writing and polishing their articles for the Annual Contest.

The business portion of the meeting concluded much earlier than usual, so Barbara Rollins had each of the members stand and give a brief introduction of themselves and their writing interests.

Program

Diane Lyell entitled her program  Pixels to Paychecks  and emphasized how it is to our advantage to submit pictures with your articles. You will make more money and sales if you can do this successfully. Submitting quality pictures with your articles saves the editor time and money since they will not have to rely on stock photographers, wade through 500-1000 photos, and then face the hassle of returning each picture she doesn't want. The going rate for accepted photos is $1500 per picture. Pictures + article = one stop shopping for the editor.

Diane explained that the best strategy for this is to invest in a digital camera. Editor want digital photos. With digital you have more freedom to experiment without the cost of film. You can send your items out to more non-competing markets at one time.

Diane provided handouts with detailed information on what to look for in an advanced amateur digital camera and included photo tips.

Remember to have a variety of shots for the editor to choose from. Cover shots are always vertical, so think vertical as well as horizontal. Make sure your photos are relevant to your article and accurately illustrate what you are discussing.

Diane concluded her presentation by presenting a slide show of a collection of photographs she has prepared for submission to Country Discoveries Magazine and encouraged the audience to give her feedback on what they liked and didn't like as if they were the editors. She also answered questions from the floor.

Minutes respectfully submitted by,



Karen Witemeyer
AWG Secretary