Newpaper Articles

The article resulting from my interview with the reporter for our local weekly paper came out today. I am impressed and flattered. Hope all articles are this nice.
I wrote a press release for a regional daily and an article is promised in Saturday's paper. If it turns out as well as the article in our local paper I'll be confident enough to send press releases to more regional and national papers.
When I wrote the press release I remembered everything except the most important item; where someone can buy my book. I had to send a corrected press release. Good thing I am starting locally where I can get away with my dumb errors.

More Dumb Mistakes

The lessons learned continue. All the advisers of on line book marketing say to use Twitter to direct people to your Blog and your Blog to your Web Site where they can buy your book. Good plan. Four weeks after I had these plans in place, or so I assumed, I was driving home when it dawned on me that I may have made a stupid error. Right. When I checked I found that I had included all kinds of links in my web site but no links in the blog back to the web site. Thus people that followed my Twitter posts to my blog had no way to find my web site without a search, which isn't likely to be very successful given the newness of the site. It's fixed now. Just in time as my book is finally available for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. However, at considerably more cost than on the publisher AuthorHouse's site.

Interview With Reporter

I had my first interview with a newspaper reporter about my book. The reporter is the sister of my next door neighbor and she goes to our church so we are friends. This is good as perhaps she'll have pity on my being a novice. It wasn't my first interview but the last one was some time ago and really left a bad taste for reporters as that one had an axe to grind and really didn't care about my views. It's not fun to have your views distorted for someone else's benefit. I have higher hopes for this interview. I also see that another area paper had a nice article today on a local author and her new book. She is using the same epublisher I used. Maybe I'll contact her and share experiences. I need to get in gear and contact the other area paper to see if they will do an article on me like they did for the other new author.

There Must Be A Better Way

All the book marketing advisers recommend joining many groups; one said as many as 50, and checking them each day. I am finding this a very time consuming task and since it is impolite to turn every comment you make into a blatant pitch for your book it is not a very rewarding task. I don't mind the unrewarding part but the time it takes is getting to me. I need to find a way to keep this type of work to about an hour a day. There are other things to do in life. I know I need to work on ways to better link my social network sites and maybe follow more blogs. I think it's easier to follow blogs as they can be syndicated into Google Reader or Yahoo where it is easy to check on a large number quickly. If I find any way to streamline this process I'll share it.

Start Book Marketing Early

I recently read a piece advising authors to begin their book marketing campaign a year ahead of their expected publication date. At the time I thought this was way too early. But upon more reflection, and working on marketing of my book, it's beginning to look like good advice. I expected to work an hour or two a day on marketing. It's turning out that it takes more because I didn't do enough preparatory work ahead of the publication date. Too late now for me but if you are planning on marketing via the web I also recommend that you start months ahead of publication rather than weeks like I did. I also came across a site with good advice on web marketing that I'll share here. It's by Maureen Hume and the site is http://blog.marketingtipsforauthors.com/2009/10/easy-affordable-marketing-by-maureen.html.

An Important Web Site

I learned of a great site for new authors from someone on twitter. If you are a new author and expect to be faced with marketing your book as I am check out. http://www.authors.com/profiles/blogs/the-usage-of-social-media   There are additional important posts for new book marketers, e.g. check out the posts on Sept. 3, 13 and 25.

A Twitter "Aha"

I think I am figuring out twitter. I started a twitter account because the book marketing advice said to. I flailed around for a week or so before I got a hint that to acquire followers you need to follow people. Then I had to learn how to find people that I wanted to follow. More advice was to download tweetdeck; which I did  and that helped some but not to easily find the people I am interested in. Finally, I asked another twitterer and got the answer on how to use tweetdeck. It worked and I am not building followers. More importantly I think I am beginning to see how to use twitter and why it's valuable.There are many things that we do that have  to do with either sharing information (our blogs and web sites) or seeking information (e.g. via search engines). However, there are some types of information that need to be shared with people directly and some types of information that other people can supply faster and easier than by other means. This is where twitter shines. It connects you easily and quickly with other people that you want to share information with or seek information from. It takes some investment of time to build the right connections. I see this as a winnowing process. Follow many people then some of them will follow you. Many will drop you and you will drop many but over time you can build the right connections with people that you want to share with and that you want information from. Now, I am going to try this approach for a week or so and see if it works as well as I think it might.

Library Book Signings

I visited my local library today and talked to a friend that arranges the special events. I wanted to know the etiquette of book signings. I found that an author can either be invited or ask for the opportunitiy. It is alright, at least at my local library, to bring books to sell. They prefer that you give them a copy rather than having to buy one- not surprising. Finally, they don't pay unless you happen to be a best selling author that demands to be paid.
As soon as I get a book in hand I will revisit my library and arrange a signing.

Latest stumblings

My latest dumb move was to forget to inform my publisher of both of my summer and winter addresses. The result was that they sent my final proof copies of both the soft and hard cover books to my winter address and I won't be there for a month. Fortunately my next door neighbor gave them a quick check so I authorized the publisher to proceed with printing. Lucky for me my next door neighbor is such a saint.

I continue to struggle with the social network stuff. I received an advice email today that suggested an author start the emarketing a year ahead of the expected publishing date. I wish I had seen that advice a year ago. Go to Pre-Natal Care for Your Book by Lynn Serafinn for the good advice that I got late. And if you figure out how to use tweetdeck let me know.

Double Check Your Social Media Sites

Per all the advice I read I signed up for Facebook. Neat site and I connected with several high school friends I hadn't seen in years. However, I wasn't very careful to check all the details. My son, younger and more savy about such things informed me last night that my facebook profile could only be seen by those signed up as friends. Not very useful as a marketing tool. I had made the mistake of assuming the profile was public and didn't check. Apparently Facebook's default is for privacy, which is a good policy, but not obvious to novices like me. So, the lesson I learned is that it is necessary to double check all the settings on these social network sites. They may not be doing what you think.

First Sale

Yesterday was a milestone day. My first book was sold. Whereas that is a trivial event it was exciting for me as a first time author. I imagine it's like the first dollar a store owner earns, frames and hangs on the wall of the shop.

Organizing Web Stuff

I have seen a number of suggestions for organizing links, subscribing, etc in order to manage the stuff it is necessary to follow and update when trying to market via the web. I am finding that is more difficult than the suggesters indicate. At first I thought I would be good to use Yahoo as it looked to me like Yahoo kept things on a common page whereas Google has a great page called IGoogle and another for subscriptions called Google Reader. I messed around a bit with Yahoo but didn't get very far. I actually gave up because the Yahoo portfolio manager just isn't as easy to use as Google's. I have now settled on Google. First, because I like Google calender and Google's financial portfolio follower. I use a IPOD Touch and it syncs calender only with Microsoft Outlook (and only the new version of Outlook). Fortunately Google calender and Outlook cross sync automatically (once you set that up). After some fussing around I have managed to bring the blogs I follow and the comments on my personal blogs into Google reader. Now that I have an acceptable process I'll see how it works for awhile.