Writing and Publishing News

Check out my article this month in Fran Silverman’s Book Promotion Newsletter. It’s called “Book Promotion Ideas That Your Publisher Didn’t Tell You About.” In fact, I wonder if publishers provide their authors with ideas and resources for promoting their books.

Pay-to-publish companies offer their authors promotional help for additional fees, such as press release services. Some will make your book “returnable” for around $800. I have yet to meet an author who has benefited from this status, however.

Publishers sometimes purchase my book, 75 Good Ideas For Promoting Your Book by the dozens for their authors—to help them jumpstart their promotional programs. Good idea! All publishers should provide something like this for their authors.

The Willamette Writer (based in Portland, Oregon) published my piece, “Is Landing a Traditional Publisher Getting Easier?” in their January issue. This is an interesting question, isn’t it? And the article is interesting, too. Believe it or not, in this time of fierce competition for authors, this article offers hope. You might be able to get a copy of the newsletter by requesting it here wilwrite@willamettewriters.com.

Why would I spend time writing articles for fairly small newsletters? For the exposure—to gain additional credibility—to position myself as an expert in my field.

Of course, at the bottom of each of these articles appears my bio: “Patricia Fry is the executive director of SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network) www.spawn.org. She has been pursuing her publishing dream for over 35 years and has 29 books to her credit. Check out her array of books at http://www.matilijapress.com. Visit her informative blog at XXX.”

And

Patricia Fry is the executive director of SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artist and Writers Network) www.spawn.org. She is the author of 29 books, including The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book, http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html. Visit her informative publishing blog often XXX

Do you promote yourself, your website, your books or your services by submitting your related articles or stories in appropriate magazines and newsletters? If not, you should be.

Book Proposal Workshop Starts January 5!
Don’t forget to sign up for my online Book Proposal Workshop to start January 5, 2010. And I’ll be teaching my Book Promotion Workshop starting January 12, 2010. Taking classes online is as easy as reading and submitting your homework via email at your leisure. Taking my courses is like working with me one-on-one on your particular project for a fraction of my usual fee.

Check out the courses I offer at
http://www.matilijapress.com/courses.htm. Be sure to read “How does an online course work?”

You probably think you know all there is about your book. You wrote it, after all. You edited it numerous times and then you worked with an editor to fine tune it. You’ve heard/read me say that you (the author) are the best one to promote your book because you care more about it than anyone else in the world. And you, presumably, know more about it.

But you can still learn more about your book from your readers. Listen and they will tell you what they like and dislike about your book, how the story or information affected them, whether the material is useful and so forth. You will also learn from readers who your actual target audience is.

You might think it is young adult readers, when older women are actually devouring your story. You might have written your self-help book to help people break bad habits and later discover that your audience actually comprises their spouses, caregivers, friends, coworkers…

How do you discover these surprising truths about your book? By mingling with your readers. Don’t stay at home with your promotional to-do list and continually promote your book to the same demographic. Especially if sales are weak, it does little good to aim your sales pitch in the same direction over and over again.

Get out and meet your readers at book signings, related club and organization events, at conferences and book festivals. Set up speaking engagements in cities locally or nationwide.

You can meet your readers online, too. Participate in forums on the topic or genre of your book, and spend more time listening than speaking. Get active in websites related to your topic/genre.

Create an interactive aspect to your website so people can respond to your questions or share their impressions of your book.

You’ve heard me suggest these things before, haven’t you? This is something you should be doing throughout the process of promoting your book. But, today I am asking you to use these opportunities to truly get to know your audience.

Based on the comments from your readers, you may decide to shift your focus from one target audience to another. If you used digital printing technology or created an ebook, it’s relatively easy to make changes to your book periodically. You can update your book to include things your readers have asked for, correct mistakes they have found or give your novel a more interesting ending, for example.

I’ve known authors who bypassed the opportunity to hire an editor and who paid for it through really negative reviews. Some authors are wonderful storytellers, but truly awful writers.

Do yourself a favor and listen to your readers, even if it becomes a little painful. If your goal is to produce a meaningful, useful and/or interesting book, then you might actually want to have honest friends and colleagues read your manuscript before publication. Put away your ego and pay attention to what they tell you.

And, once your book is published, rely on your readers again—to tell you the best way to promote it.

For more about writing, publishing and promoting your book, read my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. My readers rave about this book. You can read some of the testimonials at my website—look along the left side of the book page: http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

You still have a week to sign up for Patricia Fry’s online Book Proposal Course. Learn more here:
http://www.matilijapress.com/course_bookproposal.htm

Yesterday, we talked about our emotions upon holding our completed book in our hands for the first time and the letdown that sometimes follows. Today, I’d like to discuss what comes next.
That’s promotion, of course.

But where does one start the process of promoting his/her brand new book? Here’s what I suggest:

• Set up a merchant account system, a paypal account or some other reasonable method of accepting payment for books sold. (This is assuming that you have done the right thing and have a well-established website designed to promote your book.)

• Send announcements to your entire mailing list—snail mail and email. (If you’ve been working on your mailing list while you’ve been writing your book, you may have hundreds of names by now.)

• Place announcements in all of the newsletters and at websites where you can publish such things for free or a minimal fee. This would include your association newsletters (SPAWN members can place announcements in SPAWNews for free), publications related to your genre/topic, your church bulletin, your alumni newsletter and so forth.

• Send well-written, pertinent, news-based press releases to all of your local newspapers and those in your former home-towns. Follow up to make sure you get some coverage.

• Solicit book reviews in several appropriate newsletters and magazines—those related to your genre/topic. (If you’ve done your homework, you’ve already researched these.)

• Contact appropriate bloggers and ask for an interview or ask if you can be their guest columnist for one post. (Presumably, you have already discovered key bloggers in your topic/genre and have made contact with them.)

• Write articles or submit some of your stories to appropriate publications. Again, you should have been doing this all along as a means of establishing your credibility in your field or becoming known in your genre. Now is the time to step it up.

• Begin contacting newspaper/magazine columnists in your topic nationwide and ask for an interview or a book review. If only a small percentage of newspapers feature you and/or your book in a column, your reach could extend into the hundreds of thousands of readers.

• Get your book on amazon.com and, perhaps, barnesandnoble.com, and other online bookstores.

• Visit independent bookstores in your area. Arrange for book signings and ask if they will carry your book in their store on consignment.

• Arrange to be interviewed on local or national radio programs.

• Set up some speaking engagements locally.

• Visit appropriate non-bookstores such as, gift shops, stationery stores, pet stores, art galleries, gyms, motorcycle shops, pharmacies, kitchen stores, nurseries, etc. You might have a better chance of having your books accepted if you arrange for your own point-of-purchase display.

Now this ought to keep you busy for quite a long time. If you stick with it, continue researching new opportunities and consistently follow through, you should ultimately sell numbers of books.

Disclaimer: Those of you with self-published books (you established your own publishing company) will realize the greatest benefit from these promotional activities. If your book was produced by a pay-to-publish service, you can pursue some of these activities, but you will discover some restrictions along the way because you don’t own the ISBN, because your “publisher” won’t always comply with your request for a shipment of books, and because it may not be cost effective for you to make an agreement with a bookseller, for example.

Learn more about how to pursue each of these activities in The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. You’ll also find numerous other promotional ideas. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

Sign up today for Patricia Fry’s next online Book Promotion Workshop to start January 12, 2010.
http://www.matilijapress.com/course_bookpromotion.htm

By the way, thank you to those who have been ordering The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book through Amazon.com. They just placed a large order for the book today. But the best way to order it is through Matilija Press at
http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

Christmas is over. Unless you look forward all year to the after-Christmas sales, you may be feeling a bit of a letdown today. It’s the same letdown feeling you have once your book is finally completed and you’re holding it in your hands.

You work for months or years researching for and writing your book. You go in search of a publisher or decide to self-publish—making many decisions and maybe putting out money at every turn. Throughout the process you worry and fret. You’re also wildly excited about bringing out your book. And then, one day, it arrives. You can actually embrace your completed book. You are living your dream of becoming a published author.

Once the celebrating is over, however, reality sets in and you wonder, “Now what?” Your sense of joy and extreme accomplishment begins to fade when you realize what comes next. The anticipation is over. The celebrating has stopped. And you’re left with responsibilities and obligations of major proportions.

After Christmas, all that remains are wrappings, trimmings and dirty dishes. You know what’s in the packages so carefully placed under your tree. You’ve experienced the delight in everyone’s eyes when they opened your gifts. What you once viewed with happy anticipation now makes you cringe. It’s a similar feeling for authors who find themselves facing what comes after publishing—the hugely serious job of marketing their books.

If you are working on a book or you’re thinking about writing one, do yourself a favor and prepare for that day that comes after you hold your book in your hands for the first time.

No matter where you are in the process of writing or producing your book, read my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book, NOW. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html. Read the testimonials along the left side of the page. Click to read some of the reviews. This book is serious ammunition for any author who wants to succeed in the highly competitive publishing field.

If you’ve already experienced that post-publication letdown—you have a book that you’re promoting and things aren’t going so well, read The Author’s Repair Kit. It will tell you how to breathe new life into a failing or faltering book. It may be a simple matter of marketing to the wrong audience. http:www.matilijapress.com/author_repairkit.html

Don’t forget to sign up for my online book proposal or book promotion workshops. Read more about the courses in the December 25th blog post.

As a writer of nonfiction, I have always been interested in newspaper and magazine columns. I thought it would be cool to be a columnist like Heloise, Erma Bombeck, Abbey, Ann Landers, Dr. Gott… I wondered, what’s it like to be responsible for writing a daily or weekly column? And how in the heck do these columnists come up with enough material for so many columns?

I actually landed a column in our small town newspaper early in my career (nearly 35 years ago). First, I studied the newspaper to see what was missing. There were already a variety of columns. What could I add to the line-up? I came up with the idea of a business column—Profiles in Business. I interviewed a couple of local business people and wrote up sample columns. I then presented my idea to the newspaper publisher. He hired me on the spot. I was a columnist. I wrote Profiles in Business every week for about three years, earning a whopping 25 cents per column inch.

I almost had a magazine column. In the late 1970s, I contributed a few articles to a new women’s sports magazine. I knew that they were still developing their magazine format, so I pitched an idea for a humor column related to women in sports. I sent the editor three sample columns and they hired me. My good luck turned sour, though, when the magazine went out of business before the column went live.

Isn’t a blog much like a column? As bloggers, we are responsible for filling space with interesting material on our particular topics.

Yes, bloggers are, in essence, columnists. We have the power to write how or what we want in our little blog spaces. We can be funny, sarcastic, satirical, serious or even crass. We create the personality of our blogs. And we can write whatever occurs to us, but it had better relate to our blog topic if we want our readers to return.

If you plan to start a blog, consider what you want it to be. Who is your audience and what will you offer them? How do you want to come across in your blog? Will you entertain, inform or teach? Can you come up with enough material to post at least once a week—preferably every day? Presumably, you will develop a blog related to your book topic/genre or your freelance writing work. So, along with your commentary, interviews, guests columnists, resource lists and solid informational articles, you’ll pitch your book or business.

Here’s your chance. If you’re like me and you’ve ever dreamed of having your own column, maybe the time has come. The blog, it seems, is the new column.