Well, I have to apologize. I thought I could manage this blog while attending a conference and taking a little time to see the New York/Connecticut countryside. But I failed you. I even pre-wrote four blog posts—one for each day that I would be away and I ended up posting only one of them.
What was the problem? Two things: I was having way too much fun and staying way too busy to spend much time blogging. And the Internet connection was lousy. Although, after complaining about the Internet everywhere I take my little Acer, I’ve decided that maybe the problem is with the computer. We will be testing it this week.
In the meantime, let me say that it was a wonderful two day conference preceded by and followed by two long, challenging travel days. I spoke at the Cat Writer’s Association conference in White Plains, New York on how to build promotion into your book. It seemed to go over well—the comments following my presentation were unsolicited and favorable. And the conference was extremely well run, inspirational, motivational and downright FUN!
I’m home now with access to truly fast speed Internet and I want to continue the theme I promised. Here is more on how to build your author platform.
This is my absolute favorite way to build my platform and I’ve been pursuing it for years!!! If you are a writer at heart, it is probably your favorite platform-building activity, as well. So how can you attract readers—develop a following through writing? Let me count the ways:
• Write articles or stories related to the theme/genre of your book and submit them to magazines, newsletters and websites. Lots of them. And don’t wait until your book is a book to start doing this. It’s never too soon to begin establishing yourself as an expert in your field or a wonderful, entertaining writer. Put your writing out there in front of your audience for years (or at least months) before your book is published and you will gain the name recognition you need in order to attract readers.
• Establish a blog and post regularly. People interested in the subject or genre of your book will find your blog through your tagline at the end of your articles, from the information on your business cards and brochures as well as through their Google alerts reports.
• Write booklets and pamphlets for a nonfiction book, and short story booklets for fiction. Either give them away as samples via your website and/or at your presentations, or bundle them with your book to offer more value to your customers. If you have a book on cars of the 1950s, you might create booklets featuring hood ornaments for that era, 1950s cars in famous movies, movie star car collectors or great photos of cars from this period. For a book on rainy day crafts for children, you could come up with a never ending array of booklets featuring paper crafts, scissor/cut-out crafts, kitchen crafts, Valentine’s day crafts, animal crafts and so forth.
• Write spin off books. Perhaps you have enough stories or information in you to create one or more additional books for your audience. I’ve found that promoting two or more books on the same topic or in the same genre takes pretty much the same effort as promoting one. And I also find that one book sells others. If someone is interested in my book promotion book, they will likely purchase one or more of my other books on publishing/book promotion.
Writing is an excellent way to promote a book as well as to build your credibility as the author of a book in a particular field or genre. If you are thinking about writing a book, begin the process of building your platform now by submitting articles or stories to publications nation/word-wide, blogging and so forth.
[…] Start with your greatest strength.You might not be able to get people to take the chance and buy your book, or convince them to even crack it if you’re giving it away for free. So, give them a way to sample your skills. […]