A Learning Experience from Promoting...

Well I've learnt a lot about book promotion this past week, so I thought I'd share a few of the things I've discovered.

Plan ahead

It might help you to make a list of all your potential outlets for advertising your book- flyers that can be left at any local shops, libraries, writers groups and community settings (these do depend upon the genre of your book of course, and permissions).

Local newspapers - worth looking at the free papers that get put through the door; if you can find a local slant to appeal, as with any regional paper you buy. (Our daily paper has a weekend supplement with the Saturday edition and includes books, and local related articles- often by specific writers, so send a suitably adapted press release.)

Check out local radio- if you're in a big (UK) city you'll possibly have a BBC radio station. You may find a show during the day that has a book slot that would welcome local writers.

Flyers with your book cover, author name, where it's available (for e-books) and the price, plus a bit of the blurb. More can go by e-mail nowadays but please don't just send it to everyone on your contact list and every writer you have a contact address for. That is spamming them and they will not appreciate it, or buy your book. You can lose more friends and contacts that way.

Social media- hopefully you have a presence on Facebook and Twitter; so you've made friends who might retweet a message when you're tweeting about your book launch, or giving links to where they can read about and buy your book.

If you've created a page for your book, invite your friends to like it.

For the anthology we started with the important posts - images of the book, the back page, and the gorgeous Lola, trained by the charity we're giving 10% to.

Each day a small related link was posted as a countdown to the official launch, which hopefully kept the book in the back of readers minds, and coming back to find out more each day.

On launch day as many of the writers who could do so blogged, visited, commented, tweeted and retweeted, and posted on Facebook, also sharing. (Be warned it is tiring, so have regular breaks.)

And then there were the launch parties...

Only time will tell how sales from all sources have done, but yesterday the anthology was 17th in the kindle store anthologies list. Of course it's dropped back today as everything has gone back to normal and other anthologies get promoted.

As is inevitable there were the odd typos that slipped through, but they've now been corrected.

If you're just one person promoting a book you can only do so much. And a lot of it can be done online to reach more potential readers, so choose your best methods to get the news out and books sold.

A really important point to remember when approaching local press/radio- especially at this time of year; are there any major events going on, either locally or nationally?
Last weekend was Remembrance Sunday, and this Friday is Children in Need- both big news events, so I'm not approaching local press about the anthology until early next week, and hopefully it won't get passed by.

(It may still be, but why make it harder for yourself spending time sending out press releases that won't get read because there are big events going on with lots of local coverage filling the pages?)

I'll be adding the book cover in my sidebar (somewhere). It's a lovely reminder that I've been published in a book before I'm another year older... :-)

Are there any tips you would like to pass on? If so please leave a comment below.

Say Hello to Serena Lake...

I've mentioned Serena before, so I thought it was time to introduce her properly- more of why now, later...

Serena writes historical romances, and she does include intimate love scenes in them- sex scenes suggests that there's no emotional connection between the characters and she insists that there has to be an emotional tie between the couple involved, not just lust- even if one, or both of them haven't recognised/admitted it by that point.

Her heroes have responsibilities that they often don't want to take on, but will because they believe in justice, family honour and duty. Though it won't stop some of them rebelling along the way...

Her heroines don't simper. They know what they want, and some resent that they can't grab the object of their desire openly - without public disgrace.

You may have guessed already that Serena Lake is my pseudonym for the historical romances I'm writing, these stories are set between the mid 18th to early 19th Century.

I've submitted competition entries (when it's historical) with this name for a few years now, but finally Serena will be published in an e-book-hopefully before the end of the year, if not sooner.

The One Word Challenge Anthology is a collection of micro fiction and poems inspired by different words. Serena and I, each have a story in the anthology.

Members of the Talkback forum on the Writers Online website, have been writing these stories and poems with a new word each month for many years; now e-book publishing has made it possible to put a collection of them together.

It's getting very exciting, as each stage of the process takes us closer to a publication date.

Serena will eventually have her own site, but for the moment she'll be getting her own page on here.

When more news is available I'll let you know...