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.

Launch Party Today- Join the Fun...

Today is the day, the One Word Anthology e-book by the Talkback Writers is launched, and you can now buy it from alfiedog.com for 99p.

It's available in the following formats e-Pub for e-readers other than Kindle.
- mobi for Kindle.
- pdf for reading on your computer screen.



Buy it now!

10% of the revenue from the anthology goes to support the work of Medical Detection Dogs - you can find out more about the valuable work this charity does in training animals to support and save lives...here.

30 writers have contributed stories and poems that were written for the monthly One Word Challenge on the Talkback forum - which is part of the writers-online.co.uk
website, run by Writers News and Writing Magazine.

Each month the writers are set a word prompt. They have
200 words (excluding the title) to create a story, and/or poetry up to 40 lines.



Lola, the Diabetic Alert Dog

The winner of the previous month's competition- one for poetry and one for prose- read the entries and choose a winner, both winners then set the word for the new month and will judge the entries at the start of the following month.

The anthology is a selection of the variety of stories and poems inspired by the chosen words.

A big thank you to all the writers involved, I'm proud to be among you.

It really has been a joint effort getting the anthology organised and put together, to now being available for sale.

Special thanks must go to writers: Jay Mandal, who suggested the competition many years ago and started it all.
Brenda Gunning, who collated the pieces and edited them ready for the publisher, Rosemary J Kind - who has the patience of a hundred people (if not more) and the technical expertise.
And finally Marion Clarke who took our assorted suggestions and created
the absolutely brilliant cover.

Early in December there will be an interview with Rosemary and Brenda in Writing Magazine (January issue) where you can find out more about how the book developed.

I'd like to give a big thank you to the WM/WN editor Jonathan Telfer who has supported the One Word Challenge on the forum from the beginning, and rightfully has a few words at the start of the book -we couldn't leave him out...

Okay, that's the official part out the way. Here's my self-promotion bit :-)

You'll find my four stories appearing under both Carol Bevitt and Serena Lake (my other name).

Carol's stories are 'Junk Mail' and 'The Child in Everyone'; while Serena's stories are 'Surprises' and 'After Heat'.

The e-book is also available on Smashwords $1.60 (it's changed to UK currency ) and Amazon; but please buy direct from our publisher if you can, as it means the charity will get more...

Now it's time to party!!!

Find us on Twitter, Facebook and wherever we can spread the launch news, so please join in.

Cheers!

(image from www.freedigitalphotos.com )

Virtual bubbly will be swirling...