Oh, for those days when you just had to write the book and wait for royalties . . . You sat in your office (or at the kitchen table) typing on a Smith Corolla onto layered correction paper from that handwritten draft then tucked those 500 pages into a manuscript box and drove to the post office. Your revisions came on copies of your pages with corrections/suggestions written in by hand (if you got any!). You retyped them, sent them back and waited . . . sometimes up to 1-2 years to see the finished product come out on the shelves. There was no Internet. There were no writers’ groups. There were a couple of book publications your publisher would submit to for reviews. You’d get fan mail to your PO Box and if you were lucky, for that first book, a mention in the local paper. Bookstores or libraries might invite you to sign copies for readers. That was it. All you had to do was write the next book!
I fell into the PR trap early on with the bookmark craze in the ‘80s. My ex was a printer and took the double-sided playing card bookmark I designed for my 1988 Dana Ransom historical, LOVE’s GLORIOUS GAMBLE, to work for a rounded corner trim and coated finish. Winning Romantic Times Magazine’s Industry Award for Unique Promotion began my three-decade love/hate affair with PR. Tasseled and charmed bookmarks, tri-fold flyers, and conference giveaways (plastic vampire teeth attached to a designed business card was a BIG hit for my “Touched by Moonlight” series!) led to the Social Media explosion online. It wasn’t enough to pay for a quality website. You had to have an active blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. presence. Then fan pages, blog tours, newsletter exchanges . . . thank goodness I love my Canva graphics program and can do most the graphics (even animated!) legwork myself. I even took a class on Amazon algorithms! But money going out surpassed income flowing in. Time spent lining up day after day of events ate up hours and energy that could have been spent working on that next book. Where does it end? Do the ends justify the means? Is there a payoff or just a black hole suck on the bank and time account?
My stock answer is do what you enjoy and can afford. I only wish I’d listen to my own advice. We all know about burn out in writing, but promotion fatigue has become a real concern. I have a Virtual Assistant who updates my website and blog, manages my newsletter, and does the setup for my self-pubbed books. That’s a monthly cost that replaces the need for therapy. With every book launch, I try to have a detailed outline of past and hopeful future efforts and chart costs and results. I’ve started keeping track of everything I put up online and to what audience to keep from over-saturating. But my biggest failing is failing to get everything in place months prior to release. It always comes down to that last-minute scramble for visibility that may or may not result in sales.
My pointers: The time to start planning book PR is when you start the writing project. Have a PR folder set up with files for graphics, contacts, advertising avenues, book excerpts, quotes, reviews, and links to potential events (and update frequently). Do what you can yourself but have a list of go-tos for things you can’t. Pre-planning eliminates last minute paralysis. Build your newsletter by doing exchanges. Cultivate an active writer/friend network who will share and host your work (and you do the same for theirs!). Save ideas for ads/graphics that catch your eye that you can adapt to your own project. Don’t let the stress of promotion overshadow the joy of your new release! Take time to sit back and relish the fruits of your labor of love!
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And, by the way, I have a new release out! This is another way to promote them!
What has or hasn’t worked for you when it comes to book promotion? Any particular avenues that have you coming back to them release after release?
Happy Writing!!
♚♚♚♚♚
Nancy Gideon on the Web
2 comments:
These are some great tips! I've tried to save lines for tweets as I do final edits, but really need to start gathering PR info sooner.
Congrats on your release!
Thanks, Maureen! I've just started with saving quotes and potential excerpts during final read through. It's been a real timesaver!!
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