Entries Tagged 'Book Promotion' ↓

Frustrated with trying to find an agent? Or maybe you’ve gotten enough rejection letters to plaster a wall in your office? No one can wave a magic wand to make it all better, unfortunately. But there is help out there and that’s what this site is about.

This week, I promised you a fantastic website for women writers (although you guys might find help here, too). Well, here it is. WOW! Women On Writing is an ezine that encourages communication among women writers, authors, agents, publishers, readers and others in the writing biz. WOW! describes itself as “a global magazine, designed to support women’s creativity, energy, blood, sweat and tears, throughout all stages of the writing process.”

Each month WOW! focuses on a different topic. For March they’re featuring Small Presses and Independent Publishers. In addition, WOW! is always full of information, advice and inspiration for authors–too much to list it all here. You’ll find articles on writing and promoting your work–such as creating characters, dealing with agents, and tips for beginning romance writers–and a whole lot more.

WOW! also features quarterly writing contests. Deadline for the Spring 2008 contest is May 31. The contest includes cash prizes, goodie bags and more. Plus your entry is published on the WOW! website.

WOW! Women On Writing

Photo credit (top): Mlenny/iStockphoto

I’m always sending folks from my MySpace page to my blog here, and it occurred to me that some of the people who come to my blog might not be aware that I have a MySpace page. Well, I do, and you can get to it here.

For the longest time, I avoided MySpace, thinking it was for the kiddies only. Then I ran into an author when I was doing a book signing, and she told me I absolutely had to get on MySpace and that my view about it was all wrong.

And she was right. Yeah, there are a gazillion kids on MySpace (not that there’s anything wrong with kids, heh!) but it’s also cool for adults, especially for artistic types like musicians and authors. It’s a fantastic way to get and stay in touch with readers and also to network with other like-minded types. And many authors use MySpace to promote their work.

So check me out at www.myspace.com/conniebriscoe if you haven’t already.

Bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby has written 10 novels. Her latest, Sin No More, was published earlier this year and has already hit #16 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction and #4 on the Wal*Mart bestseller list for hardcover titles.

Kimberla has been so successful that few people realize that her debut novel, Behind Closed Doors, was originally self-published. Here she shares marketing tips for authors and much more.

Connie Briscoe: You’re on book tour for your latest novel Sin No More. What do you like about touring? What could you do without?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: The best thing about touring is meeting all of my loyal and very dedicated readers, people I never would have had the amazing opportunity to meet had I not written any books. It’s wonderful because when I hear positive and enthusiastic comments about my work during discussions, it encourages me to keep doing what I do.

The one thing, however, I could sometimes do without is very early morning wake-ups! This isn’t always the case, but there are many times when I do need to take early morning flights to get to the next city.

CB: I know all about the 5 a.m. wake-ups when you’ve been up until late the night before at a book signing. A lot of people don’t realize how tough book tours can be.

Your novels always do so well, hitting the New York Times and Essence bestseller lists consistently. Do you think touring actually helps sell books?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: I really do. I always say that whenever you meet readers in person and they also enjoy your work, they are your readers for life.

CB: What else do you do to promote your novels besides touring?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: In addition to what my publisher does for each book, I also do lots of pre-publication promotion on my own. To name a few items, I send newsletters out to my mailing lists, hold contests for general readers as well as a separate contest for book clubs nationwide.

And I get a lot of traffic on my web site, which I keep updated with my current book signings, events, speaking engagements, and other information. I now also have a MySpace page, and this has proven to be a wonderful marketing tool as well.

CB: Yes, MySpace is a wonderful marketing and networking tool for authors. How do you come up with your story ideas?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: I always try to write about real-life social issues, so I am inspired by all sorts of topics. I never base my stories on any real situation, but I am inspired by much of what I see and hear.

CB: How do you come up with your characters?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: Once I know what topic I’m going to be focusing on, I spend days mentally creating my characters. I do this for weeks and eventually they become very real people for me.

CB: Do you outline or write character sketches? If so, tell us how you do it. If not, how do you organize your writing?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: Yes, I do outline each book I write. Basically, what I do is write a synopsis of each chapter, which can range anywhere from one to two pages and sometimes even three, depending on how in-depth I want it to be. Then, when I finish the outline, I write the actual chapters.

CB: Do you feel pressure to write more frequent or more detailed sex scenes in your novels these days?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: No, actually, as of Sin No More, I stopped writing detailed sex scenes of any kind. Even in my past novels, I never wrote erotica and worked hard not to write anything offensive, but I finally realized it just wasn’t necessary to include all the details unless the story is somehow centered on sex.

CB: How much do you draw from your real life for your novels?

Kimberla Lawson Roby: The only time I based a character on myself was in my fourth novel, It’s a Thin Line. I based the Sydney character on me and the Delores character on my mom, who really did have a benign brain tumor. It was very therapeutic for me, and the other reason I wrote it was because I wanted to show what it was like losing the most important person in my life, my best friend, and how it took a lot of prayer and every bit of faith I had to get through a loss of that magnitude.

Also, I wanted to show how even though my mom was the one dying, she never stopped lifting up me or the rest of our family. She kept her faith strong until the very end.

Visit the Kimberla Lawson Roby website site for more.

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Only a few days left. I’m being featured today with an essay called “Acting White or Not Black Enough.”

For those who missed the original announcement, in recognition of Black History Month, APOOO Book Club has spotlighted one author each day since February 1 on the APOOO website. The spotlight includes an article written by the author on topics such as–

• Why Is Black History Important?
• Room at the Table (Is there room at the table for all African American authors no matter the genre?)
• Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (interracial dating)
• Acting White or Not Black Enough
• Are We Ready? (for a black president)

Some past authors featured are–

• Angelia Menchan
• Earl Sewell
• Sheila Goss
• Francis Ray
• Felicia Pride
• Eric Pete
• Jewel Parker Rhodes
• Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant

There’s bound to be an essay written by one of your favorite authors, so head on over!

APOOO Author Spotlight

I get a kick out of stumbling across nice book video trailers and this one was a special treat. I haven’t read the novel, so I can’t vouch for that, but the video trailer is a hit! This one is for Out of Her League, self-published by Delores Airey, a writer living in the United Kingdom. Produced by GWExtra.
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Want to see more? Featured book trailers.

This week we have Dorothy Thompson and Cheryl C. Malandrinos of Pump Up Your Book Promotion, a company that sets up virtual book tours for authors. The concept of virtual book tours–or a blog tour as some call them–is relatively new and just beginning to take shape. Sometimes they mean one thing, other times something else. I think what has been developed by Dorothy and her group is one of the most interesting takes on this new way of promoting books.

For several months now I have been a member of a Yahoo e-mail group for writers started by Dorothy and I don’t think you’ll ever find anyone who is more enthusiastic about promoting authors and books. I’ve watched as she started and developed Pump Up Your Book Promotion into something quite impressive, with a client list that has included screenwriters, New York Times bestselling authors, self-published authors and others.

I had initially planned to have only Cheryl Malandrinos here today. Dorothy Thompson, the founder of Pump Up Your Book Promotion, was in the midst of moving. At the last minute I also heard from Dorothy, and the two of them are so forthcoming that I realized I’ve got a ton of information here and I decided to divide the interview into two parts.

Here for you now is Part 1 of “All About Virtual Book Tours.” I’ll run Part 2 in two to three weeks.

Connie Briscoe: When and why did you decide to start organizing virtual book tours for authors?

Dorothy Thompson: Hi Connie and thanks for having us. I started Pump Up Your Book Promotion in April 2007. We’re approaching our first anniversary in another couple of months, and I’m quite excited at how successful it has become. We started out with one tour coordinator–moi–and now there are five of us: Cheryl Malandrinos, Rebecca Camerena, Jean Lauzier, our newest addition, Jaime McDougall and myself.

Why did I start Pump Up? I had self-published an ebook called The Complete Guide to Selling and Promoting Your Self-Published eBook because I had found a formula that greatly increased web visibility. One of my past clients phoned me and asked if I could do to her book what I had discussed in the ebook. What she basically was asking was, “Could you be my publicist?” I wasn’t a publicist. I was an author who wasn’t published traditionally and if I wanted my book to sell, I had to find ways to do it. As my book wasn’t in the bookstores at that time, I had to focus on the Internet.

I agreed to do this for her and the rest is history. It was incredible and I found that virtual book tours were the perfect solution to bricks and mortar book tours, but the key is getting that high visibility during your tour which basically involves a lot of networking prior to setting up your tour, which I had already established. I stress networking to all my new clients and the time to start networking is before your book comes off the printing press.

Cheryl Malandrinos: I hosted Dorothy’s clients for months before joining the staff of Pump Up Your Book Promotion in October 2007. As for the reason, that’s easy-I love promoting good books.

CB: Tell us a little about what a virtual book tour is at Pump Up Your Book Promotion.

Cheryl Malandrinos: A virtual book tour is when an author travels around the blogosphere for a set amount of time–with our clients it’s a month. The author promotes her book by giving interviews, getting book reviews, and providing guest articles. Pump Up Your Book Promotion handles finding the blog hosts and acts as a liaison between the blog host and the author.

Dorothy Thompson: That’s the simple answer. The harder answer is that it takes an incredible amount of work on the author’s part to make it successful. You just don’t sit back and watch it in action. You become very involved as it’s progressing throughout the month or however amount of time you set one up for. I am finding that the authors who are out there plugging their virtual book tour on a daily basis are having greater results than the ones who aren’t.

CB: Can you give us more detail about what exactly the author is expected to do? Continue reading →

These days, new ways are always being devised to let authors control their own fates when it comes to book promotion and to help readers find authors and books they love. Prior to the days of the Internet, authors were at the mercy of newspapers and magazines to get the word out about their upcoming book tour dates. Sometimes they got lucky, sometimes they didn’t. Then the Internet came along and authors could list tour dates on their sites, but fans had to navigate to each author’s site if they were interested.

Now there’s something even better. At Book Tour, authors can create a page that showcases their books and upcoming tour stops. And readers can search the database by author name, book title or location and get a list of book events in their area. And it’s all free! Free to list your books and tour stops and free to search the directory.

Authors can also upload photos of themselves and a short bio as well their book titles with photos of the book jackets and then link to the books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com and other online bookstores. For readers, when you visit the home page, it will also automatically list authors currently on book tour near you. For example, for me today it showed that Felicia Pride, author of all things pop culture, is touring in Washington, DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia between now and April. Lisa Scottoline and other authors will also be in my area over the next several weeks.

There are a few quirky things about Book Tour. Like when I entered Baltimore under “places,” 61 venues were found, such as the Baltimore Book Festival, but for most of them it indicated that there were “no upcoming events.” Since only five venues are listed per page, you end up scrolling through a lot of pages to find random events in your area and it can get tiresome. Visitors searching for random events in their areas would be better served if Book Tour removed the venues with no upcoming events from the resulting list or listed more venues per page so you don’t have to do so much scrolling.

Other than that little peeve–and it’s minor compared to the good stuff–it’s a great website. It appears to be a little newish and right now seems devoid of ads, but I wonder how long that will hold true as more authors list their books.

Hopefully Book Tour will get better with time. I’m always in favor of anything that gives authors more control when it comes to promoting their work and gives the fans more information and options, and Book Tour does that. I’ll definitely be using it to list my stops next time I go out on book tour.

Book Tour

Connie Briscoe Presents–
Whether you call them virtual book tours or blog tours or something else, there’s no doubt they’re having a big impact on the book selling market and that the impact will likely continue to grow in the future.

This week I talk to Cheryl Malandrinos, who runs the Pump Up Your Book Promotion blog tours for authors along with her partner Dorothy Thompson. Malandrinos’ clients have included award-winning science fiction authors, screenwriters, and young adult and romance authors among others. She will tell us all about virtual book tours and how they work.

In Sin No More the Reverend Curtis Black tries to mend his wicked ways, and Kimberla Lawson Roby has penned another hot one.

I enjoyed this book trailer. I liked the voice of the actor who plays Reverend Black. It’s smooth and has a nice tone. You can feel the conflict building up in his voice and in the video.

But tell me, what do you all think? Did it hold your attention? Does it make you think about picking up a copy of Sin No More? Is it well done? Why or why not?

Want to see more? Featured book trailers.

I enjoyed this book trailer for the novel Sweet Georgia Brown. It’s simple and gets to the point of the novel–which is about two dueling radio personalities who are married to each other–without hitting you over the head. In other words, it’s smooth. It also leaves you wondering what might happen next.

Sweet Georgia Brown, is by Cheryl Robinson, and by the way, we have an interview with the author coming up here in a couple of weeks on “Connie Briscoe Presents.”

If you have a book video trailer that you think I’ll find interesting enough to display here on Page One, send me a link and I’ll check it out. I can make no promises, and you have to realize that my selections are somewhat subjective–in other words they are based on what I like. If I decide not to feature a book trailer here, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad trailer.

Want to see more? Featured book trailers.