Connie Briscoe Presents
This week New York Times bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby, author of ten novels, takes time out from touring for her latest novel–Sin No More–to chat with me about writing and book touring. Kimberla has been hugely successful for so long–hitting many major bestseller lists–that you may find it hard to believe that her first novel was self-published.

That’s probably why she’s so savvy when it comes to self-promotion. And in our chat later this week Kimberla reveals several little gems that she uses prior to publication of her novels to help promote them.

Writing Tips
Also this week, I’ll point you to a nice little website that’s chock full of resources and advice for women authors and aspiring women authors, although to my way of seeing things it’s got handy tips for guy writers too.

__________________________________________________

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

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 recognition of Black History Month, APOOO Book Club will shine a spotlight on 31 authors, one author each day from February 1 through March 2, on the APOOO Website, MySpace blog and other places. The spotlight will include an article written by the author on varied 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)
• I’m the Head of the Household (coping when she makes more money)
• Help…I’ve Fallen and Don’t Want to Get Up (stepping out of corporate America and not looking back even when the going gets tough)
• ACTING White or Not Black Enough (When did being articulate, intelligent, and financially able become equated to being white?)
• Is the American Dream Real?
• Are We Ready? (for a black president)

First up, Angelia Menchan. And here’s the rest of the stellar lineup. OK, so I’m on there, but still this is a wonderfully eclectic list of authors. Should be exciting.

• Feb 1st: Angelia Menchan
• Feb 2nd: Ebony Farashuu
• Feb 3rd: Cheryl Robinson
• Feb 4th: LA Banks
• Feb 5th: LaConnie Taylor-Jones
• Feb 6th: Donna Hill
• Feb 7th: Bettye Griffin
• Feb 8th: Deatri King-Bey
• Feb 9th: Kimberly Brooks
• Feb 10th: Maryam Diaab
• Feb 11th: Vincent Alexandria
• Feb 12th: Gloria Mallette
• Feb 13th: Djuanna Brockington
• Feb 14th: Niambi Davis
• Feb 15th: Earl Sewell
• Feb 16th: Sheila Goss
• Feb 17th: Gwyneth Bolton
• Feb 18th: Tinisha Johnson
• Feb 19th: Tracy Price Thompson
• Feb 20th: Paula Chase
• Feb 21st: Francis Ray
• Feb 22nd: Angela Benson
• Feb 23rd: Felicia Pride
• Feb 24th: Desiree Day
• Feb 25th: Eric Pete
• Feb 26th: Jewel Parker Rhodes
• Feb 27th: Reshonda Tate Billingsley
• Feb 28th: Shelia Williams
• Feb 29th: DeBerry and Grant
• Mar 1st: Tananarive Due
• Mar 2nd: Connie Briscoe

Lately I’ve been into studying book video trailers with the thought of producing one or having one produced for my next novel. One thing I’ve come to realize is that lack of brevity leads to boredom. Most of them are too long. You should hit the viewer fast and hard and get out. Leave them wanting more. In the age of 30 second commercials, a two to three minute trailer is just too long.

Below is a video trailer for an upcoming book that I think is well done. It’s simple, to the point and best of all only a couple of secs over a minute long. It’s done professionally by a media company called Stonecreek Media Inc. They have other book trailers on their website and you’ll see that they’re generally brief. So if you’re producing these yourself, as a lot of self-published authors are–don’t get so thrilled with your talent as a producer that you overdo it.

I’m not promoting the novel. I haven’t read it, although it does look interesting. I’m merely pointing out what I think is a good book trailer for writers who are producing them or planning to. If you think you might want to check out the novel, it’s called When I’m With You. The author, LaConnie Taylor-Jones, will be touring virtually starting February 1.

LaConnie Taylor-Jones Virtual Book Tour - scroll down to read about the Taylor-Jones virtual book tour.

LaConnie Taylor Jones Web Site

Want to see more book trailers? Featured book trailers.