Tightening Your Writing

Marketing yourself and your book is a road most writers worry about. Why? Because they have no idea where to begin, what to do, who to contact. Writing your book is only half the job; the biggest and most important aspect comes after keeping your book alive and up front to your targeted audience.

It is up to you, not the neighbor, to come up with several marketing plans and make sure to be vigilante in your promotional leg. Although frustrating at first when the results show a low royalty check, it is the perseverance and determination to keep plugging away, if not every day, each week, to market and promote yourself and your book that will determine the outcome at the end.

To help you out, here are a few promotional areas to move on before, during, and after your book is finished/released.

CONTACT LIST: What exactly is a contact list? It is a list of email addresses of people you have communicated with, in the past and present, to send them updates on your writing career and published books. Open up a file titled CONTACT LIST in your MEDIA folder (explained further down) and begin building this list now. In my own CONTACT LIST, I have separated the headings like: Publishers, Editors, Authors, Friends, etc. This makes it easy for me to target specific news to the right circle of people.

MEDIA FOLDER: Files you can open and update regularly in your media kit include:

Your contact list;

your bio;

list of books and blurbs along with purchasing information;

a sampler made up with your bio, an excerpt of each of your books, direct purchasing links and excerpts of a review or two;

clips from newspapers that include info on you or your book;

all of your publishing credits, from articles to books published, titles, where and when;

in other words anything of interest to brag about your publishing career should go into your MEDIA KIT. Have folders on hand, print each of these pages, place a business card and the cover of your recent book you are promoting and hand one out to bookstores you are visiting. This kit is your talking ad about who and what you are all about.

Make sure to update these files with anything new in your writing career.

WEB SITE: There are several good free sites to help you begin your Web site. Tripod and Freewebs are just two areas that supply easy to use templates. For a small fee per year you can get your own domain name instead of tagging tripod.com or any other added line. Personally, other than two of my sites, I go with Tripod. I've always said it's the content that matters to readers to make them want to bookmark your site.

A good start would be to check out other writers sites and see how they've set up their web pages, what info do they have in there, what's on their navigational links. A little time researching now will help you organize your own site when you‚re ready.

BOOK SIGNINGS: Bookstores are not the only place to host a book signing. There are specialty gift shops, craft fairs, home book-signing parties where a few friends meet and find out about your latest book, hospitals, senior citizen homes, and so many other places you can host a book signing instead of only bookstores.

Perhaps your book is aimed at children, you can ask a school to hold a MEET AN AUTHOR day, have a sheet to hand out to the teacher to offer to the parents at the end of the day with info on your book and where to buy it. There's nothing like a hometown author to get the kids all eager to meet. Reading an excerpt to the classroom then discussing that chapter or the topic in your book just may entice a student to try writing themselves. Perhaps you can come up with a fundraiser using your book as a base to help raise some funds for the school. A dollar per book sold will not break your bank but every few dollars earned for the school or that particular classroom you are visiting is always a helpful additive.

REVIEWS: You need to understand that a review can go either way- good or bad, but it is a chance you need to take in order to get the word out. Personally, I analyze a review to see what the reviewer may be trying to tell me so I can perfect my next writing project. Luckily, all reviews coming in for my YA fantasy/adventure The Rock of Realm and my paranormal thriller Doorman's Creek have been excellent. However, at times, the diplomacy of the review allows you to pick up subtle hints aimed at you, the writer.

Make sure to target the right review sites that cater to the genre of your book. Many reviewers prefer print copies where others don't mind eBooks.

EMAIL SIGNATURES: It boggles the mind how so many writers forget to add a link back to their Web site or book's site. This is a FREE and easy advertising whenever you send out an email. Use it. Depending on the content of my email to any group I belong to I change my links to suit the need. For example, if it‚s to a children‚s group, I'll make sure I'll add my YA novel info at the bottom of my name. If it‚s to a writer‚s group discussing the how/what/where/when questions about the craft of writing then I'll use one or both of my award-winning writing eZines, or even to the annual online conference <http://www.freewebs.com/themuseonlinewritersconference> link I co-sponsor with Carolyn Howard-Johnson.

INTERVIEWS: There are so many blogs out there now searching for authors to interview you shouldn't have a problem locating them. Do a blog search based on your book's genre and a list of various blogs will pop up. Don't be shy; ask the blog host if they are interested in interviewing you.

MEDIA RELEASES: Are you offering a workshop? Have you been invited to be a speaker? Did you just have a new release? Did you win an award? All of these are great opportunities to open up that Contact List I mentioned above and send them a media release announcing your news.

These are just some of the areas you can begin promoting yourself. Remember, success does not come all set for you in a golden platter. As writers we need to be on top of things, especially our own careers, if we are to make any dents in this vast business we call the publishing world.