Less than a month left on the sunny Gulf Coast before we unfurl our sails and take our land ship of a recreational vehicle up north. Sigh...
In other news: Author Brenda Novak is holding her annual Online Auction for Diabetes Research, and I've contributed a couple signed copies of Love of My Heart. It all started like this...see... Ms. Novak was actually doing a Romance Writers of America Ask-An-Author online feature for a week, and due to a scheduling error, folks didn't know Ms. Novak was on that week, and the list moderator e-mailed us and asked us to contribute questions. Shy as I am (you all know me), I couldn't remember what had been asked, so I threw in a question on time spent on promoting. Wherein Ms. Novak gave me a wonderful answer and kindly suggested I donate several books to her online auction for diabetes research as an excellent form of promotion.
Uh huh! That's how it happened! Pretty slick of that gal, wasn't it? I'm happy to donate the books and glad to participate in the cause that she holds dear. Click on the link below to look around! It looks like there are lots of goodies for everyone. A trip to Hawaii??? I'd say so.
So, how much time do we spend on promoting our books? I've seen a lot of messages on the loops over the last few days on that very same subject. Some people are feeling drained by promotions...finding no time to write. I'm one of those people, but I know that I have to keep getting my name out there if I want people to find my books. And that is my number one goal! Finding readers!
Some folks are thinking of backing off on MySpace (nothing personal MySpace...I'm just repeating what I heard), Facebook and other sites because they feel it's taking too much time from writing. I don't find MySpace to be that much of a chore. I read one author who felt that MySpace afforded massive promotion opportunities through the use of the bulletins. That could be true.
Me, myself, and I are finding keeping up with the myriad of loops draining. I'm of the opinion that in order to get nice things, I have to give nice things. That is to say, if I want people to read my reviews and go to my links, I have to read their reviews and go to their links. That is taking a lot of time. When I go back to work full time this summer, I'm going to have to make some adjustments. Keeping up with the loops, the congrats messages and the wonderful for you messages is going to have to be sacrificed to the blog, my website, my publisher's loop, and writing time.
By the way, I asked Brenda if she thought a 60/40% writing/promoting schedule made sense, and if I recall correctly, she said it differed with everyone, there was no rule of thumb, but she thought 80/20 writing/promoting was about right. She was adamant that we not let readers down by not "delivering" what we have promoted. If the work begins to suffer, then you cannot be successful, so definitely spend most available time on work.
I must say I have not been abiding by that! I have two books out, four more in edits and under contract, one in submission land somewhere and one in the oven, but I'm spending less and less time writing and more and more time promoting. All righty then! Back to the drawing board for me! Let me get my calculator out.
Let's see...33 hours in the day. 80% of 33 is 26.4, leaving 6.6 hours for promotion... Wait! Something's missing. What could it be? Something...nagging at my subconscious. Food! I forgot to factor in eating!!! What was I thinking? :-) Zzzzzzz....
And if that weren't enough charity for the week, it's March of Dimes time...only this year, they're calling it March for Babies! Isn't that cute? And to that end, here is my daughter's logo for her march. I was just looking for a logo to support March for Babies, but this was all that was available. They've made it very easy to sponsor folks and donate this year. The baby is...ahem...my granddaughter, now six months old and cute as a button. Isn't everyone's? The website for March for Babies is http://www.marchforbabies.org/. Too cute!!
That's it for me today. I'll leave you with one of my favorite logos. This is my particular cause today, this week, this month until the brutality ends. Support the Humane Society in trying to save these little guys and gals. No one should kill an infant animal for its fur and no one should be proud to wear the skin of something so young and helpless. Sign a pledge!
HSUS MySpace Page Get web badges
By the way, I'm hardly one to promote watching the talk show of one of the richest women in the world, Oprah, since she hardly needs my promotions, but she's going to have the head honcho of the Humane Society on tomorrow on her show, and they're going to do a piece on puppy mills!
May the wind be always in your hair and may the road be soft on your feet when you're stranded and have to walk three miles. (I'm just saying... It could happen!)
Bess McBride
http://www.bessmcbride.com/
Thursday, April 3, 2008
An Auction for a Trip to Hawaii, Perennial Promotions, Charities Galore, Fur Foibles and What Oprah is Talking About
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6 comments:
3 miles? Pshaw!
Oh, I would walk 500 miles...
She is cute, Bess!
Great blog! Now that after years of writing, and sending stuff out, I finally have a short story coming out, then a book, I'm struggling with the whole promotion thing, too. I try to keep my writing time and my promo time separate, and so far, it seems to be working, but I do at times feel overwhelmed at the amount of work I have to do to keep both up.
Kudos to Brenda, first of all! I've had diabetes for 23 years, so I appreciate your donation and Brenda's marvelous auction!
As far as promoting...I simply cannot keep up with the loops. I read some of them (the WRP loop for instance) but I cannot respond to everyone. I hate that I can't, but it'd be 20% writing and 80% promoting if I did that, and I barely have the time to write as it is! Myspace is easy, but then I don't make a lot of comments are bulletins, which may hurt me in the long run.
Thanks for sharing the pics. I believe in the March of Dimes and the Human Society's efforts. Each contribution counts! Thanks!
Thanks for your comments, Cinnamon, Susan and Emma! I know we're all feeling the weight of promoting. My personal dream is to promote until I'm suddenly struck rich at which point I'll hire a publicist and dictate my newsletters from my couch!
Bess McBride
www.bessmcbride.com
Promotion is one of my favorite subjects, and one I need a lot of help with. With a book coming out in 3 days at total-e-bound.com, I've been blogging a lot, updating my website, writing articles, joining and contributing to new groups, participating in ads, doing reviews, etc. Of course, I've also been home all week sick, and not at the day job as usual, so I had more time to do this. I've hardly done any writing although I did revise a book that was rejected and get it back to my editor (still waiting on the new reply, fingers crossed). What works best for you? Can you even tell? I have nightmares that after spending so much time promoting this past month, that I'll see the royalty statements for my upcoming release and it'll be nil or not much better. Ideas?
Hi Ashley,
Like you, I'm fairly new to the writing world. I've only seen three royalty statements...so nine months of effort. To date, it has not paid off! :-) But, I believe that in time, with enough name recognition, branding, whatever they want to call it, we can build our readership up. The real trick is finding readers to promote to. We're often trapped into promoting to our peers, and although they do buy books, yessiree, they're busy themselves writing.
Unless your books are on bookstore shelves, you face the same problem a lot of us do. How to get your name out there? It sounds like you're doing the best you can. Patience is what we need now. My royalty statements have been dismal, but I get over it and keep trying. I believe a healthy backlist of books is important. Keep writing.
I'm going to give Laurel Bradley a little pitch here. She states she has sold 1000 copies of her book on her own. Go to her website and find out how she did it!
Bess McBride
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