All posts in Talkin Promo

I’ve mentioned JA Konrath’s blog before, and, well, his latest post has me thoroughly impressed. It is a candid viewpoint from a published author on how self-promo efforts could be most effective for an author’s career. A few quotes:

“I spend a lot of time and money doing online promotion, have an extensive mailing list, and am always running contests on my own dime.

Were they impressed? Yes.

The single most important thing an author must do is to make sure their publisher is happy. That means earning out your advance, being gracious and easy to work with, and making an effort promoting and marketing.”

He goes on to explain how making your publisher happy can work in your favor. Go and read it. =D

Also his thoughts on signing book stock. “Never underestimate the importance of the human contact, in this case author/bookstore employee. Impress someone working the register at a Border’s, and she’ll read your book. Once she’s read you, she’s a fan. She can handsell you. She can keep your books on the shelf even when the home office says they need to be stripped. She can reorder more copies even though the computer says she shouldn’t.

I’ve had bookstores handsell dozens, even hundreds, of my books. All because they met me.”

I’d like to add that Nora Roberts also commented in her chat at RWA con that relationships with readers and booksellers are a very important tool of promotion.

And he ends with great advice, “Necessity is the mother of invention, and authors need to find better ways to sell their books, or else they won’t last long in this business.

Learn all you can about publishing. Not only from the outside, but from the inside as well. You’re a consumer, as well as a writer. What makes you buy a book? Figure that out, and concentrate your efforts on reproducing that effect for other consumers.”

Now I don’t believe everyone can do the same efforts as JA Konrath has with his promotion. But he does make you think about the methods that are available to you as an individual writer. =) Very interesting stuff!

Truthfully, my brain must be fried from staring and rewriting my proposal because my mind has nothing interesting to say today! (I know, who says I usually say anything interesting?) Anyway, I thought I’d chat about a couple of great posts from M.J. Rose’s blog. One on newsletters and the other a guest blog by Kevin Smokler on blogging and, one of my new favorite subjects, RSS feeds. Check them out when you have the time.

I, for one, will never have such interesting and informative posts like Ms. Rose. She has a terrific eye for marketing techniques and valuable advice. Her newsletter post really has me thinking. I do send out monthly newsletters with career/website updates, sporadic book recommendations, new contests, and with an author/reader resource. She definitely has me wondering if I bore or annoy my subscribers.=)

I haven’t had someone unsubscribe yet, but it’s bound to happen eventually. Am I amazingly entertaining and share valuable information? Hah! But maybe it’s different with each reader.

This is one of those times, you have to sit back and wonder if you should take someone else’s advice or not. Sort of like a critique on your book. Do you agree with the advice given or do you ignore the person and go with your gut?

I’m thinking I’m going to be following through with Ms. Rose’s advice as much as I am able. A writer needs to share her successes and hardships, and my news flash is not likely the place to do that. But my blog is. So I will definitely try to limit the personal stuff from the news flash and make it as informative as I can manage. I mean, I’m not published, but I try to be helpful, and there are some readers that love to win something for free, right?

I can only try to change for the better! We’ll see how I do with the next news flash. =)