Category: book marketing

rambling thoughts on marketing a series

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Megfuzzle on LiveJournal was cool enough to review Take the Reins AND post a pic! That’s Mac, her horse, and he’s reading TTR too. 🙂 Love, love this pic.

Yesterday, I traded my ancient, falling apart Gateway laptop for a pink (!) Sony. OMG. I’m in love with it. Have I mentioned that it’s pink? Uh-huh. 🙂 It’s pink. I’ve been playing with it and transferring all of my stuff from one comp to the next.

After today’s phone interview, I think I’ve tapped all of the local press. I’m kind of glad to take a step back from that now and get back to my REAL job–writing. It had to go on the back burner while I did PR. Then again, going out on interviews broke up my crazy writing schedule and I’ve met a lot of cool people. I do think I got better (well, at least I hope so!) as the interviews went on. I felt less grilled and more as if I was talking to friends by the end.

But things are settling down now and I’m trying to get back on track for book five. I won’t have enough time to really figure out what “worked” PR-wise for TTR that I can shift over to CHASING BLUE, but I hope to be much better at PR when BEHIND THE BIT releases.

I wonder how marketing will be different for CB. It comes out on March 24–just 8 weeks after TTR. So, obviously, I can’t get the same newspapers and magazines to cover me so soon after January. I’m guessing I should start looking for different markets. Maybe let the bigger, statewide magazines know that local mags and newspapers have covered me and use those clips to get their attention. Hmmm. Seems like a phone call to Publicist Nicole will be necessary. 🙂 She will have Answers.

Tomorrow is my last day at Girls Horse Club! We’ve having so much fun over there and I love all of the girls! They’re so smart and funny. If you’re a young writer looking for writing advice, definitely check out the thread.

And thank you to everyone who has emailed me about the YOUNG RIDER article. You guys are the best! You’re so sweet to take time to write me and I’m emailing each of you back, I promise. 🙂 I don’t think it says so in the article, but YOUNG RIDER was one of the first places I queried. Poor Lesley Ward got an awful query from me and she sent a polite rejection back. That was in 2003. And guess what? I still have her rejection letter! 🙂

And, if you haven’t heard by now, Alyson Noel’s EVERMORE is on the NYT Best Seller list and the USA Today Best Seller list. Seriously awesome, Alyson!! 🙂

Tomorrow, Sarah MacLean is here and she’s answering questions about THE SEASON. Sarah’s super awesome, so def check back for that.

Emmy Winner Sarah Brown on Facebook…now we can befriend the mob!

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Well, kind of. The General Hospital mob anyway.

Actors, producers and TV show creators are getting more creative, people. So must we writers!

I’ve always been vocal about the fact that I’m a (big) fan of General Hospital. Well, you can find a couple of ex-GHers on MySpace. It’s common now to see actors on MySpace. But wait.

On Facebook, three-Emmy winner Sarah Joy Brown has a page for her newest character—Claudia Zacchara. Great. Idea. Sarah. Seriously. 🙂

So what does this mean? It means as writers and authors, we’re competing with a lot of other mediums to get our message across. Actors, who want to be in the public eye as many writers want their books to be, have taken serious steps to breaking down old boundaries that stood between us (the regular people) and them (the Hollywood stars.)

Innovative writers and actors are using the Internet to give us a glimpse into publishing and the movie business by reaching us through their characters. That sells, in a subtle way, their product and gives us (the interested fans) something back. There’s a sense of “someone’s making an effort to reach out to readers and viewers” with this type of medium. I love it!

Sarah Brown and Meg McCafferty (MySpace) both have pages for their respective characters. (Jessica Darling sure has a lot of friends!)

On Sarah’s Facebook page, she shares behind the scenes photos of GH (how generous and cool!) and answers questions about her character. So, she has increased her visibility as an actress, “bonded” in a way to her fans and created an interest in her art form—acting. It worked for me, Sarah, and I’m definitely taking notes on creating a character profile that draws friends and fans.

It’s the same with author created characters on MySpace. As authors, we’re not blatantly yelling “HEY, BUY OUR BOOK, PLEASE!” Instead, we’re connecting to our audience and growing our audience base through our characters. It’s an extension of ourselves.

I think these pages created by actors and authors also serve to show people we are NOT our characters. 🙂 I’ve read articles about people believing how an actor plays onscreen shows the kind of person he/she is in real life. Um, no. Same for us. I’m spunky and outspoken, like Sasha, my main character in Take the Reins, but we’re not the same person.

In short, I wanted to give a shout out to Sarah Brown and other actors and authors who are working hard to connect us with them. They’re definitely chipping away at the barriers.

The books of 2007

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You guys had some great thoughts yesterday on the Facebook vs. MySpace debate. I do think that for now, anyway, MySpace is THE place to be to market to teens. But now that Facebook is open to everyone, we’ll see how that changes things later, perhaps.

So, is anyone writing through the holidays? Going to be scribbling in a notebook while sipping Aunt Lena’s eggnog? 🙂 I’ll be working because… I’m just over 10k words away from finishing my second book in the Canterwood Crest series! Yahoo! It’s all downhill from here, baby. I want to have it all bright and shiny when I present it to Agent A next month. The lack of good TV has kept me writing much later into the evening than usual.

Also, I rearranged the blog a little and put 2007’s read books at the very bottom of the page. The new titles for 2008 will fill their old position in the sidebar. I really wanted to create one link that would take you to all of those titles, but I haven’t figured out how to do so yet.

So, I’ll ask. What’s your favorite book that you read in 2007? It doesn’t have to have been pubbed in 2007, if you wish.

Note: from now on I’m going to keep cross-posting here and on LJ. There’s such a great LJ crowd (waves!) that I was leaving them out by only posting here.

Facebook or MySpace?

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On several listservs that I belong to, the hot topic now is marketing to teens and tweens via the Internet. Especially the use of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

What’s your take? Do you have a MySpace page? Facebook? Do you use them to market or just to make friends in the hopes those friends will purchase your novel?

This summer, I finally hopped on the MySpace train and got a page. I’ve been on Facebook for much longer. A while ago, I created a MySpace page for my main character of Canterwood Crest and while I’m working on it now, I’m keeping the page private until next year.

I’m interested in hearing your take on online social networks!

**In other veeerrry unrelated news** Jamie Lynn Spears (yes, Brit’s sis) is pregnant. She’s sixteen. Sigh.

Book Marketing 101

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Thanks to everyone who responded to my post yesterday. I feel much better now considering I know I’ll be talking to lots of friends and family over the next month and will get that question a few more times.

Since I’ll be doing a little shopping on Amazon soon, does anyone have any marketing books to recommend? I’ve gotten a couple of recommendations and if anyone has another to offer, I’d love to hear it. I’ve been combing through a couple of books at Books a Million, but haven’t found one with fresh marketing ideas that would be do able. So far, I’ve been filing all of my marketing ideas into a folder and using a huge desk calendar to plot out when I need to do things in 2008 and 2009. Who knew that marketing was such a big part of an author’s job! I do love it though, and am learning a lot about the business side of things instead of only the creative side.