How To Market the Heck Out of Your First Book--Without Expiring!

This is actually a repeat post. I decided to re-post it because I've been seeing a lot of chatter from writers about how hard it is to be in the business of writing. I agree that it is more difficult than it was even ten years ago. Publishing has changed so much and so have the demands of the marketing department. We simply can't sit back and expect that some other person is going to do the work for us! Check out this article for some great tips on marketing your book!---Mary Ann

How to Market the Heck Out of Your First Book--Without Expiring

By

Kathryn Jones

                Burned out?

                Many of us are, especially when it comes to marketing our first book, and I'm not counting the craziness of wondering where to start in the first place.

                But since I've suggested it, let's start there.

                Here's a long but sweet list of places/ways to market:

                1. Reviews

                2. Interviews

                3. Blogs

                4. Social Media

                5. Postcards

                6. Speaking Engagements

                7. Online Advertising

                8. Book Trailers

                9. Book Signings

                10. Contests

                Burned out yet? Just reading the list may do that to you. But I want you to notice something. Almost all of these ideas are online ways of marketing. And that's good. Why is that good?

                FREE. Don't you love the word FREE?

                Consider all of the money you'll be saving by plugging in an idea or two and running with it. Now, pay attention. I did not say you have to do all of these ideas at the same time, or that you had to do all of the ideas above, just that this was a list I was creating for you to look at.

                So why the list, you ask?

                Sure beats trying to figure out where to start. Now with that said, I want you to look over the list again. Pay special attention to the top two ideas.

                will get the word out about your book without too much work on your end. A search for reviewers need no longer difficult either. Consider all of the bloggers who read and who would love a free copy of your book so that they might review it. Sold. Think about all of the reviewers who will review a PDF copy of your book over a paperback copy. Even better. And think about this link:

Reviews

                http://www.Stepbystepselfpublishing.net/reviewer-list.html.

                Interviews include blog interviews and blog radio interviews. Both of these come free to you and take very little of your time once you have them lined up.

                Blog interviews: Blog owner sends you a writer's questionnaire. Just fill it out and return it along with your author photo and book cover. The blog owner will do the rest.

                Try: http://www.4writersandreaders.com

                Blog radio interviews: Same as above, only you are recorded via blog radio. The host may send you a list of questions beforehand, or he/she may just schedule a day. The radio interview will be live or recorded.

                Try: http://www.wnbetworkwest.com/WnbAuthorsShow.html

                Once you have a handle on Reviews and Interviews, go down the list. See what additional two you'd like to add to your marketing plan. For example, consider the ease with which you can talk to others about your books if you also have a postcard in hand to give them when they ask about it.

                Postcards are wonderful things. Consider how often you are at the grocery story, the bank, the doctor's office, just standing around waiting for someone or something. I get my postcards through Vista Print online. On one side of the card is printed my book cover. On the back? Information about me and about my book including my website, my email, my book's synopsis and my social media links.

                If the first two prospects, getting reviews of your book and obtaining interviews, scares you about as much as hanging off of the Eiffel Tower, start here. Get 500 cards made up and talk your book up.

                But don't make that your only task. I sometimes get burned out when I forget to balance my marketing with my writing. That means I don't market more than I write, and I don't write more than I market. Even then, I sometimes get burned out, but that's because I've forgotten that life is more than writing and marketing.

                And so I take a break.

                It's amazing what I can do with a fresh mind.

Kathryn Jones is a writer, publisher, and marketer. She loves to weed the garden, take early morning walks, and speak to fans about her books. She is currently, with the help of her genius husband, renovating her newly purchased home. She is a reader of the works of C.S. Lewis, whether it be fiction or nonfiction and is open to connecting with writers and readers alike.

 http://www.ariverofstones.com.

·         http://www.ideacreationspress.com

·         http://www.twitter.com/kakido

·         http://www.facebook.com/kathrynelizabethjones.author

               

               

                

Saying Goodbye to Summer...

As a teacher, it always makes me a little sad when the end of summer approaches. Summer is when I have time to really dive into the zillion writing projects on my plate and finally make sense of them. Fall means back to the full time job and juggling family and writing in the evenings.

Here at All Things Writing it means we journey into yet another successful blogging season! As always we will continue to accept guest bloggers for our Friday slots. Clive West will continue to bring you his brilliant tips and advice on the writing process, and next week I will be announcing the winner of our Summer Short Story contest! It's a doozy!

I am currently interested in finding someone to fill another blogging spot at All Things. It would be great to have someone do weekly book reviews for us in a wide variety of genres. Unfortunately, it would be a non paying position, but if you are itching to share your thoughts about the latest books out there, email me at maryannloesch@hotmail.com.

3 Ways to Become a Guest Blogger at All Things Writing

As many of you know, Friday is guest blogger day here at All Things Writing. My guest for today had a conflict and will be joining us at a later date. I've received many emails in the last few months with authors wanting to be a guest on our site. I thought it might be a good idea to repost our guidelines to help clarify a few things!

All Things Writing is currently open to guest bloggers. As a blog that carries pieces regarding all aspects of the writing process, we are open to your suggestions on blog topics. If you are interested in becoming a guest blogger, contact Mary Ann Loesch at maryannloesch@hotmail.com. Be sure to put All Things Writing-Guest Blogger in the subject field. This is a must! I've had some clever spammers just put "guest posting" in the subject line and will no longer open anything in my mail that does not say All Things Writing-Guest Blogger in the subject line. When you email me, I would appreciate it if you would double check your message before hitting the send button. When we get emails with lots of grammar mistakes and odd spellings, we tend to ignore them. After all, if you can't write an email, how will you write a blog piece?

We do not offer financial compensation to our guest bloggers.

A few tips:

1. Be ready to submit your guest blog to us 3 days before it will go live.

2. Please check it for grammar and punctuation errors.

3. You are welcome to include a personal bio, website link, and picture of yourself or book.

4. We will promote it on Twitter and Facebook, but in order for the most amount of people to see your work, be sure to promote it on your website/blog/Twitter/Facebook page.

5. Relax and let your voice come out in your writing! We will moderate all comments.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Summer and All Things Writing

I'm running late this week with my blog post. I can't help it! Summer is finally hear and it keeps doing a naughty little dance that distracts me from writing!

Ah well....such is the nature of summer. I think I'll just let it do its dance and reap the benefits of finally having time to catch up on projects, read lots of great books, and write some long overdue reviews. In fact, that's what you can expect this summer from All Things Writing.

In addition to our usual crew of writers who know just about everything (sorta), we will be joined by several guest bloggers. Look for some fun new posts in the upcoming weeks!

I also intend to review several books on my back list including our own John Brewer's book The Silla Project. I've just dived in to  a great book by Deborah Harkness that her publisher sent to me called Shadow of Night. This is definitely one to be reading in the dog days of summer.

All Things Writing will also holding a short story contest this summer. The theme is mayhem and amusement parks. More details will be posted regarding this in July, but get your imagination revved up on this one folks!

Well, back to the pool for now.

The Romance of All Things Writing

February is at last upon us. This is the month for romance and love--thank you very much Hallmark! Interestingly, I've recieved several requests from guest bloggers who all have romance books in varying subgenres being released this month or in early March. Since Valentine's Day is near, I've decided to feature several of these bloggers at All Things Writing on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Romance is one of the best selling genres. Let's face it. It's something that never goes out of style! But have you ever tried to write one? Ever tried to create a sex scene that doesn't sound cliched or over the top with heaving bosoms? Oh yes, there is a trick to writing romance as our upcoming bloggers will demonstrate.

So be sure to check out the reviews and blog pieces being posted all this month about writing in the romance genre!

Holding on to Childhood Writings---Angela Scott

Today I'm delighted to have Angela Scott as a guest blogger at All Things Writing. She is currently touring with her book, Desert Rice, and we are lucky to be one of her stops. Please check out her book info!--- Mary Ann

The first novel I ever wrote was actually a soap opera. No joke.

 

I've always loved to write. From the time I was a little kid I was constantly making up stories, and whenever we were given an assignment to write a story in class, while the other kids groaned about it, I was already yanking out my pencil and paper and jotting down ideas.

 

But I remember being in 5^th or 6^th grade and one summer I was discussing with good friend of mine, Brandy, about how bad one of the soap operas on TV was. We lived through the era in which our mothers watched a lot of soap operas and so we'd catch an episode or two. One of the plot lines was SO over the top that we giggled about it and thought it seemed so dumb. Yet our mothers loved it! They couldn't get enough.

 

That got us thinking: why not create our own soap opera. Yeah! We could totally write one ourselves and submit it to networks. That was our plan.

 

So, we grabbed lined paper, came up with a bunch of characters—a doctor, a single father, a cheating husband, a sexy lady, a female lawyer, etc…—and started writing. She picked her characters and I picked mine. Whenever one of my characters had something to say to one of hers, I would write it down and hand over the notebook to her and she'd respond.

 

It was SO cool. We spent the summer, lying in our backyards, sun tanning (yeah, back before we knew a lot about sun damage and skin cancer) and would pass the notebook back and forth. We even had stage direction and everything.

 

We did this for the entire summer (I know, for some of you you're thinking, boy that's a sucky summer, but I loved it). We had twists and turns and MURDER!!! Lots of murder. We also had romance too. Lots of romance—elementary school type romance. The kind of romance in which French kissing was about as far as things went, because eewww gross J

 

By the end of summer, we had well over 400 pages of soap opera script, but school started and we never did submit that pencil and pen written script to anyone. I held onto it for years, not wanting to part with it, until I became a teenager and thought the whole thing was stupid and threw it away.

 

I could smack myself now.

 

I so wish I would have held onto it. Not because it was masterful or good in anyway, but because it was such an awesome memory to have. It would have been fun to read back through it some twenty plus years later.

 

That's why now, I hold onto everything. Every poem, every short story, every rough draft. It's a reminder of how far I've come, and I never want to forget that.

 

Author BIO:

Angela Scott hears voices. Tiny fictional people sit on her shoulders and whisper their stories in her ear. Instead of medicating herself, she decided to pick up a pen, write down everything those voices tell me, and turn it into a book. She's not crazy. She's an author. For the most part, she writes contemporary Young Adult novels. However, through a writing exercise that spiraled out of control, she found herself writing about zombies terrorizing the Wild Wild West--and loving it. Her zombies don't sparkle, and they definitely don't cuddle. At least, she wouldn't suggest it. She lives on the benches of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains with two lovely children, one teenager, and a very patient husband. She graduated from Utah State University with a B.A. degree in English, not because of her love for the written word, but because it was the only major that didn't require math. She can't spell, and grammar is her arch nemesis. But they gave her the degree, and there are no take backs. 

 

Blog - www.angelascottauthor.com
Twitter - @whimsywriting
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AngelaScottWriter
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13636317-desert-rice

 

 

Samantha Jean Haggert is a beautiful twelve-year-old girl—but no one knows it. All they see is an awkward boy in a baseball cap and baggy pants. Sam’s not thrilled with the idea of hiding her identity, but it’s all part of her older brother’s plan to keep Sam safe from male attention and hidden from the law. Fifteen-year-old Jacob will stop at nothing to protect his sister, including concealing the death of the one person who should have protected them in the first place—their mother.

Sam and Jacob try to outrun their past by stealing the family car and traveling from West Virginia to Arizona, but the adult world proves mighty difficult to navigate, especially for two kids on their own. Trusting adults has never been an option; no adult has ever given them a good reason. But when Sam meets “Jesus”—who smells an awful lot like a horse—in the park, life takes a different turn. He saved her once, and may be willing to save Sam and her brother again, if only they admit what took place that fateful day in West Virginia. The problem? Sam doesn’t remember, and Jacob isn’t talking.

To purchase Desert Rice, click on the links below:

Desert Rice Paperback Amazon
Desert Rice Kindle Amazon
Barnes and Noble

 

 

 

3 Tips to Help You Stay Motivated and Consistent With Your Writing

Today we have a great guest blogger, Edwin from Celebutaunt, sharing insights on staying motivated and consistent. As summer approaches, I can't think of a better topic to help us beat the "dog days" and move forward! Thanks for joining us Edwin!

Where do writers find a source of constant motivation? Earning a living is a very good motivator, but honestly this is a shallow well. Things like boredom, personal time, and other interests will inevitably slink in and you'll find yourself justifying these things today in exchange for harder work tomorrow.

Sometimes "tomorrow" happens several days later, which is symptomatic of a lack of motivation. All writers go through periods of writer's block, strings of boring topics, and a desire to focus on other things of interest.

Here are a few tips you can use to keep yourself motivated and constantly writing.

This Is Your Real Job

If you're relatively new to freelance writing and expect to make a living from it, you have to take one very important step. You have to tell yourself this is your fulltime job and then treat it as such. As simple as this sounds, countless freelance writers, or more accurately wannabe freelancers, don't understand this simple fact. As a result they have only moderate—or worse—success to show for their efforts.

Finding success as a writer takes hard work and discipline and that starts with setting up a daily schedule. If you worked at a bank, it's unreasonable to think you can show up at random times, on random days, and expect to have any measure of success. You'd lose your job before your first paycheck arrives, yet this is exactly what so many new freelance writers do.

Creating a daily schedule is actually a motivational step. It changes your writing from "hobby" to "career", which is the kind of significant shift in mindset it takes to treat writing with serious and deliberate intent.  A career as a writer is exciting, ever-changing, and financially rewarding. These things serve as their own forms of motivation, particularly when compared to writing as a hobby. Hobbies come and go, they can be worked on in your spare time, and they're easy to forego when they become tedious or boring.

If this sounds familiar to you, chances are you have not transitioned your mindset from hobby to career.

Vanity Can Be a Positive Thing

Writers like to hear positive feedback about their work. It's a natural human desire, and any writer who says they aren't in it for the praise, at least to some extent, isn't being honest about what motivates them to write.

Seeking feedback from editors and establishing a fan base for your work is a great source of motivation. The feedback will help your sharpen your skills, as well as help you write in the style your clients desire. Professional critique designed to help you master your craft should always be taken as a positive event. After all, no editor is going to waste their time on writers who show no promise. They'll simply cut them loose.

If you're receiving regular constructive criticism from the people soliciting your work, as well as praise for your writing style, grammar skills, and attention to detail in your articles; you're doing something right and it should make you feel good. Use this as motivation to write another great article, and then another, and another. Before you know it you'll be writing great articles because you know you can, and this is one of the most powerful motivations a writer can tap.

Diversity Is Your Friend

Writing about the same things, over and over, will lead to certain boredom, particularly if you can't find new and interesting angles. A very effective way to stay motivated as a freelance writer is to write on a wide range of topics. Not only does this keep your workload fresh and interesting, it forces you to do some research on new topics, which I find very interesting.

In the same vein as using positive feedback as motivation, you'll quickly discover that writing great articles on subjects that are new to you has a domino effect. As a result you'll continually seek new and challenging assignments which will keep you excited about your career as a writer and fresh with new ideas for future articles.

Let your editors and other content seekers know that you're interested in writing on a wide range of topics. This is your career and you're the one in charge of it. Don't expect them to read your mind or to somehow know your goals as a writer. When you let them know, you're telling them you're serious about your career and recognize their role in helping you become successful.

It's Hard Work

Freelance writing is hard work, it doesn't come with a lot of glory, and it requires constant effort on your part to become successful and stay relevant. Most who attempt freelance writing do so for all the wrong reasons. Treating what you do as your career, with a schedule for writing and a desire to constantly improve your skills, will keep you in high demand with editors and content seekers.

Using the tips above will help you stay motivated, will help you tap into creative forces that will result in engaging content, and will foster good writing skills.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share on what keeps you motivated to keep going consistently every day?

This guest post is by Edwin who regularly writes about celebrities, TV, and movies for the Celebutaunt blog on USDish.

What's Coming Up At All Things Writing?

I don't really look like this...much.

Today I'm the guest blogger at Romancing the Darkside, and I'm talking about how a book cover can make or break a book. Slide over there and check it out if you get a chance! ROMANCING THE DARKSIDE.

I always look forward to this time of year. I'm a teacher and summer is coming. Do I really need to provide you with a further explanation of why I'm singing a happy tune? I love the little children I teach. Really. But sometimes they make me crazy!

For me, summer means devoting more time to reading and writing. I have a new YA coming out June 1 called Bayou Myth which I'll chat more about in the upcoming weeks. However, we also have a very full calendar for May and June when it comes to guest bloggers, interviews, and book tour reviews. My summer is jammed pack already with a great reading list that I can't wait to get to.

As many of you know, we are already a tour host for the nice folks at Innovative Online Book Tours. Because they do such a great job, I know they are incredibly busy. I've been getting some amazing tour requests in all genres. In addition to that, we also have been contacted by Hydra Publications to work with some of their authors on interviews and reviews.

So here's what's coming up:

CRAZY FUN!

Sorry, I didn't mean to shout.

Actually, we've got zombies, literary fiction, historical fiction, sci/fi fantasy, mystery, more zombies, and several YA books all about to be interviewed, reviewed, or given away. Be sure to drop by in the next few weeks for some fun!

By the way, I have to now do a shameless plug for myself. I'm hosting a giveaway at my blog, Loesch's Muse, right now for my young adult novel, Bayou Myth. You can win it before you can buy it if you provide me with your favorite Cajun recipe. After all, that's the flavor of the story--spicy, not too sweet, with a dash of voodoo mixed in for good measure! Click here to enter: LOESCH'S MUSE