From Completelynovel.com

most publishers and literary agents would agree that when it comes to selling books, an author who makes an effort to build up a profile and make themselves known is much easier to promote than a shrinking violet. There’s a lot of noise out there and if you want to be heard, then you need to be prepared to shout.

From Completelynovel.com

CHAPTER II, Blog # 14

SET UP A CONFERENCE WITH YOUR PUBLISHER'S PUBLICIST

With your basic battle plan outline in hand, now is the time to talk to your publisher. Set up a telephone conference with your publisher’s publicist. Find out what they will do for you. Since your book’s budget is not set in stone at this time you might get a bit more out of them especially if they see you are enthusiastic and willing to take an active part in promoting your book. You do not want to plan anything that will duplicate their efforts or worst interfere with their sales people efforts to get your book into the bookstores. Their sales people are putting together a catalogue of their Spring or Fall list. They have already decided what the price will be and have an idea what the first printing will be which in turn will dictate how much time and money they invest in promotion. They have done this thousands of times and there is little you can do to change. Except for a SELL-IN tour.

If you are planning a book tour on your own let your publisher know about it. Ask what can they do to help you in each city.

Don’t be disappointed if your publisher does not plan a book tour for you. Well it’s okay to be disappointed but don’t get depressed over it. See Book Tour below.

Do Keep your agent informed about your publicity plans.

Ask your publisher how large is the first run, the number of books they plan to print. Ask when is the publication date. While they will give you a publication date, it is not set in stone but can be used as a good yard stick to begin your publicity campaign. Ask about press kits and posters.

DESIGN YOUR WEB PAGE
Today every author needs a personal web page. People who invest time and emotin in your books want to know more about you. Your web page is a way to give them more information make them part of your, what I like to call ‘family-fan base.” Visit other author web pages to cull ideas. A basic web site should have a minium of four pages. The lead page should have a picture of the cover of the book near the top and gripping text from your book. Your site should have a biographical page about you, and a page to gather information from your fans – a guest book for them to sign-in.
If you have a interesting hobby or skill, especially one that either relates to you book or will bring in people to your site, you might want to make a separate page with direct links to you book and bio page.
Make a list of all the all relevant web pages you want to link with. Web rings may be helpful.

Don’t get into a chat room just to promote your book. You will wear out your welcome and create resentment.

Blog # 13A

STONE READER
A critically acclaimed book vanishes and its author forgotten. One reader is determined to find out why.
This is a movie that delves into (by the back door) many aspects of writing and publishing. It is a must-see by all authors.
Below is a list of books and authors mentioned in STONE READER (or shown on shelves) in the movie and/or cut from it and/or read and thought about while making it.

The authors and books in bold I’ve read.

* William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey
* James Joyce, Poems
* John Seelye, The Kid & Beautiful Machine
* Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat
* Lord Byron, Collected Works
* Howard Mosher, Northern Borders (coming of age story set in Vermont)
* John Frederick, The Darkened Sky
* Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (& introduction to the 1972 10th anniversary edition)
* R.A. Lafferty, Fourth Mansions (SF)
* Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
* John Barth, The Floating Opera (Leslie Fiedler’s favorite modern American 1st novel)
* William Kotzwinkle, The Fan Man
* Crocket Johnson, Harold and the Purple Crayon
* Ben Hogan’s Power Golf
* Claire Bee’s Chip Hilton series
* Dan Guenther, China Wind
* John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
* Ross Lockridge, Raintree County
* Thomas Hegan, Mr. Roberts
* Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold
* William Manchester, The Last Lion
* Ferol Egan, Fremont
* A. Yehoshua, Five Seasons
* Janet Hobhouse, The Furies
* Christopher Isherwood, Berlin Stories
* Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis
* Virginia Woolf, A Voyage Out
* James Lord, Picasso and Dora
* Franklin W. Dixon’s Hardy Boys books
* Colin Wilson
* Mark Twain Puddinhead Wilson, Huckleberry Finn, A *Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
* Madeline L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
* Ernest Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea
* Henry Roth, Call It Sleep

CHAPTER II, Blog # 13

Consider what your can do within a limited budget.
Some suggestions for a set amount of budgeted funds. The lists are cumulative and the ideas general in scope..

For $1,000.00 you can:
Have your publisher send out review copies.
Make 40 press kits
Send out press kits to local newspapers’ feature editor and review stories in local newspapers and magazines. (Review stories are articles on your book. They are
often easier to convince an editor to run than a book review)
Create a flyer and leave it in bookstores, libraries. Mail it out to your friends, family and fans.
Have a friend create a web page.
Do a local book tour.

For 2,000.00 you can
Buy a half page in Bradley’s Radio & TV interview Report
Print and send out 3,000 post cards or flyers.
Do a regional book tour.

For $5,000.00
Hire a national publicist for selected city markets. However, still buy this manual
for your own information.
Buy a satellite telephone tour.
Do a multi-city book tour.

Obviously there are a wide variety of other options available to the author.

Form a Company
Whether you use a DBA, a C or S corporation you are now a small business and must treat your book campaign like a business. Save receipts, set up an accounting system, and preferably a separate check account. Rent a post office box. You do not want to have ‘fans’, irate or otherwise, knocking at your door. Check if you have to collect sales tax on your books and what paper work goes with it. Print up stationary, business cards, and perhaps an email address separate from your personal email solely for your writing. See your accountant.

CHAPTER II, Blog # 12

Time
Is a book tour a good investment of your time? Depends. If your are an attorney charging $450 an hour, maybe not. When did John Grisham quit his day job? Touring establishes your credibility especially among the booksellers and your publisher (Read future publisher if your current publisher did not pay for your book tour!).
If your are planning an extensive regional or national tour you can try and plan your book tour around vacation time. This is easier for writers without large families. Though I know one author who took his family with him on book tour and survived!

Your Budget?
What type of campaign you plan will depend on how much time you have or want to dedicate to your campaign and most important your budget.

Travel: Calculate hotel, gas and food. If you go on an extended book tour. I targeted
states and cities where I had friends and family who would gladly put me up for a night.
They also came to the events assuring a lively crowd.

Telephone. Depending on your campaign if it is out of area then this can be the largest
expense. Think of a national calling plan with a fixed fee and unlimited anytime minutes.
Plans change so swiftly check with all the instate and out-of-state carriers.

Postage. As you found out while sending out manuscripts this is another major expense.

Stationary. Necessary. You can print, like I do, stationary from your computer.

Printing. Hopefully one time costs. Example, 6,000 postcards for $450.00

Your Time: If you haven’t quite your day job, which I highly recommend you do not do,
remember your time is valuable.

It is said calculate your promotion budget as 10% of your advance. If your advance was as small as mine then you could only afford a half dozen telephone calls. Spend only what you can afford. Though take into consideration this might be your only shot at proving you are a saleable author. I spent my advance plus.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for your royalty check.

Remember generally you will not get any royalties until months after the end of the year to allow for return calculations. Except for your advance, your royalty checks will not help finance you publicity campaign.

.

CHAPTER II BLOG POST # 11

A media blitz takes a lot of coordination and planning.

The ideal publicity campaign will begin with a bang the moment your book makes it to the bookstores shelves. There will be lots of ink, radio and TV spots. While the biggest push will be in the first three months, a well planned campaign should last an entire year. Success in the first three months will keep you book on the shelves hopefully for years to come.

FYI: The eternal paradox. To keep your books on bookstore shelves you have to move them off the shelves.

Decide What Type of Promotional Campaign is Right for You
If you have targeted your core readers then this should be easy. What type of publicity campaign is best for your book? A local interest book on Fishing the Back Lakes of Polk County, Florida would not merit a national publicity campaign but it would a regional campaign. A book on global warming would be, well, global.
Budget, time, drive and audience identification will determine which campaign is best for your book.

The three types of promotion campaigns:

1. Local.
Your regional city and the outlying towns. Your county even your state. In most areas you will be pleasantly surprised at how many bookstores, libraries and schools are within a two hour drive; and how many daily and weekly newspapers there are.

2. Regional.
New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest. Prairie states, the Northwest. Be sensitive to seasonal migrations. New York and Boston empty in the summer and most book signings and media appearances can be a waste of time.

3. National.
From sea to shining sea and beyond. A national book tour may include a few selected national cities or an ambitious cross county undertaking The major houses have identified certain cities that are ‘book buying’ cities, like New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington D.C. (Especially for geopolitical stories) and areas like the Southeast. There are the second tier cities Boston, St Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and seasonal areas such as Florida in the winter, and Cape Cod and the Jersey Shore in the summer. Book well in advance especially for seasonally sensitive areas.

FYI: For Florida writers. There is a curious demand for Florida novels in the Los Angeles and New York markets.

CHAPTER II Post # 10

THE BUSINESS PLAN

Every successful self-promotion campaign begins with a plan. You are the general of this campaign. You have to attack the markets with military precession.

FYI: Plan early.

A plan should include scheduling, budget, time and desire.
First decide what you want to do with your book. This might seem like a rhetorical question however most of us do not think of exactly what are our expectations for our book.
I don’t think there is anyone who would not love to see their book on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

Do you want to make selling your book a life long hobby?
I know one author who says she will be selling her book for the rest of her life.
Do you want to soft sell over a couple of years?
For those of us who have a full time job this might be the only option. Promoting on the weekends. Better still coordinate an extended vacation around the publishing date of your book.
Self-published or Print-On-Demand (POD) authors have that luxury.

If you have a brick and mortar publisher, like Dell, Random House or Simon & Schuster or any of the medium or smaller publishers your options will be limited. You will not have the luxury of a leisurely campaign. You have to start off with a big bang, a media blitz. You want to create what we affectionately call a BUZZ. Why? Because a book has a life span. Usually three months. If a book does not have legs, if it does not move off the shelves after three months it will be sent back to the publisher to make room for newer books. These books are the returns slated for the remainder pile. Returns are the ban of all authors. For authors and publishers there is no sight as sad as a box of their books with their covers ripped off heading back to the warehouse destined for the recycle bin. If there are no books in the bookstores then even an appearance on Good Morning America or Oprah will be for nought.

FYI: A book has the shelf-life of a banana.

Walk into any bookstore and look at all the books they are trying to sell. As important as you book is to you it is only one to the bookseller. You want to make them more aware of your book. Enroll them into helping you sell your book. Local and regional campaigns can be very successful at enrolling.

Chapter II Post # 9

You Are An Expert
You have become an expert. Whether you have a series of PhDs from top universities or not your are an expert in your field. You are a published author and your book is about something. What is it about? Identifying your expertise is especially important for fictions writers. Is your book a Sci-fi on space travel? A murder mystery involving poisons? You have written a book on it and are now an expert in that field. Think expert in space travel, an expert in poisons used in homicides. There are radio and TV stations and magazines that want you to share you expertise with their audience. Identifying your expertise is important when you pitch your media spots and events. More on pitching the media later

Continuing Education
Educate yourself on the industry; actually three industries: publishing, promotion and book selling. Go to your local library and read sections of the Literary Market Place. Read back issues of Publishers Weekly to help you understand the complexities of the publishing industry. These references will help you with your planning giving you new ideas and possibilities. Knowledge about the publishing industry will help you in your pitches to the media. You want to talk the talk, drop key industry words, and sound professional. Busy people do not have the time to educate the initiate. Below I have listed a few of the scores of books on book publicity.

With your ideas in place you can begin to formulate a business plan.

CHAPTER II Post # 8

Collect Your Thoughts
Gather ideas of how you are going to conduct your publicity campaign. This is an ongoing task that you will do for the life of your book. At different stages in your campaign you will need new fresh ideas. Many ideas will build upon things you do now.

FYI: A most important tool is your mind. Your imagination. Be creative in your promotional ideas.

Identify Your target Audience (Again).
Hopefully you did this before you began writing your book. Revisit it. What is your book about. In twenty-five works or less describe your book. You will use this description often as you promote.

Who Will Buy Your Book?
Ask yourself who are my core readers? Who will want to read my book? Your core readers are the people who can not live without buying your book. This obvious exercise is will help you plan your book tour.

FYI. Advice for writers beginning a project. Reader identification should be done before your write the first word of your book. Be realistic. Publishers will be realistic to the extreme and judge your book accordingly. After all it is a business.

After you identify your core audience then move out to the second tier readers and on out. These are the large percentage of the public that will buy your book. Do you have a couple thousand readers or rather book buyers? If not don’t bother writing it unless you like to write for fun.

Why Is Your Book Important?
The first question a radio programer or TV news desk person is going to want to know is why their audience would be interested in your book, your topic or you. Is there any current event tie in or news worthy aspect to your book? Can you piggy-back on a news worthy event? Non-fiction and fiction based on reality books are easier to attach to a news worthy event but fiction writers can and should piggy-back on to an event or subject. Fiction writers have to use the back door approach. More on how to do this later.

CHAPTER II -- GETTING READY, Post # 7

GETTING READY

Chapter II

The Keystone to a Strong Promotional Campaign Begins Now



When are you going start?
Today. Hopefully you have nine months to a year before the publication date of your book. No matter how long it is to your publication date you can begin your promotion but at the nine month mark you should have a business plan and the other basic foundations of your promotion campaign in hand. Here is what you should do,

Twelve Months Prior to Publication
A year out start to formulate the conceptual stage of your promotion campaign. Read books on publicity and promotion. I have included a partial list below in resources. Read this manual through. Talk to other authors about their publicity campaigns. Authors love to swap war stories and complain about their publisher. Educate yourself.

Nine Months Prior to Publication At the nine month mark begin building the foundation of your campaign. Why so early? For the next nine months your publisher is going to keep you busy. If you are like most authors, there will be rewrites of your manuscript, there will be editing, copying editing, line editing, and galleys to read. Along with your duties as a ‘soon to be published author’ you will need a full nine months to give birth to a healthy, vigorous publicity campaign.

Set aside time to begin the basic building blocks for your publicity campaign. You will form a company, design a business plan, fashion a press kit, create a web page, plan a book tour, construct a mailing list, and learn. You won’t have time to do it all a few months before publication.

Advance planning is the keystone to a successful publicity campaign. The core reason is lead time. All media outlets have different lead times. Magazines, for example, generally have the longest lead time. Depending on the publication they may be gathering material for an issue four to six months in the future. You want to be ready to jump in with your pitch at the right moment. Chances are you will only have one initial shot. You must be ready with any information they want, a press kit or references, and you should sound like a practiced professional or you will be brushed off. There is too much competition for them to waste their time with someone who is not prepared.

Say your book is about gardening and is scheduled to come out in time for April plantings and you want the gardening magazines to run articles on your book or you in their April or May issues. You will have to contact them in September or October (Your pitch might take a month to make).

Timing in promotion is everything.

From Nielson Bookscan -- Post # 7

From Nielsen Bookscan

Of the 1.2 million NEW books, 950,000 sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 books sold more than 5,000 copies. Fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000 copies. Only 10 books sold more than a million copies each.

THE AVERAGE BOOK IN THE UNITED STATES SELLS ABOUT 500 COPIES.

CHAPTER I, Post # 6

2. Hire a local or regional publicist.
A local publicist might charge $300 to $400 dollars a month and are good at getting you into local radio stations and newspapers. Also most regional publicists book you into bookstores and coordinate the necessary publicity and announcements. A local or regional publicist works best if you live or work near a large ‘literate’ metropolitan area. In the trade there are certain cities that for the most part can be designated ‘illiterate’. Simply put their citizens do not read let alone buy books!

Both national and regional publicists charge for their services. Expenses, such as, postage, long distance calls etc. will be passed on to the author.
With either a national or local publicist, get their references. Talk to bookstores about them. And ask for a flat rate on the publicity campaign they plan to initiate. Ask for a detailed work plan or publicity campaign proposal that includes which media outlets they will pitch and the services they will provide.

3. Depend on your publisher’s publicist.
Your publisher’s publicist will typically have over 200 books per year to promote. Your book will be listed on your publisher’s seasonal list. The top of a publisher’s seasonal list is mostly populated by the so-called “A-List “ authors and the books your publisher has the greatest sales expectations. The further down the list a book resides the less attention it will receive. Some bookstores will automatically order a publisher’s top five or top ten books. It is up to the sales representative to convince the booksellers to buy more books.

FYI: If you can get a sales rep on your side you will have a white knight to help you.

Depending on advance sales, your publisher’s view of the importance of your book and any national publicity you have managed to generate they will have your book somewhere on their list. Few first time authors will displace a Norma Roberts or an Edmund Morris. Not that they won’t work on you book. They want your book to succeed. But they also know the odds.

Trying to reach your publisher’s publicist might be difficult. You’ll know almost immediately. Chances are you will only get their secretary or their voice mail Be persistent but not a pest. And of course if you constantly call and are seen as bothersome you might not get to them at all. All publishers, agents, and publicists have had their share of authors from hell. Don’t be one. Be agreeable. As my father always said (don’t you love these) you attract more flies with sugar than vinegar.

I will say one thing in defense of my publisher publicist. He did a good job and educated me in many of the aspects of publicity especially as it relates to publishers. I was lucky. I could get on the telephone and call my publicist and he would answer the phone. Few of the bigger houses will respond the same way.
By the way, when I say him, it’s an anomaly. I think I had the only publishing house in the business run by men. Gentlemen, the publishing world is gender controlled, and it’s not us. Most agents, editors, publicists and publishes are women.

The fact is simple. Women read more books than men. I read that 80% of all fiction books are purchased by women over the age of fifty.

The bottom line is that no matter what your publisher does, you are the CEO of your publicity and promotional campaign.

FYI: Your agent, your publisher, and your publicists are all busy people. Don’t abuse your access. Ask questions but don’t bother them except for important issues.

4. Promote your book yourself.
Take control. Design and execute your own promotion campaign. Educate yourself, read. Promoting your book yourself is the gist of this manual. It is not easy. It’s time consuming and can be frustrating. After you are finished with self-promotion you will realize a publicist is worth every penny.
So, you must ask, why did I self-promote my own book? It came down to the bottom line. I couldn’t afford a publicist.

Don’t expect your agent to promote your book. Contrary to many new author’s expectations that is not a literary agent’s job. You can ask your agent for ideas and tips but do not expect any in-depth promotional help from your agent.

Peppered throughout this manual are Don’t s -- on what not to do. They are quick posts for you to learn from other authors’ experiences and mistakes.

Get ready, take off your author’s cap and put on your promotion helmet.

CHAPTER 1, Post # 5

PUBLICITY vs ADVERTISING

CHAPTER I

What is the difference between advertising and publicity? You pay for advertising. Publicity is free. Except in topic specific books, where a specific audience can be targeted, for the most part advertising is a poor return on your investment. Say for example an author wants to advertise their book in a magazine like Hydroelectric Dam Engineering or Sumatran Tropical Bird Diseases. Our in-house engineer would get more milage writing a magazine article for his specific audience on “Hydroelectric Dams” which would be read by all the magazine readers. An advertisement tucked away in the back pages is more likely to be passed over unread. Also, an article establishes your credentials gives you credibility and you will be paid for it. We’ll cover magazines and other print media later.

The time to begin your promotion is when you have a signed book contract.
The publication date might be nine months or a year away. You still have long months of editing, reediting, copy editing, line editing and galley printings before that happens and the last thing you have time to think about is promoting you book. If you wait you’ll be too late.
So how do you get your book out in front of the public?
You have four choices:

1. Hire a national publicist.
A full time publicist (full time for you and a dozen other clients) can charge $5,000.00 a month and they are worth every penny. Most are hired for an average of three months, the general life span of a book. They will organize a full national book tour for you; contact the media, arrange travel plans, book you into hotels and supply you with literary escorts.
Others will charge you by city. Usually guaranteeing you two radio and two TV interviews plus ink -- coverage in newspapers. They charge anywhere from $2,000 to $3,500 per city or area which might include two or three cities in one urban area, like Dallas-Fort Worth or the North Carolina Tri-city area.
Even if you have the funds to hire a national she might not take your book. After an initial conversation or meeting she might realize there is nothing she can do that will help you increase sales. Not all books and authors, are promotable, in the sense of an equitable return on your investment.
There is a useful list of book publicists in the Literary Market Place.

Proloque Post # 4

NULLE DIES SINE LINEA
While outside of the scope of this book this is one of the most useful terms I know. NO DAY WITHOUT A LINE. A Latin Renaissance term for artists, it is as useful to today’s writers as it was for Benvenuto Cellini and Miguelangelo Bunnarotti. Write every day. Graham Green wrote 500 words then stopped. Steven King writes 2,000 a day no matter what. One author said it simply, “write a page a day and you’ll have a book at the end of a year.” Hemingway counseled count your daily word progress. I aim for a thousand words a day. What ever you decide set a goal and keep to it. You’ll be amazed at your progress.

FYI: People want to read your book. They just don’t know about it yet.

Most important try and have fun. Remember it is only a book. With luck this book will be followed by many other books. You only have one life and one family. Don not ignore either. Stay healthy and stay happy.

Now the question is how to get your book into the hands of the public. The answer is you have to tell them about it, either through advertising or publicity.

PROLOGUE Post # 3

NOTHING SELLS ITSELF.

This old mantra is true if not more so in the publishing world. Type up in bold large letters -- NOTHING SELLS ITSELF -- and tape it to your wall in front of your desk, kitchen table or where ever you work. Promotion equates to sales in any business. However, as I have said, unless you are very lucky, you as a first time author will receive little help from your publisher. Experience has shown them for the most part overinvesting in a new author is a waste of money. Why do they even publish new authors? The hope is out there lurks a new Steven King, John Gresham or Jackie Suzanne waiting to break into that 15% level. The chance of a wildcat well striking oil is better than the possibility of finding a new best selling author. One glance at the New York Times Bestsellers list show the same authors making it year after year. They are sure bets. New authors are not. Still if you push and promote wisely and sell enough books to get noticed attitudes will change. If your book suddenly shows promise then the publisher will take notice. They will jump on your band wagon and help. Otherwise for the most part, you are on your own. Think of a publisher as a fisherman on a lake with scores of fishing lines in the water waiting for the big hit. When it does they reel it in and take the appropriate credit. For the other books, they are just drowning worms.
“Publishing houses will take ten books by new authors and throw them against the wall hoping three will stick,” political satire author D.V. Date said at a recent Writing Conference.
One bright light is that even with the plethora of tried and true repeat authors that rule the best seller lists, a surprising number of first time novelist did make the top 15 Publisher Weekly’s best sellers list. Sometimes all it does take is good writing, a good story and good luck along with promotion.
For the rest of us without a rabbit’s foot in our pockets if we want our books to succeed we have to do most of the publicity. Remember no one knows your book like you do. So push it yourself.

This is a good time to remind you of the most important word in the writers’ echelon:

PERSEVERANCE
PERSEVERANCE
PERSEVERANCE

Another reminder sign for your walls.

You have already done it. You have persevered. You have written your book. Now redirect that perseverance into promotion. Be optimistic, enthusiastic. Believe in your book. Promote as if your book is on the New York Times Bestsellers list and you want to keep it there for 12 weeks. To get on the New York Times list you’ll probably have to sell more books in a week than your publisher has printed. But don’t let that stop you. Think second massive printing.
The first printing is based on advance sales. This is the only point during the publishing schedule that you have a chance to exert any influence, except of course, your second (and more) editions. So start to promote early and persevere. To influence advance sales we’ll talk about the all importance ‘sell-in’ which we’ll get into later.
No matter what you decide to do remember persevere. Like the Nike man says, “Just Do It.”