Promotions & More RWA Dirt

All right, I know, I had promised to have a real blog this time. And believe me, I will but I just wanted to pass along a little more on the RWA front. Mainly in the form of links and the like because it’s time for everyone to form their own opinion.

You all should read every one of the links posted on Dear Author because they contain relevant information to anyone epublished. Yes, there is some rehashing over the whole problem but since last week, RWA’s President Diane Pershing has given us a rebuttal. Oh, joy. Look at the links and discussion here: http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/06/23/the-case-for-rwachange/ as well as here: http://espan-rwa.com/ Lots of good information on both sites.

Also, if you are serious about challenging RWA’s stance on ebooks, epublishers and epublishing, you might want to join the RWAchange group. It is planning to change the name here shortly to reflect what the group is as a whole and to not get RWA any more upset than they probably will be. They just don’t want to be sued…but then…who does? You can join the yahoogroup at RWAchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and just to give you a few stats, this group was formed on June 20. It already is planning an election of officers and has a membership of 527 as of this writing. Pretty impressive if I say so myself.

Still, like I said, this is the time for individuals to decide just which side of the fence they are going to stand on. This is much bigger than just the local chapters loving the epublished authors and national not. It looks to the future and as we all know, time waits for no one.

Moving on…what I really wanted to talk about this week is…promotion.

Now, personally I have a promo group who does a lot for me. I don’t usually post any excerpts, they do but I do send out notices for things like this blog. I also have to prepare exactly what the promo group is sending out so I know what’s being posted. Eventually, I’m sure I’ll even have someone do that for me but right now, I like the control.

I belong to many yahoo promo groups as does my promotions manager, so she gets to post things about me in over a hundred different groups. Recently, I caught the tail end of an email, which stated that many of the promotions groups were changing their rules because so many authors didn’t know or understand promotion etiquette and they were tired of the blatant disregard of those rules.

That bothered me because I know I go out of my way to make sure I and my promotions group does everything correctly. What is correctly you might ask? Here are a few tips on how to promote yourself well.

1. Make sure you follow the rules of the group perfectly. This means, if they want a certain thing in the subject line, put it there. For example, if you must label your excerpt as PROMO, then do it exactly as their example shows. This would include making sure you post on the correct day and their requested way. Don’t be surprised if your promotional item doesn’t show up if you haven’t followed the loop rules.

2. Make sure you don’t inundate the loop with the same promotion repeatedly. Between me and my promotions group, we belong to roughly 200 lists. We have a set schedule of who posts what where and how many times for that month. A good rule of thumb would be to promote heavily on release week, up to once a day on the loops for the first week, then only once a week thereafter. If the book is from your backlist, then once to twice a month is sufficient unless it has a tie in to your current book. Example: I have a Christmas elf series. About 2-3 weeks before release day, I start promoting book 1 of the series all the way up to the current book. The items on the current book are usually little teasers with a full excerpt on release day. Then I promo the heck out of it the first week dwindling down to just a couple times a month for as long as I want to promote that particular book. And yes, I promote all my books, even those published in 2004.

3. Do one to four guest blog spots a month in addition to your own blog. Not every blog is the same and you will not necessarily find the same people on all the same blogs. This means, you can recycle material if you need to. Most of the time, the owner of the blog will send you a set of questions to answer. They post them and you need to check for comments several times during the day. Make sure you answer everyone who comments. This goes a long way with the readers. Everyone wants to be recognized for something they did or for stopping by. By doing this, you are exposing yourself to a new group of readers at least once monthly.

4. Try to participate in one loop chat a month but never do more than four. Reason, being there more than once a week can really make readers annoyed. At least that’s what I’m hearing from many of the promotion groups. You need to keep your content fresh and interesting. If you’re there every day, it can be hard to bring readers back again and again because they’ve heard your spiel before.

5. Don’t overstaturate the market. Exposure is good, overexposure is bad. I’ve taken many marketing classes before and have been told it takes about 10 times before someone remembers your name. Another 10 to remember your product and then another 10 to associate said product to you. This means a minimum of 30 times before you start getting name recognition. With the digital age, it’s not hard to do at all. The trick is doing it in such a way people look forward to your excerpts, blogs and chats not gloss over them because they’ve had too much. If you only have one book, this is hard as readers do get bored with having the same item over and over again.

6. Last, join promotion groups and loops to see what promotional opportunities are available to you. Here’s a couple of links to get you started.

http://1stturningpoint.com/
This is a website/group started by authors to teach about promotion. They have good articles and are extremely good at helping a beginning author.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Promotion_Loop_Schedule/?yguid=266457368
This is a yahoogroup that gives you a daily message regarding where you can post your promotion. It is very good as you will get reminders in your mailbox. To subscribe to this loop, use this link Promotion_Loop_Schedule-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Happy promoting! See you all next week!

Lynn

RWA, Reviews and More

Don't you just love this picture? It's of the Eilean Donan castle in Scotland and is very calming which is always needed before discussing a controversial topic.

Okay, I really thought that I was done with the RWA thing and then on another loop someone posted that ESPAN, a special interest chapter in RWA for electronic and small press authors, posts a kick-ass expose from one of the best agents in the industry, Deidre Knight. Here’s the link below and I think you all should read it.

http://espan-rwa.com/the-digital-age-and-rwa-a-call-for-change/

What is so very vindicating is the fact she basically says the same thing about the industry as a whole I have over and over again. Since she has a lot of clout, I’m hoping the industry will sit up and notice, especially RWA. So I thought I would Google the whole RWA and epublishing thing. OMG! There are 6300, count them, posts regarding this very thing. And believe me, this is one thing I will really, really get the word out on. RWA…are you listening now?

Here are a few of the more of the most interestng links: (NOTE: I went 10 pages in before I stopped…6300 references are a lot to look through…LOL!)

http://charleneteglia.com/blog/rwa-epublishing-and-money-bring-your-torch-and-pitchforks

http://www.jackiebarbosa.com/2009/06/03/wtf-wednesday-rwa-vs-epublishers-take-one-millionty/

http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/05/rwa-rejects-digital-publishing-workshop.html

http://www.erecsite.com/2009/06/rwa-and-epublishing.html

Now the last link has is a whole list to other blogs and things which looks at what the RWA president, Diane Pershing, said in her last column.

Now you all might think I hate RWA and I have to tell you I don’t. I love RWA. I’ve served on its board, founded chapters and used to go to every conference until my mother got sick. Then my focus had to change and it’s only been in the last four years or so that I’ve come back to the fold so to speak.

What I hate is the shortsightedness of this stance. One of the above blogs directs the focus of the problem by comparing what RWA is doing to the record business who got too big for their britches when they tried to control everything about the recording business including how CDs were produced and sold. Hello…notice there are really no record stores anymore? Except of the collector variety? Most cars have a jack for an iPod and I know I wish mine did because I buy everything off iTunes put it on the iPod and move it around as I need it. And I’m no spring chicken. I have kids over 30 and I wasn’t a baby when I had my oldest either. If I can adapt RWA can too.

Okay…off my soapbox…LOL! Maybe I’ll just get a petition going or something. I’m sure there are RWA members out there who would really want to sign it.

One of the other items I want to talk about is reviews. Most of the reviews now days are done online which makes it easier for all those involved as they are very accessible. At least, in my mind, that’s what it’s all about. I have received lots of reviews over the years from many different places. Some are good and some are not so good as expected. But come on now, almost five years after the release date? To give the reviewer some credit, she did give me a good review and she probably didn’t receive the book until recently. It’s been known to happen but is still a surprise.

Now, my question to all you authors out there, what is the longest time you’ve had to wait for a review? I’ll give anyone their choice of eBooks if they are past the five year mark. Just let me know through blog comments and I'll email you privately offline.

One final bit of news is in the form of some music. All right, all right, I’ll admit, I’m a music slut. I will listen to almost anything and I like something from every genre imaginable except maybe the polka. LOL! Here’s a new group I ran across via another blog, The Divine Madness, and I thought you all might like their music. Someone had used it in a book trailer and the music was just so perfect. Check them out and I think you’ll see what intrigues me so much. Here’s there link:

http://www.myspace.com/thedivinemadness

Remember you must comment to be entered into my drawing for a basket at the end of the month. I plan to put in a lot of goodies including an iPod and all sort of sexy toys. Sorry there isn't a picture but I forgot to take one this week. :-(

Hope you enjoyed this week’s blog and see you next time!

Lynn

eBooks, ePublishing and RWA

First, let me apologize about this blog being so late in the day. My computer hasn’t been cooperating the last couple of days. I can only surmise it is as under the weather as I am feeling with sinus headaches and hurting joints. That’s what happens in the desert when you get clouds and humidity for a few days. Your body is forced to get used to something not normally here. It took me two days to adjust and it just might take the computer a little more.

Second, the blog topic for this week is epublishing and ebooks. As much as this pains me to say, the blog Dear Author had a very relevant topic with the following blog today. Here’s the link, so please go read it and take the poll. This is one blog the industry pays attention to a lot and I suggest we participate.

While the Dear Author blog is not known for playing nice in certain areas, they have actually tackled a subject which should be near and dear to all of us. They are also fierce supporters of ebooks and that is good for all of us.

Here’s the link: http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/06/10/how-many-readers-have-bought-an-epublished-book/

When I read the blog, I had to pull out my RWR and look to see if they were telling the truth. Sigh. Sadly they were and all I could think was another RWA president put their foot in their mouth before really thinking about a large chunk of their membership.

In the letter, RWA President, Diane Pershing says because of the lack of advances, epublishing does not serve the RWA membership well. Apparently, RWA feels that anything less than $1000 up front is not good, not even the industry standard of 37.5%+ royalty base serves the membership as well. I would like to know just what planet this woman is on.

I am a past RWA board member and I just don’t understand how, in this economic climate, RWA can not see the benefit of their members receiving a monthly or quarterly paycheck instead of a biannual or annual one which may or may not see any cash in hand. I receive monthly royalties from a couple of my publishers and am quite happy with the arrangement. I didn’t get an advance and to be honest, I didn’t miss it at all. I would miss my monthly royalties if I didn’t receive them at all.

Now, I expect another RWA battle in the works and it’s not going to be pretty. BUT the only way to be part of the solution is to state our opinions and let the world know just how you feel about the ebook and epublishing industry. I know I am.

I know I did when I voted on this poll that RWA and NYC industry leaders will see. Even NYC is seeing the writing on the wall and has the foresight to understand ebooks are the wave of the future. Most books in print from NYC also have an ebook component. It’s a necessity to survive in publishing today. Why can’t RWA see this? Why can’t they ride the wave of the future? What is it that’s holding them back?

I don’t understand and I’ve been a member of this organization since 1984 for the most part. I’d like you all to let me know just what you think and go vote on the Dear Author poll. It might just help us all.

Remember, for all of you who comment, you’ll be entered into my June contest. I plan to give out basket full of books and goodies as a celebration of me being back writing full time and my birthday. Yeah, I’ll be a year older this month. And the solstice never looked so good. LOL!

Till next week…

Lynn