The Middle Place

We all have a middle place, a time in our lives where we start looking at things differently, start realizing our own mortality and what we’re going to leave behind.

That was not the case when I opened the article below whose link had arrived from a friend in my email box. No, those things were the furthest from my mind. I had opened this article because she said it was cool and because it talked about author promotion. Take a moment and read the article and you’ll see what I mean.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304603.html

Okay, I think, just what is so special about this person. She had this great story idea, she does some readings and bang, she gets a lot of media time. Geez, what does she have that I don’t? So, I decide to go one more step and go to her website. Take a look.

http://kellycorrigan.com/themiddleplace/newsevents/index.html

Yeah, the website is great and I just love the layout and if I were a jealous kind of person I would be jealous. But I’m not because I’m still intrigued by what is making her so popular. Why are these myopic look at one’s life so great? Geez, I’m only 51 and I am blessed to not ever really having a devastating disease and it is my one hope that I never get Alzheimer’s which is what my mother died of.

So, I’m not getting it and then I see the YouTube link, realizing that it all started here. Sigh. Now go look at it and come back to read the rest of this blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_4qwVLqt9Q

I get it. I so, so get it as I sit here trying to type through the haze of tears. Maybe it’s just because I am still reeling from the news that a 40 yo brother of a friend died so unexpectedly. Maybe it’s because I’ve been suddenly missing my mother and God only knows why. Maybe it's because my dog, who had been kissed by the fairies with his one blue eye and one brown eye, had also unexpected died at the beginning of this month. Or maybe it’s because I feel stymied by my own fears and wants and desires that I seem not to be moving forward in my own writing career and this brought it all to the forefront.

Maybe I just needed a good cry. So thank you Kelly Corrigan for bringing it all into focus once again. You don’t know me and probably never will but with just those three things you have enriched my life in ways I didn’t know it needed to be enriched. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. This is just the kick I need.

And like a good little consumer girl, the next time I am out, I will be trying to find your book so I can purchase. So don’t be offended if the first place I look is Costco followed by Wal-Mart as I have a very cheap, very Scottish husband who is always admonishing me for spending more on books than I must.

Good luck in everything you do, Kelly, you deserve to be the ‘it’ girl as you have a way with words.

Here are the other websites mentioned in article http:/www.shewrites.com/ and http://www.inkwellmanagement.com/about.php

And no, no big promo push this week because even I need to rest. But here’s the winner of this week’s drawing: Tierney O'Malley.

See you all next week.

Lynn

More Promotional Opportunities and Reader Giveaways

As I move along in my career, I find it is just as important to give back to my group of fellow writers and our readers. One of the ways I am doing this is to offer more promotional options for authors and reader giveaways all of which are free. It costs nothing to do any of these but you must schedule them with me to be included in the author portion. For the readers, you just need to show up.

First up is Sexy Saturdays. On September 1, 2009, Sexy Saturdays began on my yahoogroup, XtraOrdinary Romance (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/XtraOrdinaryRomance). Everyone is invited to promote their books every Saturday all day long. I’ll be popping in and out during the day to see how it’s going occasionally or to add my own promo.

Rules for posting are simple and will be sent to you the moment you join. Please let me know if you are a reader or an author or both as the welcome messages are different. If you already belong to my group, then please look under the file section and you’ll see a file there explaining the guidelines for posting and the rules for giveaways. The only items I will mention here are these: I don’t allow drive-bys by anyone and I would appreciate contributions from the authors to the weekly giveaway which start next Wednesday. The more contributions we have from authors, the more readers we can expect to see.

Every Wednesday, I plan to hold a weekly giveaway of all the things authors have donated for the week. It’s not a requirement to give a donation but remember it is a great way to get your name out there and show the readers how much you care. A PDF copy of one of your eBooks will suffice just fine as I don’t really expect anything more. It could also be a free read you have put together. As long as it looks professional and is something you’re proud of, I will put it in. And thank you in advance for your generosity. Readers need to know we care about them in these rough economic times.

On Thursdays, starting October 1st, I am doing author interviews on my personal blog at www.lynncrain.blogspot.com. These aren’t to take the place of my weekly spot here at all but meant to enhance an author’s exposure. Blogs, because they change frequently, tend to come up in search engines more and the biggest reason I contribute to more than one. This opportunity I have named 2 For Thursdays. Each and every Thursday, I will interview not one but two authors. Each interview will take center stage on the blog twelve hours and have their two latest covers posted for the week as well. I have a set of questions you’ll need to answer for me. Again, these need to be scheduled. At this point, I am filling the spots by invitation only BUT if you want to get on the list, email me now because I will start down that list as soon as possible.

Now for readers, as noted above every Wednesday, we will be giving away ebooks and maybe more to a few lucky winners. These are random drawings and the occasional question and answer. You do need to be present to win. Also, every Saturday and occasionally during the week, we will be doing a quickie. You heard me right, a quickie. It will announced as such. These are random and will usually involve the giveaway of something from the basket or an ebook of my own.

You can subscribe here XtraOrdinaryRomance-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Again, my personal blog is at www.lynncrain.blogspot.com.

Thanks and hope to see you all there! I look forward to it!

Now, the moment you have all been waiting for...the winner of last week’s giveaway is quiltingreader! Come on down and get your free copy of An Elf’s Magic!

Hope to see you all here next week when we talk more about promotion and I give another book away!

Until then...

Lynn

Interesting Author Tools

I'm on my new machine and don't have any pictures except cover art...and isn't it a wonderful cover? Yeah, I'm on the elf track again. I'll talk more about this is July...

This week when trying to decide what I would write, I ran across some interesting things for writers. Some of these you all may know and some you might not.

The first is a place called Tiny Url. The website for this is http://www.blogger.com/www.tinyurl.com and it does something miraculous. It takes a large url, like the purchase link for one of your books, and makes it small. So basically, you go from this

http://www.extasybooks.net/ebjmsite/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=ebook_flypage&product_id=5045&category_id=31&manufacturer_id=65&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=44

to this

http://tinyurl.com/AnElfsMagic

with very little effort. The page is self explanatory and these tiny urls can be book specific. This looks more polished and professional in my opinion. I use these in all my promo now and it does look much better.

Last week I had talked about promotion and given you a yahoogroup to join, so you would get pinged every day about promoting. This week, I'm going to give you a list of links where promotion is welcome. On these lists, you can promote anything. You should check them out.

An Alternative Read http://groups.yahoo.com/group/An_Alternative_Read/

Cupids Library Reviews http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cupidslibraryreviews/

ebook Chatters http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebookChatters/

Hot Romance Readers http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HotRomanceReaders/

Infinite Possibilities http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Infinite_Possibilities/

Moonlight Fantasy http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Moonlight_Fantasy/

Don't forget to check to see if they have any posting rules. Most groups have but they are easy to follow. These are but a few on my list which ranges between 80-300 groups. Do I belong to them all? No, I don't but I go regularly to check them out and see if they are offering author days. It never hurts to just join then change the email to special notices only. That way you're there and will only have to make a minor change to become a regular again. And there are always giveaways on these groups. Nothing wrong with some free books for any of us.

Another thing you all may have run across are book trailers. I have been asked many times whether you need one or not. I'm not sure if an author does but I can tell you it does generate interest. Take a look at one of my trailers and see what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMsz9fmy9ls

Now what is amazing about this video is two things. One is that it has been viewed 2,136 times. To this day, I get people emailing me and asking about this video. It's a little long but nicely put together even if there is an error in it that no one caught. LOL! Oh, well, it didn't distract anyone at all since no one pointed it out.

The reason the error was never changed is that making a video is time intensive and I had moved on by the time I noticed it. Still, videos are a great way to get the word out about your books.

That's all on the promo front this week. I wish you all luck in getting the word out about your books. Drop me a line and let me know.

More on epublishing and RWA: the epublishing dilemma has been heating up over at RWAchange. The group is renaming itself in order to not violate any RWA edict on use of the name as well as to better define what they are about. The new name will be Romance Writers for Change with a completely new website and yahoogroups. There is still a lot of misinformation floating around out there, so I suggest that all of you read everything carefully before you decide which side of the fence you'll end up on.

One of the best articles I've read this week really hits the nail on the head, so to speak and I think you'll see the truth of this blog. The link is http://www.blogger.com/www.theresameyers.com/blog/ and the author, Theresa Myers, is a long time RWA member. Very interesting to see another's perspective. And look under June 25th if the blog doesn't come up correctly as the software is new and while it's the same, there are some new features which I'm not sure I quite have down yet. LOL!

Next week I'll be gone to Idaho but plan to have something up. I'm not sure if it will be pictures or a travel log but it will be something. Then I'm off to visit a friend in Canada. She lives north of Vancouver and I can't wait to go. I'll keep you all posted.

One final thing...the winner of my summer pack is...drumroll please: Debby Creager (cleo@hbeark.com). Debby, I will be emailing you this weekend for your snail mail addy. And I want to thank all of you for participating. I'll be having another contest in late August for the release of my next elf book, Giselle's Elf, coming out August 1.

Until next time...hope you have a great week!

Lynn

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

The Art of Promotion

Now that I am a published author, I find myself constantly looking for ways to get my name out there. As a writer, my name is my product and I know it’s imperative to get it out there as much as possible. The question is how?

Do I visit every Yahoo group I can find and post excerpts? Do I blog every single day and hope to get a following that way? Do I pay to have my banner or cover advertised at a review site? Do I garner up the courage to go on a radio blog?

There are so many options out there it is mind-boggling. Some days I feel I spend more time promoting then actually writing. So that brings up the next round of questions. Can you ever do too much promoting? Not only do I worry that people will get sick of seeing me on all the loops, but how much money should I really invest?

So I am putting these questions out to all you writers and readers. Then I would like to know what worked for you? Do you have any unique ideas that boosted your sales?

-Stephani