Welcome back to your Do-it-Yourself MFA program.

Now it’s time to get out there and sell the book.  Actually, this part should be happening while you’re still writing the book (if it’s non-fiction) or editing the book (if it’s fiction).  In other words, it is never too early to create buzz.

Here’s an analogy: sometimes PR people contact me, wanting me to write about their product.  The reality is that it’s almost never a product I already know–iPods sort of sell themselves–but instead, a small niche product.  Here’s the reality–if they had purchased some ad space on a few blogs and I had subconsciously heard of the product several times before they approached me, I’d probably be more interested in getting a sample and writing about their product.  But when they’re cold-calling me without any prior poke into my subconscious, it would have to be a pretty incredible product to get my attention.  And frankly, if it was that incredible, they probably wouldn’t be approaching me to write about it because it would already be selling like hotcakes.

Books work with the same thought.  If you cold-call the reader, for example, just setting it on the table in the bookstore and hope they pick it up, 99 times out of 100, they will walk on by without glancing at it unless it has a remarkable cover or title.  But if you saw reviews and ads and met the writer in passing at a conference, chances are, when you bump into that book down the road, you’ll be more likely to give it a try.  Therefore, the marketing wheels need to be turning early-on in order to catch the crowds right at the book’s release.

Some of these avenues will be closed off to you if you self-published your book, but regardless of the size of your press, the rest of these are places to try to get a bit of publicity for your book.

• Your Blog
• Your Book Site
• Other People’s Blogs
• Reviews on Book Sites
• Reviews in Print Mediums
• Readings at Bookstores
• Readings at Conferences
• Speaking Gigs
• Advertisements
• Email List

Let’s explore these ideas:

Your Blog

Hopefully, you’re still writing on your blog and keeping up your platform.  You already have people who like your writing style so tell them about your book.  Not by continuously clocking them over the head with it, but you should use your blog to shout to the world that you do, indeed, have a book.

Your Book Site

And for the love, set up a book site.  A place to point people toward for information about your book’s release, upcoming appearances, and an excerpt.  Make sure that’s it’s both eye-catching and easy to navigate.

Other People’s Blogs

Otherwise known as a virtual blog tour.  You can ask others to write about your book or have them conduct an interview with you.   You may do a guest post on their blog if they’re open to the idea, therefore reaching new readers who may not know about your blog or book.  Sometimes, another person will organize the virtual book tour for you.

Reviews on Book Sites

The best place to have a review beyond a site that contains your niche audience for your book is on a book site.  After all, people who read book sites usually read books.  Try to make connections with book bloggers (and by make connections, I mean take the time to build a relationship.  Please don’t write a general email to every book blogger or reviewer begging them to look at your book) and you can usually arrange to have the publicist send them a review copy.

Reviews in Print Mediums

These are getting harder and harder to get.  If you have any connections, use them.  Your publicist at the publishing house will also be using their connections.  Instead of trying to get a review in People magazine or the New York Times, focus on your niche audience.  If it’s a non-fiction book, is there a magazine that covers the topic?  If it’s a fiction book, is there a smaller magazine that might do a review?

Readings at Bookstores

It’s not that publishers don’t send authors on book tours — there are people reading at bookstores every night of the week.  But do the math — there are many more authors and books than there are bookstores and not everyone will get a book tour.  In fact, most publishers no longer put their money toward book tours because they often aren’t worth the cost.  The exception is with big name authors who can pull in the audience.   Speak directly with local bookstores or the scheduler at your local big chain store.

Readings at Conferences

Are there conferences going on that are connected in some way to your book.  A piece of general women’s fiction might work well with BlogHer.  A book about a specific medical condition may fit with a conference being held on that medical condition.  Search to see if there are conferences you should be attending and networking at as well as places where you could speak about your book.

Speaking Gigs

On that end, if you have a non-fiction book, you may be considered an expert in a topic and get a speaking event at a conference or meeting where you can also mention your book.  If you have a piece of fiction, you may be able to get a speaking gig about publishing in general and mention your book there.

Advertisements

Purchase advertisements in smart places.  It might be worth your money to purchase ad space on a popular blog that is read by people who might like your book.  It is worth getting print advertising in a magazine that caters to people who would read your book, or buy advertising in a newsletter.

Email List

This is not a time to get shy.  Email out one or two announcements about your book or readings to your friends.  Ask them to forward it to their friends.  You do not want to be annoying and send out dozens of emails, but this is also a time to get by with a little help from your friends.

Other suggestions for ways people have publicized their book?

Okay class, any questions on what was discussed here? Please leave them in the comment section below and I will answer them in the comment section below. Keep in mind that I have a lot of topics to cover so your question may be answered in a future installment (see below). So keep your questions about book publicity.

Heads Up and Looking Back: topics that will be covered in future installments or that were covered in past installments

1. Before You Even Get Started

2. Are You Ready to Be an Author?

3. How to Write a Non-Fiction Book Proposal

4. Why You Need an Agent

5. How to Get an Agent

6. Querying Agents

7. What Happens Next–Waiting for a Book Sale

8. Self-publishing and Self-representation

9. Working with an Editor

10. THIS POST

11. A Mishmash of Leftover Questions and Answers

I did two of the photography sessions at BlogHer last week, and even though I didn’t edit these images, I thought I’d throw them up because I freakin’ took them through glass with a point-and-shoot.  Did you read that?  Through glass.  With a point-and-shoot.

Click on each thumbnail to see the larger, clearer image.

We spent the day at the aquarium after swinging by my cousin’s house.  Our time was limited, so we decided to visit our favourites.  We swung by the clown fish and the crocodiles.  We spent a long time wandering by the sharks.  We learned that you can’t determine a sea turtle’s sex until they’re around 20-years-old.  That horseshoe crabs have blue blood.

During the dolphin show, Josh and I were whispering and the ChickieNob asked what we were talking about.
I said, “Daddy and I may be planning a surprise for you.” To which she shrieked, “you’re getting me a dolphin pet!”

Er…no…we are not getting her a dolphin pet.  Not even when she sketched out how the dolphin would be ours, but would live at the pool, and in the winter, could move into our bathtub.

She earnestly inquired why the aquarium didn’t have a mermaid exhibit.  I mean, on the spectrum of interesting sea life, she does have a point that more people would want to see mermaids than shield shrimp.

We went out to dinner and walked by the Harbour, and then made our way back home.

Today is Friday the 13th.  That only occurred to me because someone Tweeted about it earlier in the week.  I also missed the fact that it was 8/9/10 on Monday.  I am not the brightest woman when it comes to dates, though I have 2012 circled on my calendar not just because the world is ending that year, but because it’s also Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee.

Though I’m usually fairly anxious around certain dates, allowing my imagination to run towards grotesquely disturbing scenarios, I’ve never had big feelings concerning Friday the 13th.  Even if I live … like … 2 miles from Camp Crystal Lake and I totally know someone who knows someone who is the cousin of the counselor who decapitated Mrs. Voorhees.

It’s one of those dates that I feel like I should have big feelings about.  If I’m not worried, then I must be a fool.

You know how girls pinched each other’s arms with a Cootie Shot to ward off boy germs?  Mentioning that it’s Friday the 13th feels like a horror Cootie Shot.

*******

The Weekly What If: In honour of spooky things and Friday the 13th — would you knowingly eat a whole spider (as in, you would need to pick it up and pop it in your mouth, unadorned by other ingredients) in order to gain an extra year of life?  If the number was limitless, how many spiders would you eat?

*******

Thank you to all of the people who participated this past week with the Cake Extravaganza for the Roundup.  I Stumbled all of the posts (because I seriously have mad Stumbling skillz), and I hope that the party continues.

Just to repeat an idea from last week — and I’ll keep annoying you with it until it catches on:

I set them out there simply because I hope that you too will read these posts if you missed them the first time, or nod in agreement if they moved you too, and then jump into the comment section on that post and let the author know.

300 (okay, 200) posts later, and that last concept, sadly, hasn’t truly caught on.  So let’s remedy that for the next 200 posts.  If you click over to read (and for the love, you should click over to read because you’d want people to do the same if a post from your blog was here and hopefully, I do a decent job of remembering who has been featured and who hasn’t and keeping it fresh each week), please leave the author a comment.  Answer their question, let them know you’re abiding with them, tell them how hard you laughed.  The Roundup has always been about community discussion.  And it has been way too quiet.

*******

And now, the blogs…

All Aboard the Pity Boat has a post about her dad that I not only couldn’t stop thinking about, but made me burst into tears when I tried to tell Josh about it.  I cannot tell you about it without ruining the gorgeous ending.

FtM Doctor has a post about a complicated situation; where one person wants a child and the other does not, and they are situationally infertile, adding an additional emotional layer to the decision.  It is a post about reaching out to those around him, begging for the right words that will bring the peace of heart he craves with this situation.  And it’s never easy; there are no perfect words.  But that doesn’t mean that you don’t stop by an offer support anyway.

DI Mom has a post about the two sides — love and hate — that rises out of infertility and their need for donor insemination.  Oh my G-d, it’s a gorgeous post; especially her ability to see the beauty in the small realities of life.

Fertility Foibles has a post about the two year anniversary of learning about their son.  She writes, “When parents go to help at the orphanage, I get photos, videos and updates about how he’s doing – just like I would if I was carrying him in my uterus and going to the doctor and getting ultrasounds.”  I love the analogy, and your heart aches for all of them in terms of the wait.

Lastly, A Garden for Butterflies has a post about rewriting your story.  The moment in the post that gutted me came in the middle: “The story I was working on took such a dramatic change that it’s like a new book had to start.  The story where I was in love and loved and joyfully waiting for my son stopped abruptly. The story of being admitted to the hospital, inducing labor for a pregnancy that I wanted, holding my dead son, then the years of grief could not be combined with the story of happily expecting a baby.”  Do you really need more than that to click over and read the post in full?  Then I promise you that she will help you reexamine your own life by the time she writes the last line.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Friday the 13th!  Answer the Weekly What If.  Thank you for participating in the Cake Extravaganza.  Comment, pretty please.  And lots of great posts to read.

The Wolvog, ChickieNob and I have been enjoying the Judy Blume oeuvre this summer, most recently Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (Josh flipped out when he saw the cover of the book, mixing it up with Then Again, Maybe I Won’t.  I guess in Josh’s world, drinking Juicy-O and masturbating are one and the same.)

Before we got to the last chapter this week, I mentioned that something really funny was going to happen because … I remembered the ending as humourous.  Granted, I hadn’t read the book in about 30 years, so I had vague memories.

I wish I could have videotaped the expression on the Wolvog’s face as the scene unfolded.  First, the wide grin anticipating something amusing.  And then the knitted brow of a boy who doesn’t quite understand what just happened.  And finally, his lower lip trembling as tears rolled down his face, his heart breaking for the turtle currently being churned up by the acid in Fudge’s stomach.

He buried his face in my upper arm and sobbed.  For ten minutes.  I apologized several times, admitting that the scene wasn’t quite as funny as I remembered, and he informed me that, “eating someone’s pet is never funny.” (which is true.)

But the worst part came after he had calmed himself down and he asked, “is Dribble going to be okay?”  And I had to explain (since I thought it was why he was crying in the first place) that Dribble was dead after being pooped out by the little brother.  And the tears began anew, despite being promised that it was only a story (“There are some very real boys, Mommy, who would name their turtle Dribble and there are real boys who would swallow a turtle.”)

He finally told me that he needed a break from my stories.

So tell me, what book are you currently remembering fondly from childhood that you will soon discover is not quite as benign as you think?

I’ve had two or three days now to marinate with my thoughts and discuss the trip with others. This was my fourth conference, which definitely made for a different experience.  The first two came back-to-back and I was definitely wide-eyed and excited.  I met probably 200+ people that first conference.

The third conference came last year in Chicago and I was in this perfect space to both connect with people I knew only through the computer, see old friends I met at prior conferences, and meet new people.  I probably came home with over 100 business cards again and spent a week or so diligently looking up new blogs to read and adding Twitter feeds.

This fourth conference made me feel old.  Not old in the grey-haired sense of the word (though yes, I noticed as I stood in the bathroom and stared at the other women sharing the mirror that I had more grey hair than anyone else washing their hands at that time), but old in the blogging sense.  I’ve been around the block.  I’ve seen bloggers come and go.  I’ve written through five summers by this point, and it can make you a little Eyeore-ish as you approach a month for the fifth time around and need to keep it as fresh as it was back in the mid-aughts.

I was also coming off a month of stress and upheaval in a summer that was going to be an emotional one regardless.  I was depleted before I got to the Hilton, and I know that plays largely into the lethargy I felt when I arrived.  I am usually overwhelmed in New York.  Throw 2400+ bloggers in a hotel with a low-energy woman and you have the makings for a perfect crying storm.

I didn’t actually have a perfect crying storm until I hugged Eden, but still, you know what I mean.

After the festivities Thursday night, I stayed mostly in the hotel.  I went to a bunch of keynotes and a lot of sessions.  I swung by the sponsor room for about a half hour and got overwhelmed by the poor Hillshire Farms people who were trying so kindly to get me to try some sandwich meat.  I learned a lot about photography, but you wouldn’t know from the pictures I’ve taken since.  I attended some panels.  I met up with a lot of ALI bloggers.

Looking back over the last few paragraphs before I continue, “overwhelmed” seems to be a running theme.  But I own that–I don’t think it’s the fault of the conference.  Truly, the only part BlogHer plays in that is that the conference has gotten so incredibly large and popular that it is difficult to navigate the stream of people.  I came home with 15 business cards–I only met 15 new people.  It is just too hard to latch onto conversations as people swarmed past.

But what is the flip side–to limit attendance?  No one would be happy with that either so it’s just a fact about the differences that come from 1000 people vs. 2500 people.  And frankly, I get a little cranky when people write snarky BlogHer-sucks posts when they get home.  You just got to partake in this fantastic opportunity and to get hung up on small details feels a little bit as if you’ve taken an enormous dump on the conference planner’s breakfast plate.

And with that image in your head, back to my mood.

My mood made me want to scream out something wholly inappropriate and I’m not sure why.  You know how you have those daydreams during math class such as “what would happen if I pulled down my pants and danced on my desk right now” (what?  Am I the only person who wondered these things?)

I felt very much as if I was blob of oil traveling through everyone else’s vinegar and I wanted to scream something and create an emulsion.

Of course, I didn’t.  Because I’m sane.  And because I also didn’t want to get asked to leave the conference before I got a chance to learn how to use Photoshop.  And because wonderful people such as Lori and Sheri and Calliope and Briar and Liza kept me grounded.

And despite my mood, I had a wonderful time.  On Friday, the ALIers got together for lunch and on Sunday, a much larger group got together a second time, blending every room of the blogroll into one enormous chat-fest in the lobby of the hotel.

After the first two conferences, I came home and raced head first into a dozen blog projects.  After the third conference, I came home full and happy.  And this time, it was like an old woman finishing her tea, a small ritual, necessary for staying grounded, and now refreshed, able to return to what she was writing before she started letting the tea leaves steep.

I do the conference differently every year, and this year, I remained the truest to myself.  I went to a tiny sliver of one party, I avoided the swag, and I just spent time with old friends.  And that is perhaps the best road for me.

You may need to click twice on the image to see the larger version.

Top: Calliope and Eva.  Kir* and Me.  Me and Lesbian Dad.

Middle: ALI Friday lunch.  Eden, Tuesday, and Me.  Lori, Eden, Me, and Tuesday.

Bottom: Sparklecorn cake.  Lori and Eden.  Lori and Eden.

* One of the highlights of the trip was meeting the always amazing, Kir.  She is one of the first bloggers I ever read (as in July of 2006–that’s how long we’ve been together, babe).  I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time petting her and reminiscing about the old days (or covering the new beyond what is written in our blogs).  I know I’m going to see her again, but I’m glad we snapped this picture from the first time.