Somebody Should've Poked Me

Oy, Vey! Somebody should have poked me with a pointy stick. I had no idea how much time it was going to take to promote a book.

Let this serve as a warning to the rest of you. As soon as you catch a whiff that you might sell a novel, build your marketing plan ASAP. I'm not kidding.

.

And even if you think it might be several years down the road, get thee a nice professional blog with your "author name" and not a moniker. You need to build a presence that will serve as an extension of your brand. (Ouch! We won't even get into brands right now.)

There are so many things that have to be done, so many things that have to be researched that you will find your time sucked away into a giant Hoover.

For example, I really wanted to do a book trailer. The lovely and talented Diane Craver wrote an article for Writers Weekly on book trailers that you can read here.

I could have gone ahead and hired someone to create one for me, but if you know me, you know what a control freak I am. I would never be happy unless I picked out all the images and the music. Well guess what? That takes a huge amount of time, not to mention I would have to learn how to put the thing together. So, book trailer--Out.

Websites? I built one two years ago and I am so glad I did. Not only did it give me time to learn how to use Dreamweaver (the bane of my existence) but it forced me to think on how I wanted to be represented. I have very definite ideas on how I want my books seen and it took me a while to find my path. That was two years well spent, and it's one less thing I have to worry about now.

Interviews: I've had a couple of people offer to interview me on their blogs and I'm looking forward to that. I've never been interviewed. Who knows what I'll say?

Perhaps in the interest of sharing, I will write a few posts on what I'm doing to promote Touch Of Fire. Maybe it will help someone else. Maybe not. (grin)

But for the love of Pete, please don't wait as long as I did. This publication business will smack you square in the face and believe it or not, you only have a couple of weeks to make a splash. After that you become old news. That "15 minutes" of fame can take months of preparation.

In my case, I get two chances at fame. May 20 is when the e-version of Touch Of Fire comes out. The print version debuts later. I'll post the date as soon as I find out.

Stay with me for the next couple of weeks and we'll talk about specific book promotion ideas.

*****
It SNOWED yesterday. In Texas! Which only proves God has a sense of humor.