Thursday, December 22, 2011

Marketing Your Book

It's Dec 22nd, and I still have lots of cooking to do before Christmas Eve, yet here I am, on my computer. As I have mentioned before, I thought writing the book was my job and contribution to the process. Although I decided to go with assisted publishing, for the simple reason that I could get my book out there faster, (a good 18 months faster) than traditional publishing, the marketing process landed in my lap as soon as the book was published. (I am told it would have been the same either way).

I was ecstatic to find my book offered in over 100 online bookstores, I would not have known where to begin or even how to do that on my own. I was offered all sorts of marketing options, and each one came with a price. That’s when I began to spend more and more time on internet, researching my marketing options. I created a facebook book page, offered a book giveaway, made a book trailer and now here I am, writing this blog.

I had no idea how to do any of these things before I sat down and tried. I still wonder what to do or say on my fb page, but the giveaway went well. After spending all week on the book trailer, the program crashed and refused to open. I spent another week learning to use a new program and remaking the trailer. I wasn’t able to manipulate the images in my slides as I had in the first video, nor could I access the slides to see what I had written on them. For now, I guess it’ll do. I am still learning and trying new things.

Although I graduated from the Institute of Children’s Literature, and was guided through the process of preparing my manuscript, queries, agents and publisher submissions, none of these touched on book marketing.

Will my book ‘make it’? I don’t know. I hope so, because I believe it’s a worthy novel. My offer to you, as a travel companion, on your journey through this scary and overwhelming world of writing and publishing, is to share my experience with you. I would like to share my questions with you as well. I found that having as many sources as possible is a life saver.

Enjoy this Holiday Season with your friends and family. I’ll be back soon enough.

No comments:

Post a Comment