Peter Bowerman, of Well Fed Writer-fame, has a new blog and it’s getting a lot of attention. He allows comments and he gets a lot of them. Check it out at http://www.wellfedwriter.com/blog
I would like to allow comments here. I did for quite a while, but I was so busy deleting spam all the time, and no one was commenting, anyway, so I asked my webmaster to have the comments option turned off. I do, however, provide my website address in practically every blog entry (through which you can easily contact me) and I frequently give you my email address. I do welcome and invite legitimate comments.
I get random questions from random people every week. Yesterday, a “virtual assistant†contacted me with a question about locating sites where her author could list her books and tapes. Here’s what I told her:
“Hopefully, your author wrote a book proposal before coming out with her book. Or at least, hopefully, she researched her competition. If she is familiar with competing books, she can find out how those authors are marketing their books—where they are showcasing them, where they are getting reviews and so forth.
Do a Google search using the titles of competing books and tapes as the keywords and see where they pop up in blogs, at review sites, in magazines, etc. This will give your author an idea about where to begin promoting hers.
Where did she go for information when researching her book/tapes? Revisit these sites, magazines, newsletters and see if she can get interviewed there, have her book reviewed, get her book listed for sale at these sites…
Talk to others with books on these topics and ask what their best promotional ploys are. Most authors are happy to develop a mutually advantageous network.
Look at the calendar and press sections at other author’s sites to see where they are speaking, where their books are for sale, where they are getting interviewed…â€
Hopefully, this gave the virtual assistant some ideas about where to start and will lead to some good exposure for her author.
I’ve also recently been asked how to find paying work on the web. Does anyone out there have any ideas? Those local to Ventura County may have seen the article in the Ventura County Star this week about getting web writing gigs. Let me know if you have additional information that I can pass on to my clients, blog followers, students and others. PLFry620@yahoo.com.
In the meantime, what are you working on these days? Are you focused on writing a book? Seeking freelance article work? Trying to place stories in magazines? Doing corporate or client writing? Trying to land a newspaper or magazine column? Promoting a book? How’s it going?
If you need help in any of these areas—some ideas, encouragement, solid resources, instruction, information—be sure to check out my array of books at http://www.matilijapress.com
Here are my best sellers: The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book (enormously, incredibly rich in information, instruction and resources), The Successful Writer’s Handbook, (a great choice for someone getting his/her feet wet in the writing business), How to Write a Successful Book Proposal in 8 Days or Less (a stand-alone book on writing a book proposal), The Author’s Repair Kit (featuring the post-publication book proposal—for authors with books that are faltering in the marketplace), Over 75 Good Ideas for Promoting Your Book (my all-time best seller at Amazon), A Writer’s Guide to Magazine Articles (for the freelance writer who wants to earn a living or supplement his income through article-writing).
Note: You can get The Successful Writer’s Handbook or How to Write a Successful Book Proposal in 8 Days or Less in print or digital form FREE with a SPAWN membership or renewal. http://www.spawn.org At least sign up for the FREE enewsletter, SPAWNews.
And don’t forget, yesterday I started a 6-week online (email) article-writing course. It’s not too late to join in. http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm Contact me with questions: PLFry620@yahoo.com