Writing and Publishing News from

How often do you have an opportunity to promote your book or your upcoming book and you don’t take it? Last night I had the pleasure of working with two dozen or so writers and authors under most unusual circumstances. I’m at the Cat Writers Association conference in Los Angeles today. This organization receives a whole lot of support and attention from companies that sell items for and about cats—nutritional products, toys, treats, magazines, calendars and so forth. Not only do they support this organization financially, but they send boxes and boxes and boxes of their product samples to be given away at the conference.

So on the night before the conference, volunteers (that is speakers, attendees, organizers) gather and fill goodie bags with all of these items for conference attendees.

Generally, I travel to New York for this event and I arrive too late to participate. This year, the conference is in my backyard, so I arrived early enough to join in. What great fun! I met friends from past years and many new cat writers. They refer to members who are attending for the first time as, “kittens.” Cute!

After the work was completed last night, we sat in a circle, shared some veggies, fruits and cheeses and introduced ourselves to the group—talking about our work and, of course, our cats. What a nice moment. And it was a great opportunity—one of those unexpected marketing moments. How cool is that?

As authors, we must be prepared for such moments. I don’t suggest that you necessarily always have the hard-sell thing going on. Not everyone can pull it off well. I’ve met people who can. Most who do it annoy me. But you certainly can mention that you are an author and introduce your latest book. Only one woman, last night—and it wasn’t me—had the foresight to bring a copy of her latest book to hold up during introductions. I guess she’s been involved in the goodie bag stuffing party before.

After the introduction session, came socializing and networking. I noticed people gravitating toward those with interesting stories—backgrounds or work they wanted to know more about. I heard, “Oh, congratulations on your new book, can I see it?” “I write about black cats, too—have you heard of such and such magazine?” “I’d like to know more about that resource you mentioned.”

You’ve heard/read me suggest that you carry your book with you everywhere you go—that you collect business cards—that you have interesting materials of your own to hand out. In other words, always be prepared when one of these great opportunities arise.

Secrets From Novelists
I’m excited about my planned series of blog posts for all next week, where I interview novelists at various stages of publishing and success about their techniques and approach to their stories. I’ve received most of the interviews back and I can tell you, these are going to energize and inspire you in ways you can’t even imagine, yet.

To give you a sneak peek into who will be featured—Wendy Dager, Raven West, Hope Clark, Margaret Brownley and Kathleen Ewing.

The interviews run all next week—November 5-9, 2012.

My new book is up at my website. If you have a book to promote, please do yourself a favor and order it. It’s Talk Up Your Book (Allworth Press) 300 pages, $19.95. http://www.matilijapress.com/TalkUpYourBook.html

Speaking of book promotion, an interesting story came across my desk yesterday. It seems that a publisher was interested in producing an anthology of stories from members of a particular writers group. The publisher had already published some of these members’ stories, however. And, since no one seemed interested in promoting their work (sales were dismal), the publisher decided not to go ahead as planned. This group of authors lost out on an opportunity because they did not promote their work.

Promotion is such a very different animal than most hopeful authors realize. Some of them don’t understand that promotion is part of the publishing game. They aren’t aware that, along with writing for publication, comes the HUGE responsibility of promotion and marketing. While most authors hear this and read it many times throughout the process of writing their books, they either don’t believe it, choose to ignore it or think that their situation is different—somehow special.

And then there are those people who just don’t know how to go about promoting a book outside of telling a few friends about it.

Many authors go right back to work writing another book after producing one. These authors are probably the worst promoters. What would you rather do, sit at your computer and write or go out and beg people to buy your already published book?

It doesn’t take an author long to realize that just reminding friends and twitter/facebook/discussion group followers to buy your book isn’t enough. In order to sell numbers of books, authors must launch a plan—organize projects to promote their books. They need to step outside their familiar box and organize events and activities, learn about events and opportunities and get involved.

The fact is that you won’t sell a copy of your book to everyone you talk to or everyone who hears about your book. The percentage of books sold per your efforts is probably around 8 or 10% at best in this competitive bookselling climate. Now, if you’re talking about friends and family, your percentage might be close to 50%. Sales to acquaintances (co-workers, fellow club members, neighbors, etc.) might amount to 6%. That is, for every 100 acquaintances who know about your book, six might buy it. And that’s if you are promoting to them personally. It’s much harder to sell a book from the background. Your customers will be more apt to buy your book from you in a face-to-face situation.

The reality of bookselling success is that it is time-consuming, energy-draining and hard, hard work. An author who wants to be widely read—who wants to profit from his or her publishing venture—must be willing to give promotion his full attention for at least three months. But I have to warn you, your book will only sell for as long as you are promoting it. Stop promoting and it will die.

The group of writers who were so thrilled to be published and then were excited about being involved in another anthology, really blew that opportunity with their publisher. It will be interesting to see if they learned something.

Let’s hope that each and every one of them will begin to take book promotion more seriously—that they will buy books on book promotion and study them, take courses/webinars on book promotion, read the many book promotion articles in the magazines and newsletter they subscribe to, bring in speakers on the subject of book promotion, attend writers conferences and sit in on sessions on book promotion.

If you are new to publishing, this is also what you should be doing. Start by reading my series of books.

Publish Your Book helps you to understand the publishing industry, all of your options and your responsibilities as a published author. http://www.matilijapress.com/PublishYourBook.html

Promote Your Book offers way over 250 tips and techniques for promoting your book. This book provides a treasure trove of ideas for the hopeful, new and struggling authors. http://www.matilijapress.com/PromoteYourBook.html

Talk Up Your Book shows you how to use your personality to sell your book in many different ways. This is a must-have book for any author who wants to or who should be doing signings, interviews, book festivals, public speaking, workshops at appropriate conferences, readings and so forth. http://www.matilijapress.com/TalkUpYourBook.html