Andrew Smith's Blog - Posts Tagged "promotion"
Care-Giving for the Mature Novel
I promised myself when I started this blog that I wouldn’t write anything unless I had something useful to impart about self-publishing. So, it having been summer and me having been gallivanting around Eastern Canada and/or working at home on a new novel, I’ve had nothing to add here for almost four months. But I recently received an e-mail from one of the many ‘Self-publishing Self Help’ sites I desperately subscribed to when I was naïve and innocent and first worked on self-publishing Edith’s War. The e-mail touted a tutorial entitled “Old Age: How to stave off the inevitable decline in your book’s sales.” I wasn’t about to cough up the hundred bucks it cost to learn what pearls of wisdom the site might impart about ensuring the health of a book’s golden years (there must be a multi-million-dollar business out there in self-publishing advice to wide-eyed wannabe authors). Besides, my latest statement from the Edith’s War distributor included a $400 cheque, plus I’d made a couple of hundred dollars worth of private sales through the summer. But the touted “Old Age” tutorial prompted me to accept that I needed a rejuvenation strategy to extend my novel’s life beyond the eighteen months that have passed since it first hit the shelves. Some may be interested to know what plans are to reinvigorate my ‘mature’ book:
•More bookstore ‘appearances’ around Toronto and environs. I’ve done three since late September and have four more lined up before the holiday season. Fortunately I quite enjoy hanging out and introducing Edith’s War to likely readers. There’s alway a customer with a war story, always a young aspiring writer to encourage, always one or two who buy a copy just to support the author. And there also seem to be more and more e-reader customers on each successive visit who are in the store to choose books which they then go home and download.
•Inspired by self-publishing author Amanda Hocking, whose multi-million sales of her paranormal young adult romance novels she attributes mainly to book bloggers, I searched for book bloggers with the intention of doing guest blogs for them or to have them review the book. Trouble is, it takes hours to try and find appropriate book bloggers. After considerable effort I only managed to snag one guest blog. So I was pleased when a fellow author told me about TLC Book Tours, who specialize in setting up ‘virtual’ book tours with bloggers they’ve researched and who supposedly ‘match’ an author’s book. I’m in the process of negotiating a virtual book tour through them. See: http://tlcbooktours.com/ Report to come.
•I’m trying to fix up at least one reading in a local library on or near Remembrance Day. One fell in my lap today: an opportunity to go to Burlington library and talk about my experiences to a class who are taking a course on publishing.
•The Canadian private member’s bill calling for an apology to Italians is now at the committee stage (see blog entry http://www.edithswarselfpublish.com/S...). I’m tracking it to be ready to piggy-back on any publicity that will ensue once it’s finalized and an apology is forthcoming.
•I’m exhibiting at Self-Publishing Book Expo in New York later this month http://www.selfpubbookexpo.com/ No idea what to expect, but will report back on my return.
I could go on, but I think I’ve probably illustrated that — although many writers think their work is done once they hand in a manuscript — the fact is most authors, even those who publish with a conventional publisher, never stop work on a book until it dies and goes out of print.
Unless of course the author dies first. At one of my bookstore appearances my eye happened to fall on a novel titled A Confederacy of Dunces. To make a long story short: young author, John Kennedy Toole, wrote this book in the 1960s; tragically, he committed suicide after he was unable to find a publisher; eleven years later the novel was published due to the persistence of Toole’s mother; it immediately became a best seller and was critically acclaimed; Toole was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A Confederacy of Dunces is now considered a canonical work of the Southern United States and promises to be in print for years to come. Now there’s no way my 96-year-old mother, feisty as she can be, would be as persistent as Toole’s. So, even if I could fake my own suicide, I think I’m better off sticking with a few bookstore appearances and a virtual tour.
•More bookstore ‘appearances’ around Toronto and environs. I’ve done three since late September and have four more lined up before the holiday season. Fortunately I quite enjoy hanging out and introducing Edith’s War to likely readers. There’s alway a customer with a war story, always a young aspiring writer to encourage, always one or two who buy a copy just to support the author. And there also seem to be more and more e-reader customers on each successive visit who are in the store to choose books which they then go home and download.
•Inspired by self-publishing author Amanda Hocking, whose multi-million sales of her paranormal young adult romance novels she attributes mainly to book bloggers, I searched for book bloggers with the intention of doing guest blogs for them or to have them review the book. Trouble is, it takes hours to try and find appropriate book bloggers. After considerable effort I only managed to snag one guest blog. So I was pleased when a fellow author told me about TLC Book Tours, who specialize in setting up ‘virtual’ book tours with bloggers they’ve researched and who supposedly ‘match’ an author’s book. I’m in the process of negotiating a virtual book tour through them. See: http://tlcbooktours.com/ Report to come.
•I’m trying to fix up at least one reading in a local library on or near Remembrance Day. One fell in my lap today: an opportunity to go to Burlington library and talk about my experiences to a class who are taking a course on publishing.
•The Canadian private member’s bill calling for an apology to Italians is now at the committee stage (see blog entry http://www.edithswarselfpublish.com/S...). I’m tracking it to be ready to piggy-back on any publicity that will ensue once it’s finalized and an apology is forthcoming.
•I’m exhibiting at Self-Publishing Book Expo in New York later this month http://www.selfpubbookexpo.com/ No idea what to expect, but will report back on my return.
I could go on, but I think I’ve probably illustrated that — although many writers think their work is done once they hand in a manuscript — the fact is most authors, even those who publish with a conventional publisher, never stop work on a book until it dies and goes out of print.
Unless of course the author dies first. At one of my bookstore appearances my eye happened to fall on a novel titled A Confederacy of Dunces. To make a long story short: young author, John Kennedy Toole, wrote this book in the 1960s; tragically, he committed suicide after he was unable to find a publisher; eleven years later the novel was published due to the persistence of Toole’s mother; it immediately became a best seller and was critically acclaimed; Toole was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A Confederacy of Dunces is now considered a canonical work of the Southern United States and promises to be in print for years to come. Now there’s no way my 96-year-old mother, feisty as she can be, would be as persistent as Toole’s. So, even if I could fake my own suicide, I think I’m better off sticking with a few bookstore appearances and a virtual tour.
