by Nancy Martin, whose book is published today!
Keeping a successful group author blog running can be a real drain on creativity--the creativity perhaps best kept for writing the books we write for a living. So now and then, group blogs supplement the work of "the regulars" by inviting guests authors or experts to provide content.
Truth is, some guest bloggers are like the house guests you wish you'd never invited for the weekend. You know who I mean--the ones who drop wet towels on the bathroom floor, eat all the food and leave dirty dishes in the sink. Maybe they even insult the neighbors while they're at it.
A good house guest brings a hostess gift, plays the role of raconteur at the dinner table, pitches in with the dishes and leave the bathroom tidy.
A good guest blogger? Well, if you want to be invited back, here are my suggestions:
1. Bring eyeballs. Email your friends, colleagues, listserves and fans to alert them you'll be a guest. Ask them to drop by. (Provide a link!) A guest blogger who brings new people to our audience is guaranteed another invitation. On a daily basis, we're trying to build our readership, and you can help. But if you use our blog simply to tap into our audience, what's in it for us? Don't expect another invitation.
2. Respond to comments. Our blog's purpose is to create a community of readers who will buy our books when the time comes. In the meantime, we want to keep them entertained and connected. To do that, we facilitate "the backblog." On the days we blog for ourselves, we keep the conversational ball in the air. If you drop our ball, it takes a while to regain the readers who have gone off to join somebody who's more interactive. So find ways to plant multiple questions in your piece so the audience feels moved to respond.
3. Entertain. This should go without saying, but you might be surprised how boring some fiction writers can be when they try their hand at a short personal essay. Send us your most sparkling prose, your wittiest ideas, your most thought-proviking material. If you're boring or muddled or repetitive (the most common error) our audience isn't going to remember you, or worse--they'll actively avoid you in the future. It helps if you read our blog for a few days to understand what our perspective is, too, so you're not lecturing about something we've already covered ages ago or bringing up one of our forbidden topics. (Diets, for instance.) If you can't be funny, be very personal. Or educational. Or try to sway your audience with a clearly argued personal opinion. Be that scintillating dinner guest who knows he's supposed to sing for his supper.
4. It bears repeating: Entertain! Don't use our blog as a billboard for your book. We don't blatantly advertise our own books because we've discovered obvious promotion turns off our audience. Buy ads in magazines or online book review sites if that's what you want to do. Or do an online interview with someone who promotes books. But for us? Write something entertaining.
5. That said, we know you're guest blogging to plug your book, and we don't really mind. (Heck, it's why we created our blog in the first place!) But be subtle. Write about a topic that's tangential to your book. Provide links to your website and to bookstores that stock your book. Why not link to some reviews, too? Provide a short bio we can include at the beginning or end of your post. Make it lively--not the same bio you send everywhere else. Include an amusing tidbit about yourself. Or an outright lie!--As longs as it's entertaining. That's as much advertising as our audience can stand.
6. Keep it short. If you check our posts, you'll get a feel for how long a blog should be. An ideal guest blog for us is 600 words of pithy, witty, orginal ideas. (We don't post material that's been seen elsewhere on the internet, by the way.) Some blogs write much shorter. If you drone on for 1500 words, you lose your audience. Believe me, I learned this the hard way--by experience.
7. Have I mentioned bringing eyeballs? Help us help you. We'll share out audience with you if you reciprocate. Nobody succeeds in the blog world by snubbing everyone else. If you don't link to others, how can you expect to build your audience? Online networking is the key to reaching readers and growing the number of people who get to know you and your books.
I know there are more points I could be making here, but I suspect you know them as well as I do. What kind of blogs do you enjoy? How do they keep you coming back? And does blatant adertising work for you? Or turn you off?
Nancy Martin is the author of MURDER MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH (in stores today!) She's also one of the Book Tarts who blog at The Lipstick Chronicles.
Showing posts with label Murder Melts in Your Mouth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Murder Melts in Your Mouth. Show all posts
Monday, March 03, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
Party Planning
Party Planning
by Nancy Martin
My new book, MURDER MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH, will be released in three weeks, a thrilling event in any author's life except for one glitch---I should have done all the advance work for this book at least three months ago.
But three months ago, I was getting ready for Christmas, my kitchen was under construction and my husband surprised me with a 30th wedding anniversary trip--the kind a girl just doesn't say no to. And now it's too late for book launch PR.
Good thing my publisher has assigned a topnotch publicist to do the basics: Send ARCs to all the big reviewers (PW, Library Journal--which, by the way, gave me a rave--whew!--syndicated newspaper reviewers, etc.) and to the smaller reviewers (local newspapers, genre magazines, independent mystery bookstores that publish newsletters, amateur online reviewers. The publicist also coordinates some visits to bookstores for me. (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Lansing, Michigan.) Plus he's sending postcards and doing a massive promotional mailing that has meant dozens of phone calls, not to mention hours devoted to packing, writing cover letters and doing the mailing. And putting up with me referring more and more jobs his way as stores and newspapers contact me personally.
This year, my publisher isn't sending me on the road to tour as they have in the past. Instead, they're putting the money into something new--sending little tins of promotional chocolate to booksellers. This sounded like a great idea to me. (The way it works is this: Your book hits stores and requires at least four weeks of intense promotion. But at the same time, you're frantically trying to finish writing the book that will be released a year from now. Ever try doing the best writing of your life while also planning multiple parties?? So staying home this year sounded like a blessed relief.
Fingers crossed that the chocolate draws attention to MURDER MELTS.
Of course, the really big task was accomplished months ago by a totally different department at the publishing house. That task is getting bookstores to agree to stock the book. (You think books appear on shelves by some kind of publishing osmosis? No. No and no and no and no.) My publisher creates and prints a catalog four times a year and sends it to bookselling entities. (Not just stores, but the buyers for the big bookstore chains and buyers for the huge wholesale distributors that supply big box stores, drug stores, grocery stores and whatnot, not to mention libraries and anybody else who requests one.) Then the follow-up phone calls begin. This year my editor personally called the buyer for the Borders group (which includes Waldenbooks) and scored a nice order.--Yay!
The sales department works really hard to get bigger and bigger numbers of my books into stores every year. Depending upon last year's sales, though, distributors want to buy exactly the number of last year's sales to avoid "returns"--unsold books that the store returns to the publisher for reimbursement. Returns are espensive for everyone, so nobody wants them. So orders are often smaller than they were the previous year. And because the publisher doesn't want to print too many more books than they can sell, they reduce the print run. Everybody's trying to save money, and who can blame them? The publisher wants a great "sell through"--the percentage of printed books sold. But for the writer, this is all very nervewracking. If my orders are reduced and my print runs get small, won't all these numbers eventually spiral down to zero?? At the distribution phase, the author feels entirely helpless---at the mercy of numbers.
Talk about nail biting. The joke among writers is that our publisher doesn't want us to know the names of the sales staff in case we camp out on the office floors and make their lives miserable.
The other big expense my publisher pays is co-op money, which nowadays is primarily spent on placement in bookstores. What does this mean? A couple of years ago, one of the big bookselling chains admitting that they're selling 80% of their books within 20 feet of the front door--in other words, the books that are on special display racks as you enter the store sell best. For those of us who write genre books that are generally shelved at the back of the store, that's not good news. How is a customer supposed to find a book buried in a dark back corner? So I'm pathetically grateful when the publisher agrees to pay for my book to be placed in that golden real estate. Not all books are treated so royally, and I'm lucky to get good placement.
What should I be doing to help all this happen?
First of all, my job is to write great books--each one better than the last. But I also maintain an email list, and I'll be sending notices to nearly 5000 formerly satisfied readers, asking them to please buy the new book within the first week or two of release. (After that, sales will be not nearly as important. A book needs to sell well right away, or it's stripped out of stores to make way for books that will sell.) I also blog weekly--which nurtures a community of loyal readers which--we hope--will buy the book when it's released. And I maintain a "fan" listserve of over 250 readers. In addition, I belong to various organizations, including Sisters in Crime which coordinated a nationwide promotion featuring member authors, and my books were widely displayed thanks to SinC's efforts. And I do set aside a small travel budget each year to make a handful of library appearances and attend a few conventions.
But mostly? I write.
Obviously, I rely on the team at the publishing house to do the lion's share of bookselling. As I strive to write entertaining stories, the effort it takes to sell tens of thousands of books would be beyond me. I must protect my writing time.
But we're having a launch party when the book is first released. If you live near Pittsburgh, I hope to see you at Mystery Lovers Bookshop on Sunday afternoon, March 9th. We're throwing a chocolate extravaganza! Please come, because I don't dare take home the leftovers.
by Nancy Martin
My new book, MURDER MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH, will be released in three weeks, a thrilling event in any author's life except for one glitch---I should have done all the advance work for this book at least three months ago.
But three months ago, I was getting ready for Christmas, my kitchen was under construction and my husband surprised me with a 30th wedding anniversary trip--the kind a girl just doesn't say no to. And now it's too late for book launch PR.
Good thing my publisher has assigned a topnotch publicist to do the basics: Send ARCs to all the big reviewers (PW, Library Journal--which, by the way, gave me a rave--whew!--syndicated newspaper reviewers, etc.) and to the smaller reviewers (local newspapers, genre magazines, independent mystery bookstores that publish newsletters, amateur online reviewers. The publicist also coordinates some visits to bookstores for me. (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Lansing, Michigan.) Plus he's sending postcards and doing a massive promotional mailing that has meant dozens of phone calls, not to mention hours devoted to packing, writing cover letters and doing the mailing. And putting up with me referring more and more jobs his way as stores and newspapers contact me personally.
This year, my publisher isn't sending me on the road to tour as they have in the past. Instead, they're putting the money into something new--sending little tins of promotional chocolate to booksellers. This sounded like a great idea to me. (The way it works is this: Your book hits stores and requires at least four weeks of intense promotion. But at the same time, you're frantically trying to finish writing the book that will be released a year from now. Ever try doing the best writing of your life while also planning multiple parties?? So staying home this year sounded like a blessed relief.
Fingers crossed that the chocolate draws attention to MURDER MELTS.
Of course, the really big task was accomplished months ago by a totally different department at the publishing house. That task is getting bookstores to agree to stock the book. (You think books appear on shelves by some kind of publishing osmosis? No. No and no and no and no.) My publisher creates and prints a catalog four times a year and sends it to bookselling entities. (Not just stores, but the buyers for the big bookstore chains and buyers for the huge wholesale distributors that supply big box stores, drug stores, grocery stores and whatnot, not to mention libraries and anybody else who requests one.) Then the follow-up phone calls begin. This year my editor personally called the buyer for the Borders group (which includes Waldenbooks) and scored a nice order.--Yay!
The sales department works really hard to get bigger and bigger numbers of my books into stores every year. Depending upon last year's sales, though, distributors want to buy exactly the number of last year's sales to avoid "returns"--unsold books that the store returns to the publisher for reimbursement. Returns are espensive for everyone, so nobody wants them. So orders are often smaller than they were the previous year. And because the publisher doesn't want to print too many more books than they can sell, they reduce the print run. Everybody's trying to save money, and who can blame them? The publisher wants a great "sell through"--the percentage of printed books sold. But for the writer, this is all very nervewracking. If my orders are reduced and my print runs get small, won't all these numbers eventually spiral down to zero?? At the distribution phase, the author feels entirely helpless---at the mercy of numbers.
Talk about nail biting. The joke among writers is that our publisher doesn't want us to know the names of the sales staff in case we camp out on the office floors and make their lives miserable.
The other big expense my publisher pays is co-op money, which nowadays is primarily spent on placement in bookstores. What does this mean? A couple of years ago, one of the big bookselling chains admitting that they're selling 80% of their books within 20 feet of the front door--in other words, the books that are on special display racks as you enter the store sell best. For those of us who write genre books that are generally shelved at the back of the store, that's not good news. How is a customer supposed to find a book buried in a dark back corner? So I'm pathetically grateful when the publisher agrees to pay for my book to be placed in that golden real estate. Not all books are treated so royally, and I'm lucky to get good placement.
What should I be doing to help all this happen?
First of all, my job is to write great books--each one better than the last. But I also maintain an email list, and I'll be sending notices to nearly 5000 formerly satisfied readers, asking them to please buy the new book within the first week or two of release. (After that, sales will be not nearly as important. A book needs to sell well right away, or it's stripped out of stores to make way for books that will sell.) I also blog weekly--which nurtures a community of loyal readers which--we hope--will buy the book when it's released. And I maintain a "fan" listserve of over 250 readers. In addition, I belong to various organizations, including Sisters in Crime which coordinated a nationwide promotion featuring member authors, and my books were widely displayed thanks to SinC's efforts. And I do set aside a small travel budget each year to make a handful of library appearances and attend a few conventions.
But mostly? I write.
Obviously, I rely on the team at the publishing house to do the lion's share of bookselling. As I strive to write entertaining stories, the effort it takes to sell tens of thousands of books would be beyond me. I must protect my writing time.
But we're having a launch party when the book is first released. If you live near Pittsburgh, I hope to see you at Mystery Lovers Bookshop on Sunday afternoon, March 9th. We're throwing a chocolate extravaganza! Please come, because I don't dare take home the leftovers.
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