The promotion game is slowly starting to gel. I'm beginning to see the logic of spending nearly every evening (and some days) on this part of the writing biz, even though it takes a chunk out of actual writing time. But then, I don't write much in the evenings. When it comes to being creative, I'm definitely a morning person. Nights are reserved for the bookkeeping, promotion, market searches and other necessities in the writing life. So, here's what I've done this week:
- added two PayPal 'buy me' buttons to my website, one for each book. My 19-year-old daughter, Elida, watched over my shoulder and steered me in the right direction, which was a good thing because I was about to click the wrong button a couple of times. Sadly, I do that a lot.
- Found six more people who are willing to review my book, and this is a big thing for me, because I'm a little shy about asking, but I keep looking.
- Joined AuthorsDen and set up a profile page. I'm also about to launch a new blog that focuses on all things to do with white-collar crime, which is what my mysteries are about. It's a subject that interested me long before Enron, BriX and Conrad Black made the front pages.
-Sent out more flyers to libraries, who were great about buying my first book, Taxed to Death.
BUT HERE'S THE TWO SMARTEST THINGS I DID:
I bought and started reading Steve Weber's amazing how-to promotion book called Plug Your Book. Thanks to Cheryl K. Tardif for recommending it.
Second, I decided to have more fun with promotion because, frankly, searching for reviewers and mailing out flyers just doesn't cut it. Last weekend, I was talking about this blog to Elida as she was finishing her own blog entry. And that's when the idea came. Wouldn't it be fun if we blogged together and discussed all sorts of topics from our different perspectives? Elida thought it was a great idea, so we posted our first entry on MySpace on Wednesday. I don't know if it will be an effective promotion strategy because few entries will be devoted to writing or my books, but the main point is that it's a fun thing to do with my daughter (she's a great writer herself) that we can actually fit into our busy lives, and that's important to me.
If anyone's interested in reading it, visit www.MySpace.com/debrapurdykong.
Alas, the newspaper article about me has yet to appear. Hmm. I've asked about it, but haven't heard back yet. In the grand scheme of things, though, I'm not going to sweat the stuff I have no control over.
Debra_Kong@telus.net
Excerpts of Fatal Encryption can be read at www.debrapurdykong.com
Available at amazon.com or from my website, provided the buttons work.
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