I’m guest blogging today over at Tony Eldridge’s blog, Marketing Tips for Authors!
How OK! Magazine Taught Me A Thing Or Two About Book Promotion By Dorothy Thompson: http://bit.ly/49×2rF
See the magazine cover on your left? Look to the right and you see a picture of Jennifer Aniston? I was called by the editor of OK! Magazine to give my opinion of the Jennifer Aniston l Vince Vaghn relationship. My quote appeared in this very magazine in ‘04.
Seems so long ago. I had put together a book of soul mate stories – true soul mate stories – called Romancing the Soul, and I knew there was a vast untapped online market out there to get me and my book in front of. The thing is, I had to try this, try that, and what happened really became the backbone of my company, Pump Up Your Book Promotion and now, it’s wonderful new counterpart, Pump Up Your Book.
One of the great things about newspapers going bust (I don’t mean that in a negative way of course) is that what’s happening is that they’re concentrating now on online measures to get their news out – more so than ever before Back in ‘04, newspapers were still thriving but the journalists had discovered how to cut a few corners and that was to find what they wanted over the Internet.
If you concentrate on building up your author platform, present yourself in a professional way (great website), write until your fingers fall off about your expertise…someone is going to find you and present an offer you won’t believe such as I did the day OK! Magazine’s editor called me for a quote.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to find an author platform you would be comfortable with. After all, if you can’t talk the talk when you walk the walk, people will see right through you. I knew my stuff. Putting together an anthology of true soul mate stories where more than half of it was written by other writers, that’s not enough. To make my book stand out, I divided the questions into three sections – Twin Souls, Companion Soul Mates and Karmic soul mates – and through my expertise, I could tell which story fell in which section. As it turned out, it wasn’t just a collection of stories, but a lesson in finding and keeping your soul mate and learning why certain people come into your lives.
So, there was my platform. I became the soul mate expert, then gravitated to relationship expert.
Define your author platform, use those key search words in everything you send out. Who knows – there are journalists, magazine editors, book publishers, agents, ect. out there looking for the next big thing. Or, at least a quote. And, believe me, that quote is like getting a gig on Oprah. It could be your big break, open a few doors, or make you believe in miracles.
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.
Whether you’re writing your first book or your tenth, the process is never easy. It’s full of challenges, obstacles and frustrations, but every author knows that writing is probably the most fulfilling and rewarding activity in the whole world. Many first-time authors think that after they’ve finished their masterpiece, they can relax, sit back and enjoy the fruit of their labor. However, getting your book to readers is the most difficult task that every author faces.
Good book marketing needs a plan and you should start planning your campaign even before your book is published. I suggest you read two books that taught me everything I needed to know about book publicity: Red Hot Internet Publicity by Penny Sansevieri and Book Promo 201 by Nikki Leigh. When I first read these books I found them totally overwhelming because I felt like I had to do at least two thousand things every day. However, not everything works for every author and for every book and you should give it some time, think about it and discover what really works for your book, for your genre, and what doesn’t.
Build a website. Your website is your internet business card and your homepage is your billboard. Your website should contain all the necessary information but it should not overwhelm and stress visitors. Some websites have endless menus and so much information that visitors find the whole concept confusing and leave the site without even reading your information. Keep it clear, keep it brief, keep it friendly. And don’t forget to add your media room with updated information and downloadable files. You can check out my website http://www.barboraknobova.com for inspiration. I’ve been getting lots of praise on it and I think it contains everything that a good website should contain. At least that’s what I’ve been told.
Start a blog. A blog is the easiest way to get your message to readers, it’s easily maintained and updated. Make sure to publish new posts regularly (usually when I have some time on my hands, I write a few blog posts in advance for future use, it saves time). Blog about your book, post excerpts, blog about what it is like to be a writer. There are so many options.
Use social media. I’m not sure whether social media like Twitter, Facebook and others really sell books but they definitely expose you to your niche if you use them wisely and they fill the internet with your message. Nikki Leigh, a social media expert (http://www.nikkileigh.com), has taught me so much about social media and about how to use them wisely and effectively. Her knowledge and expertise is priceless.
Get reviews. Many authors say that getting reviews is hard but it’s not as hard as it may seem. There are many keen readers that blog about books and are happy to review yours. Search the internet and also look for Amazon reviewers that review your genre. Most of them have a blog where you can contact them and ask them to read your book. Paid reviews are also an option, and not a bad one. Many people think that paid reviews are worthless, which is a common misconception. If you pay for a review it means that you will receive an honest review, it doesn’t mean that you will receive a positive review. It’s frustrating to pay for a review and then receive a bad one but that’s how it works. At least it creates a buzz around your book and makes people curious.
Get on the radio. I love Blog Talk Radio. There are so many wonderful hosts that interview authors and talk about books. When you see a show you like, contact the host and ask him/her to consider your book. You can also contact Kelly Wallace (http://www.authorautobahn.webs.com/), a wonderful lady who not only hosts her own show but also organizes radio show tours for authors. She will choose the right shows for you, contact the hosts and take care of the details. She also offers lots of free promotion opportunities and other services that are worth checking out.
Use Amazon.com to market your book. Amazon offers many opportunities for authors to get in front of their readers. Build your Author’s Page and blog, be active in discussions about your topic. Review books that are similar to yours. Be creative, Amazon is a great networking place for authors.
Organize a Virtual Book Tour or have it organized by those who really know how do to it. A VBT is a unique and very effective way to connect with your readers and generate sales. I work with Dorothy Thompson from Pump Up Your Book (http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com) on my tour and I’m nothing but impressed. Dorothy is diligent, creative, helpful, she goes the extra mile. She understands authors, she understands books, she understands the market and she understands her job. Besides, she’s such a sweetheart and a wonderful friend.
Be reasonable about how much money you spend on book promotion. Start learning as much as you can about book marketing and soon you will find out that you can do many things yourself. This may save you thousands of dollars. Every author needs to invest into book marketing but it doesn’t mean you should use your life savings and end up broke. Set aside a budget and stick to it.
There are three important things I’ve learned about book promotion and I think every author should keep them in mind. One, don’t sell the book. Sell what your book can do for the reader. Two, be polite and never forget to thank those who have reviewed your book, hosted you on their blog or radio show. Make sure they know you appreciate their effort. And three, have fun with your book promotion. If you have written a good book, sooner or later it will find its way to readers.
Barbora Knobova is a writer, love coach and expert in Delicious Life. A world traveler, she is one of those rare world citizens who live everywhere and nowhere. Barbora is a firm believer in female friendship, loyalty and bonding. She writes hilarious, sharp-witted, caustically apt, ironic, moving, true books for strong, independent, smart, fearless women. Barbora has also written several self-improvement books and teaches women about the importance of self-love in relationships and life in general. Barbora speaks eight languages and has found her home away from home in New York, London and Milan. She is always on the move, accompanied by her beagle Brinkley, the nasty dog from her new book Tales for Delicious Girls.
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.
Today’s guest blogger is James Ruby Dominguez author of The Peruke Maker.
Guest Post:
From the first day of conception of idea, I started promoting my would-be published book. I talked about it unceasingly to anybody who was willing to listen and showed off my book cover ideas, my way of feeling ahead of time the kind of reception I could expect from my readers.
Prior to publication, I up loaded a home-made 1 minute book video trailer on Youtube, Metcafe, facebook, yahoo, aol, live video, crackle, etc. to generate a buzz.
I also printed and mailed two-side 100 postcards openly displaying the bookcover for the USPS mail service personnel to talk about while at work.
Today, I am doing a two month bulls-eye Halloween promo focusing and bringing my story to its origin which is in Salem, Massachusetts.
Other marketing avenues that I am currently doing are:
1) A Virtual Book Tour and blog radio interviews under the very hands-on and capable Dorothy Thompson of www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com .
2) Email blasting though I feel is a scam I tried, too.
3) I am involved with horror, Halloween events and festivals across the US via sponsorships/advertising opportunities.
4) I tweet at www.twitter.com about your book. I tweet on New York Times, ABC, Timelife, CNN, Breaking News, etc. They’ve got millions upon millions of followers! I just plug it in right with them!
6) I post my book on Craigslist under books for sale or the local news category everyday!
7) I’ve posted my book also at Backpage.com and Voice Village in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, MA and San Francisco.
The author Ruby Dominguez is challenged by the conflicting complexities of the past and future. Undeterred, she strokes with pen the somber and bright hues of her visions. She currently resides in San Francisco and works in the field of property management/leasing. She has been a recipient of the “Editor’s Choice Award,” by the National Library of Poetry in 1999 and 2007 for her published poems in the SHELTER OF SHADE. Visit her website at: www.outskirtspress.com/theperukemaker, and blog at www.salemcurse.wordpress.com
This is the dilemma my good friend, Cheryl Malandros, experienced this morning and I thought I could give you some helpful hints if it happened to you.
A lot of authors are blogging on the free blog platforms – mainly Blogger and WordPress. The problem with this is that anyone at any time can declare your blog offensive just for the heck of it. Didn’t know that? Sure enough! It happens all the time. The only real inconvenience of this is that you have to wait a few days for it to come back, that is if the mighty gods of WordPress and Blogger deem you innocent.
Cheryl was innocent this morning when she clicked over to her blog to find out WordPress had suspended her blog. Sometimes we don’t know why they deem us offensive, but Cheryl did. It seems someone who had registered the same blog name with a .com had found Cheryl and was mighty upset she was using “her name” and was taking business from her. Cheryl doesn’t run a business at her children’s book blog, The Kid’s Book Connection, but obviously, someone else is.
The woman became irate even though Cheryl tried to explain to her the difference in urls – the woman had a .com and she had a wordpress.com and we’re all presuming this is the reason why Cheryl’s blog was suspended this morning. Of course, WordPress will see it’s not offensive and turn her back on, but what do you do when this happens?
One, you wait, but while you’re waiting, there’s a few things you can do to access your blog that is no longer accessed by its url.
If your blog is old enough, you can find the archives at a nifty site called The Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, the blog was too new for this so another trick I use is to put your url in google and when the url shows up, click on “cache.”
When I clicked on “cache,” I found her blog and what was on the first page. If I wanted to find more, I could probably put “The Kid’s Book Connection” and “the author’s name” in search and the url might come up. I would then click on “cache” and voila there it is.
But the thing that gets me most about all this is that all of this should have been unnecessary. Cheryl’s blog is not offensive; it just is the same name as this other person’s blog who is trying to make money to support her kids as she told Cheryl. Cheryl was sympathetic, but how was she to know this when she picked out the name? All she did was put it in the box at WordPress and WordPress tells you it’s available. Simple. She never would have thought someone would be out to get her like that.
The unfortunate thing is that if you are paying for a domain name and hosting it yourself, you’re going to not be able to stop the free blogging platforms out there who will be registering the same name simply because the url is different. The only thing you can do is go into as many free blogging platforms and register the name so that no one else can use it. I think this is a bit going over the top, but if you’re the kind of person who wants the name all to yourself, that’s the only way you can do it.
I’m sure Cheryl will recover her blog, but if it happens to you, try these easy methods to at least get a few of your archives back. All I have to say is, thank God for Google.
I had a girl at work yesterday who is a voracious reader (she has no TV so reading is her life) tell me about a book she was reading which absolutely sucked. Now this woman is not picky but she judges a book by the usual reader qualities like whether it captures her attention and is entertaining – the usual things one who reads books for enjoyment and pleasure usually look for.
The woman stood there, shaking her head. “The characters didn’t even start speaking until a third of the way through the book,” she said. “I don’t know. I just wasn’t getting into it.”
Out of curiosity, I asked her who the author was. “June something. I can’t really remember,” she said.
Frankly, I’m surprised she even remembered that much. If it were Nora Roberts (her favorite), the name would have rolled off her tongue in a heartbeat.
I’ve often asked her who were the authors of the books she was reading and oftentimes she can’t remember. Now I’m thinking…if she represents a certain percentage of readers out there, and she can’t remember the names of the authors who wrote all these books she’s reading, I’m almost 100% sure she’s not going to pay attention to who published it.
Authors, on the other hand, do pay attention because they store this information in their heads for when they go to publish their own books.
But, book readers? I had someone tell me recently that she goes more by the book cover than she does the publisher and she reviews quite a few books professionally online.
So, with that all said, I have a poll I’d like you to check out. I’m curious. Do you check out who published the book? Or not?
After you have voted, leave a comment below to tell us why. Your comment may be used in a future blog post. Thank you!
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.
Today’s guest blogger is James Hayman author of The Cutting.
Guest Post:
As a debut author I was lucky.
I got a lot of help promoting my first book
My first thriller, The Cutting, was bought by a major New York publishing house, St. Martin’s/Minoaur, in a two book deal. Minotaur made the book their lead title for July 2009 and assigned a staff publicity person to help promote it.
In the month before publication, Minotaur sent nearly two thousand advance reader copies out reviewers, bookstore owners and other key influencers. That paid off. The Cutting was named to the American Booksellers Association IndieNext list for July and was named a pick of the week by the Boston Globe. I also got reviewed by a half a dozen online reviewers as well the two major newspapers in my home state of Maine (The Bangor Daily News– http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/111054.html –, and The Portland Press Herald– http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=274367&ac=Audience&pg=1) and one in the near neighboring state of Rhode Island. I was featured on a major interview show called 207 that follows the evening news with Brian Williams on my local (Portland, Maine) NBC affiliate. I appeared on a debut authors panel moderated by best selling thriller writer David Baldacci at ThrillerFest 2009 in New York. I had successful readings and signings at a bunch of bookstores in Maine and a few elsewhere. I’ll be appearing on a panel at CrimeBake New England in November.
So what am I doing here?
While it all helped, and The Cutting is doing pretty well, it still wasn’t nearly enough for the book to really break out and head for best-sellerdom. And the St. Martin’s publicity folks had other authors to help.
It quickly became apparent that the gods of commercial success in book publishing would help those who helped themselves. It was up to me to push the book further.
I looked into hiring my own book publicist. But that was way too expensive. I was on my own.
The first step was a good website with a blog. www.jameshaymanthrillers.com. I got that finished even before the book came out on June 23rd. The second step was a Facebook fan page for The Cutting. I got that done about a couple of months ago. To take a look, just log onto Facebook and put The Cutting in the little search box on the upper right. I’ve got about eight hundred fans on the page and would be delighted if you want to add your name to the list.
One of the great benefits of Facebook is that it is a classic viral marketing tool. Viral as in virus. One Facebook fan catches the excitement for your book from another. Every time you post something on the fan page and one of your fans likes it or comments on it their comment goes to all their Facebook friends who can then click on it and be taken to my Fan page. Try it. It works.
I also did spend a little money running an ad for The Cutting on Facebook. You only pay for the people who click on your ad so its pretty efficient advertising and it seems to have worked pretty well so far.
The next step was to get more reviews from online reviewers and guest posts on other people’s blogs. For that I turned to Dorothy Thompson’s Pump Up Your Book Promotion. She arranged a virtual book tour for me that started October first and runs through the end of November. This post is one of the first stops.
Like the hero of The Cutting, James Hayman is a transplanted New Yorker. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan, he spent more than twenty years writing TV advertising for clients like The U.S. Army, Lincoln-Mercury and Procter & Gamble. He moved to Portland, Maine in 2001. Four years later he decided to scratch a lifelong itch to write fiction and began work on his first suspense thriller featuring homicide detective Mike McCabe. St. Martin’s/Minotaur bought rights to The Cutting and published it in July, 2009. Hayman is currently at work on the second McCabe novel which is due to be published in July, 2010. The tentative title is The Chill of Night.
Pump Up Your Book Promotion has now extended their services to include a new blog in which to promote their authors on virtual book tours. We offer tour pages, author interviews, radio shows and reviews for our authors. Don’t forget you have until Oct. 31 to sign up for our 12 Days of Christmas Virtual Book Tour Package which includes 12 – 15 stops from Dec. 1 to Dec. 16. A super deal for the author who wants to sell their books during the holiday season. All details are on the blog at www.pumpupyourbook.com. Sign up before time runs out and get optimum exposure in the search engines and great savings. Let us take your book to the virtual level!
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.
Today’s guest blogger is Joy DeKok, author of Rain Dance.
Guest Post:
As the Director of Marketing and Promotion at Sheaf House Publishers, effective marketing is a balance between the old techniques that still work and new relational marketing using technology.
Here’s my favorite marketing equation: A great book + relationship = readers (books sold) Another key: Every piece of creative marketing can be used to impact more than one audience.
We’re building relationships with bookstores using one direct mailing technique: postcards. If they are well done, they get read on the way to the wastebasket. If they attract that store manager’s attention, they get kept. These well-designed cards often become book markers or they get posted on the store bulletin boards. The same postcards are sent to our readers and we invite them to take them to their local stores if they want to order the books.
Another thing we’re doing is utilizing the value of a monthly e-newsletter. Readers, bookstores, and librarians have signed up to learn about our authors and enjoy the generous giveaways we offer.
We also use technology to send a “green” sell-sheet to librarians. No one needs another envelope to open or piece of paper to file. When we make this contact, we also invite them to take a look at our newsletter. Librarians are readers and we want to appreciate their profession as well as their personal interest in books and authors. These same sell sheets can be sent to all of our newsletter readers – several of our subscribers are also booksellers and we’re now maximizing our marketing efforts to get our books in front of them at least four times.
For my own published works, I also hire a professional PR company, Pump Up Your Book Promotion. This has been an excellent marketing decision for me and I will continue to hire them in the future. They’re helping me form relationships with other writers and readers. We’re considering this for all of our authors.
At Sheaf House we also purchase ads in Publisher’s Weekly, some of Ingram’s catalogs, CBD catalogs, and in other print and online sources. These ads get the attention of book buyers. When we contact the store owners, we’re hearing, “I saw something just the other day with your logo on it.” I used to think of these ads as our way of building credibility with stores and purchasers. I now see them as our introduction and handshake – our first step in relationship building.
We’re also discovering the value of FaceBook, Twitter, author websites, book trailers, YouTube interviews, and other social and media driven tools. Our readers are out there and wherever we let them know we’re there too – they join us. While it’s all high tech it’s also a little bit like an old-fashioned general store. As a reader, you go to get a good read and you end up with a relationship with the author and sometimes the publisher.
By combining the tried and true with the bold and new, we’re establishing relationships with readers. This is what matters most in marketing.
Joy DeKok and her husband, Jon, live in Minnesota on thirty-five acres of woods and fields. Joy has been writing most of her life and as a popular speaker shares her heart and passion for God with women. In addition to writing novels, she has also published a devotional and several children’s books.
Dr. Avi Perry grew up among many of the character-types depicted in his latest book 72 Virgins, then served in the Israeli Defense Forces and gained valuable and relevant experience in military intelligence, one that breathes authenticity into the setting. He was a professor at Northwestern University, a Bell Laboratories distinguished member and manager, and a Vice President at a hi-tech company. He is the author of Fundamentals of Voice Quality Engineering in Wireless Networks, published in 2007 by Cambridge University Press.
Visit the author’s web site at www.aviperry.org. Follow him on Twitter @avpiap Behind the writing of 72 Virgins
People keep asking. “What drove you to write 72 Virgins?” Why—after a long career as a professor in the academia, followed by a hi-tech stint as a technology chief—suddenly an author—a fiction writer. What happened?
My latest novel, 72 Virgins, carries a message, a prediction. Islamic terror is about to explode in the US. It’s a fact. Imagine. Attacks were thwarted even on the day the book was released. The real question is not whether Jihad terrorists’ plots will ever cease to emerge—there is no chance of that. The question the book seeks to answer is whether the next one will be stopped before it’s too late.
I was born in Israel. I served in the Israeli military during, before and after the Six-Day-War in 1967. I lived and breathed war violence, military intelligence, spy-craft designed for terror deterrence. I understand wars, military conflicts, and faith-based hate—an Islamic trait, since I grew up in that kind of a hostile neighborhood. I have been frustrated by the naiveté of my American friends and colleagues who keep asking, whenever I take a trip to my birthplace, “aren’t you worried? Isn’t it dangerous over there?
I keep thinking to myself. “Aren’t you worried as well?” Did you forget 9/11? Did you forget the following terror and potential terror attacks on US and Western interests all over and around the world?
America needs a constant reminder. Americans must be more alert and more aware. The economy is important. The healthcare system must be fixed. But security should not be sacrificed in the process. Without security – freedom, the economy and healthcare are meaningless. And if you don’t get it, try living in Afghanistan for a week.
There has been no serious terror attack in the US since 9/11. Americans have become complacent. The political left is on the attack—their aim is distorted. They go after the CIA, the law enforcement agency in charge of protecting us. They do not ask themselves the question that I am trying to answer in 72 Virgins—how is it that there has been no terror attack on US soil since 9/11? We all know (or at least those who read or watch the news), that there have been attempts; they failed; perpetrators were caught; we are safe. No!
I grew up in Israel, and I have seen it. You can’t fight a religion driven, faith-based hate by being nice, by making sure you don’t violate rules of war, by making concessions. These are means that apply to rational opponents—not ones steered by a holy book, but rather, by a selfish interest. I was trying to clarify that concept in 72 Virgins. I was trying to craft characters, through which the reader can grasp the new reality behind the type of terror we have been witnessing in the past twenty years.
I wrote 72 Virgins because I care about America, because I have grown distressed when witnessing the mounting naiveté among those who lack the understanding of history; those who are unable to learn from it and avoid repeating past mistakes.
I was trying to explain that suicide bombers are not desperate people. They are the most selfish animals in existence. They kill innocents, believing that that criminal act is martyrdom, qualifying them for an express ticket to heaven, next to Allah’s throne, where 72 Virgins would attend to their needs.
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.
Imagine a typical “Jewish American Princess” finding herself, inadvertently and to her own astonishment, a “pioneer” in Israel. From a comfortable upper middle class metropolitan life, she is transplanted to living in a modern day wilderness, without electricity or telephone, trying to make a living working with dogs, horses, and other animals (not a particularly respected or profitable profession in this part of the world), and to cope with the very foreign Middle-Eastern mentality. That girl was me, and I (apparently a masochist through and through) am still in Israel, after years of struggle, smiles, tears, and adventures, telling the story of my attempts to survive life in Israel under conditions totally different from any I had experienced before or from anything I might have expected. The only things that enabled me to survive were an invincible stubbornness and a sense of humor.
Actually, I wrote this book for myself. I wanted to preserve all the adventures I have had over the years, and thought that writing them down would be the best way. Then I could pass the stories on to my grandchildren. Once I started writing and re-reading what I had written, and letting friends read parts of it, I realized that it actually was pretty good and quite funny, and that maybe I could become the James Herriot of Israel. Who knows?
I naively thought that writing a book was the hardest part. I quickly discovered how wrong I was. Getting the book published took considerably longer than writing it, and was considerably more stressful. I was told that no publisher will look at a book that is not represented by an agent. So I started looking for an agent, getting lists from the numerous books and websites that are out there to help the naïve and inexperienced. After being ignored by many and turned down by the rest, I finally found an agency that was enthusiastic about my book – what joy! After two years or so of paying them various small fees, which added up in total to not such a small amount, and receiving in return lists of publishers that had supposedly turned the book down (“But we think so-and-so will be interested and we will submit again…”), I discovered that this agency was a total fraud. Being incurably stubborn, I did not despair totally from this debacle, and finally did manage to find a publisher.
Okay, so now the book was published, I was holding a tangible copy in my trembling hands, so now all the hard work was over, wasn’t it? I soon discovered that Oprah was not about to come knocking on my door, and neither was the book reviewer of the New York Times. There are a lot of books out there, in just about any genre that you choose, and for people to read your book, you have to find a way to show them that it exists and that they will enjoy reading it.
Promoting Tails of Shaar Hagai is still something that I am learning. Living in Israel, I am far from most of my prospective markets, so can’t make use of some of the more standard promotion routes such as book signings and appearances in local media. But we do have a fantastic tool for getting to people, the internet, although knowing how to use it effectively is not easy. I have made use of various lists, clubs, and groups I belong to, including Facebook, sending out descriptions of the book, reviews, and excerpts. But it is important to find the right channels to get to the best market, and for this I have decided that it is worth going to the professionals. I have started doing the Blog Blitz of Pump Up Your Book Promotions, which I hope will bring me exposure in the right places. I am hoping this will be a big step in the right direction for promoting Tails of Shaar Hagai.
About the Author:
Myrna Shiboleth is an animal behaviorist, world champion dog breeder and international dog show judge, and is acknowledged as the world authority on Canaan Dogs, one of the few remaining breeds of feral dogs in the world. After growing up in the U.S. and receiving a degree from Northwestern University in art, she made a radical change in her life by emigrating to Israel. She has worked at a variety of animal related occupations over the years, including stable manager and riding instructor, kennel manager and dog trainer, advisor on dog behavior to the Israel Defense Department, keeper and animal trainer at the Safari Park, and more. Her previous book, The Israel Canaan Dog, has been published in two editions. She lives and breeds Canaan Dogs and collies at Shaar Hagai Farm in Israel, lectures and instructs in Israel and abroad on a wide variety of dog related subjects, writes for professional publications in Israel and abroad, and continues to enjoy new adventures with her dogs.
I’m guest blogging today over at Tony Eldridge’s blog, Marketing Tips for Authors!
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click 
Barbora Knobova is a writer, love coach and expert in Delicious Life. A world traveler, she is one of those rare world citizens who live everywhere and nowhere. Barbora is a firm believer in female friendship, loyalty and bonding. She writes hilarious, sharp-witted, caustically apt, ironic, moving, true books for strong, independent, smart, fearless women. Barbora has also written several self-improvement books and teaches women about the importance of self-love in relationships and life in general. Barbora speaks eight languages and has found her home away from home in New York, London and Milan. She is always on the move, accompanied by her beagle Brinkley, the nasty dog from her new book Tales for Delicious Girls.
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click 
The author Ruby Dominguez is challenged by the conflicting complexities of the past and future. Undeterred, she strokes with pen the somber and bright hues of her visions. She currently resides in San Francisco and works in the field of property management/leasing. She has been a recipient of the “Editor’s Choice Award,” by the National Library of Poetry in 1999 and 2007 for her published poems in the SHELTER OF SHADE. Visit her website at: 
This is the dilemma my good friend, Cheryl Malandros, experienced this morning and I thought I could give you some helpful hints if it happened to you.
I had a girl at work yesterday who is a voracious reader (she has no TV so reading is her life) tell me about a book she was reading which absolutely sucked. Now this woman is not picky but she judges a book by the usual reader qualities like whether it captures her attention and is entertaining – the usual things one who reads books for enjoyment and pleasure usually look for.
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Like the hero of The Cutting, James Hayman is a transplanted New Yorker. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan, he spent more than twenty years writing TV advertising for clients like The U.S. Army, Lincoln-Mercury and Procter & Gamble. He moved to Portland, Maine in 2001. Four years later he decided to scratch a lifelong itch to write fiction and began work on his first suspense thriller featuring homicide detective Mike McCabe. St. Martin’s/Minotaur bought rights to The Cutting and published it in July, 2009. Hayman is currently at work on the second McCabe novel which is due to be published in July, 2010. The tentative title is The Chill of Night.
