Garasamo Maccagnone studied creative writing and literature under noted American writers Sam Astrachan and Stuart Dybek at Wayne State University and Western Michigan University. In the mid 90’s Maccagnone decided to fulfill the promise of his writing career, by first penning the children’s book, The Suburban Dragon and then following up with a collection of short stories and poetry entitled, The Affliction of Dreams. His literary novel, St. John of the Midfield was published in 2007, followed by his For the Love of St. Nick, which was released in 2008.

Maccagnone expanded the original version of For the Love of St. Nick and had the book illustrated for a new release in June 2009. My Dog Tim and Other Stories is a literary anthology of the author’s best work.

Garasamo “Gary” Maccagnone lives today in Shelby Township, Michigan, with his wife Vicki and three children. At this time, he is researching the location for his second novel, tentatively titled, He Lay Low.

You can visit Gary online at www.garasamomaccagnone.com.

Welcome to Book Marketing Buzz, Gary. Can we begin by having you tell us a little about your book?

My Dog Tim: and other stories is a collection of short stories and one novel. The anchor story, which is the novel, is entitled, St. John of the Midfield. It tells the story of Bobo Stoikov, a youth soccer coach who was once one of the world’s greatest soccer players. He escaped communist Bulgaria to live the American dream. Once he arrived, he had no idea what was in store for him.

Some make the mistake believing this is a typical adolescent sport’s novel. It begins that way, but then takes an unexpected turn.

What is the first thing you did to promote your book once your publisher accepted your manuscript?

I contacted Cheryl over at Pump up your Book. She’s my guiding hand.

If you had to pick just one book marketing tool that you’ve used to promote your book, which would you say has been the most effective?

In the case of my novel, St. John of the Midfield, I marketed heavily on a major soccer site called topdrawersoccer.com. Besides having a two or three banner ads on their site, they distributed marketing e-mails to their contacts of over twenty thousand people.

Do you do more promoting online or offline and which do you prefer?

I like on-line marketing. I’m introverted. I’m not the type to show up for a reading.

Do you use social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to promote your books and have you had any success with it?

Currently, I’m on Facebook. It’s been a nice tool, though I make sure I don’t overuse it.

Do you own a blog and how often do you update it? Did you set up your blog solely to promote your book and what is its effectiveness?

I don’t blog. I have a web site that is maintained by a friend of mine. She keeps the front page fresh by updating on a bi-weekly basis.

Do you recommend authors getting publicists to help them promote their books? Do you have one?

I don’t have a publicist. I suppose you have to earn that, or pay for it. I tend to invest mainly in my content, which, I believe, will stand the test of time.

If an author prefers to do it alone rather than hire a publicist, where should they start?

Call Cheryl at Pump up Your Book. If you want viral notoriety, she’s a great person to work with.

Thank you for coming, Gary We wish you much success!

Your book has just been published.  Or maybe it’s going to be published in the next month or two.  Regardless, authors are signing up for virtual book tours the moment they hear about the exciting ways they can promote their books with them.  There is no better vehicle to sell your books online so I don’t blame them.

I would like to provide a checklist of things to consider before booking your tour.  After all, you want you and your book to be in the most tip top shape, so here goes:

Book Marketing Buzz’s 28-point Checklist BEFORE Packing Your Cyber-Bags:

• Do you know which audiences you want to target?
• Are you aware the broader the scope of readers you want to target, the better the tour?
• Have you narrowed your key search words down to the most important and have figured out ways to use them in your interviews and guest posts?
• Have you compiled a list of potential blog stops for your tour along with email addresses if you are putting your tour together on your own?
• Are you making sure these particular blogs are updated frequently and have a full set of archives to make them search engine friendly?
• Can you provide author copies (unless the publisher takes care of it) to reviewers in time for them to receive the book, read the book and post the review by the given date both of you have agreed on?
• Do you have a professional author photo and can you provide your blog hosts with a jpg copy?
• Do you have a landing page (website or blog) where people can go to learn more about you and your book?
• Does your website or blog have clear enough directions on how to buy your book on the first page and are you providing a cover to entice them?
• Does your website/blog have contact information in case people want to get in touch with you?
• Are you keeping your blog updated with fresh content to keep it search engine friendly?
• Do you know how to craft a bio written in third person that includes your book’s title and website/blog url?
• Does your bio ramble or can you say most of what you have to say in one to three paragraphs?
• Are you prepared to learn more about you and your book than you did before the tour took place?
• Are you prepared for the workload that is involved when planning your tour – e.g. having to write several guest posts and fill out an umpteen amount of interviews keeping each interview fresh, different and non-boring?
• Do you have a few guest posts already written for when blog hosts ask for them?
• If not, can you come up with a few ideas beforehand so that when asked for a guest post at the last minute, you’re not pulling your hair out?
• Do you know what kind of guest posts bring in more reaction from the readers?
• Do you know what kind of guest posts bring in more sales?
• Do you know how to use the social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to promote your tour stops on a daily basis?
• Are you set up in google alerts to alert you on how well your publicity efforts are taking you?
• Do you know how to set up press releases to announce your tour or know of someone who can do it for you?
• Have you built up on your communication and organizational skills so you don’t become unglued?
• Have you built up your contact list (your followers)?
• Have you prepared yourself for negative reviews in case they happen and are you willing to accept them for what they’re worth?
• Are you willing to participate in your virtual book tour by leaving a comment at your “stops”?
• Are you willing to thank your tour host after they so kindly posted your interview, guest post, review, etc.?
• Are you prepared to SELL BOOKS?

If you have answered no to any of these, reconsider fixing those problems before you embark on an international virtual book tour.  It’s way better to be prepared and ready than winging it.

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I found a really interesting article called “32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business” at WebWorker Daily. There were several reasons I liked it, but the main reason was how Facebook can be used as a highly effective business tool. Authors need to keep in mind that their books are their business and any way we can find to promote them is all right in our books. One thing I think authors overlook (I had one of my clients clam up after I asked them their twitter and facebook urls. “I don’t know how to get one,” was the response for Facebook) and now, my author friends, you can get a vanity url which will lead everyone to your facebook page. The link is http://www.facebook.com/username/. Mine is www.facebook.com/thewriterslife if anyone wants to hook up with me or www.facebook.com/pumpupyourbook if you’d like to join our Pump Up Your Book Fan Page. I strongly recommend all writers and authors to visit Facebook (as well as Twitter) and learn how you can not only promote your books at both places but learn what networking with others is all about first hand.

Another interesting article I found was “5 Ways Companies Used News Trends for Business Success” at Mashable. What it is basically telling you is to make your promotions more news worthy and less promotional which we are all told to do when promoting or marketing our book. It’s useless to even waste our time with “Buy Me!” antics, but if you could somehow relate your book to news worthy items, then you just might have something there. How? Read how 5 businesses are doing it and follow suit.

And I believe the most interesting article was author Libba Bray’s interview with Skype where she discusses her “virtual book tour.” I know most people have read about this before now, but it bears repeating because this is a really great way to promote your book. We do something similar at Pump Up, but it’s more or less a vidlog. Vidlogs are where authors talk about their books and which are posted up at YouTube, among other video sharing websites such as Yahoo Video, Google Video, Veoh, VSocial, Blip…dozens upon dozens of places in which to do this. Readers tend to love seeing their favorite authors talk about their books as opposed to reading about them. One particular favorite vidlog we have done was with Kelly Epperson sitting on Santa’s lap with her book in her hand. Wasn’t Santa so accomodating?

That’s it for today. See you in the blogosphere!

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I don’t know if anyone noticed, but Book Marketing Buzz has a new look.  The picture on the left shows you what we used to look like in case you forgot.

I have a wonderful wonderful lady who has helped me change over from the generic wordpress template to a more professional one.  I’ve got lots of templates on my dashboard to the point that if I’m not happy with this one, one or two clicks, and I have another one.  And – I’m still finding them to load on here.  I’m a happy camper now.

But it was in the middle of our redo when I got a frantic call from her.

“I lost your archives!”

Seems that HostGator told her that wouldn’t happen and they were very, very wrong.

And of course she was very very upset.

But you know, I didn’t panic.  I immediately went to my old wordpress dashboard and there was Book Marketing Buzz right there – with archives intact.  Only the thing was, I would have to reload them.  Talk about a relief.  I don’t know who was more happy – me or her.

But I love this woman.  For a small fee, you tell her what you want and she’ll set you up on a spanking new blog with all the bells and whistles.  Leave a comment below and I’ll get up with you on who she is.

The point being – I am slowly adding the archives of the old Book Marketing Buzz to the new one so if you’re a newcomer, this isn’t all we have by far.

Now if you’re wondering why I chose to go self-hosted which would cost, I’ll tell you.

Not only do you not have to depend on the generic templates they give you at Wordpress, there are plugins up the yooza that are perfect for what I want to do with this blog.  I can now add javascript, which means I can add codes to my template here that I couldn’t do on the free Wordpress template site.  I have a very cool plug-in that lets me submit my latest blog post to sites such as Yahoo Buzz, Twitter, Facebook – lots and lots of places – and I just love my new tweetmeme button which makes it so easy to announce my latest blog post at Twitter.

I still have so much more to add and between my work with Pump Up Your Book and getting these blogs in shape, it’s a race to the finish line, but stick around, I have new ideas coming up!

–Book Marketing Buzz

Interesting article in TechCrunch this morning. Seems they had run a story about a 104-year-old woman who had signed up for Twitter (supposedly the oldest woman to sign up for this wonderful microblogging platform), but the thing is, it ended up being a PR stunt that either worked or not (depending on your take on things). TechCrunch apologized; wasn’t their fault. They were just reporting a news item and wanted to clear up the facts (thanks TechCrunch!).

But what I find interesting in all this is that Ivy is still twittering. Just four hours ago, she wrote, “hello all spending the morning reading wont be able to use lap top much today other residents are using it be in touch later.”

So is Ivy doing this or someone from The Geek Squad who supposedly put her up to it in the first place? Who knows, but I followed her. It would be interesting to see how far this takes us, you think?

But is there a fine line between getting that story and maintaining integrity while doing so? Do you think IvyBean 104 was being taken advantage of and has no idea what’s going on or maybe really she can Tweet?