Photo by Bonnie Burton, courtesy of the Star Wars photostream on Flickr The term ‘stage mom’ provokes an instant, visceral reaction in most of us. We immediately conjure up images of pushy parents, barging into agent’s offices or haranguing a director for more screen or stage time, or else we picture painfully young girls dressed in puffy dresses with make-up. It’s not necessarily a pretty sight. But I have to say, from my years in theater, there is a good side to stage mom-ery. Those are the moms who get up early every day, make sure their child has a nourishing breakfast, drives them to classes and lessons and auditions, and supports them every step of the way in their dream of greatness. As writers—yep, you guessed it—we need to be stage moms for our book babies. We’re the ones who brought them into the world, after all. We’re the ones who have to get them looking their best, make sure they’re ready to go out there in the world, and we’re the ones who have to be thei...

That's me in a big way this year. You see, I've signed up for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge . Along with 2,000+ other bloggers - yes, more than 2,000! - I'll be blogging daily starting with the letter A prompt and ending with Z at the end of the month. Why do something like this? Well, the best way to boost your blog traffic and get notice from search engines is to post meaningful content on your blog regularly over an extended period of time. This is proven. The blog I'm working with was created to support a book title, the first in a trilogy, and deals with environmental themes, as well as murder and romance. So my goal going through the alphabet will include topics I might be writing about in the series. I'll also be reporting my daily word counts and hope interaction with other A to Z bloggers will inspire me, and maybe even garner a few new friends. Are any of you reading this post planning to join the A to Z venture? What is your blogging focus...

Platform One at Minehad Railway Station Photo by Ross Hawkes , via Flickr. One thing that agents and acquiring editors often look for is whether the author has a platform.   Exactly what a platform is can cause people to stutter while trying to explain the term. Some say it means you have a cause. Your book is about curing cancer. Or your protagonist is a recovering alcoholic. Or … you have something to talk about that might get you publicity. Even more so, if you yourself have conquered cancer or been sober for twenty years.   Some think it means that your book touches on a topic that is hot, like the politics in the Middle East or the two lovers end up together because of their work on global warming. Because those topics are relevant, you could get on talk shows. Although all of that would most likely be a help in promoting your book and can be part of a platform, it’s not really THE platform. Your platform is your ability to get publicity and sell your book. ...

Promotion is a black hole. It has no boundaries, no end in sight. The dark is so complete you can lose your aim within it, shooting expensive ammunition at imagined targets. This black hole may or may not lead to a universe of measurable results—and if it does, the sale of books may not be the best indicator of those results. Marketing, likewise, only the stakes are higher, because that black hole will be sucking money from your hand. Yet this we must do, because if no one knows of our books, they can’t purchase them. So when deciding on events and products for my launch later this month, I found it best to ask: Does this promotion fit within my budget of time and money? What do I hope to gain? 1. Launch party. Budget: Many will say a launch party is never worth the money (you’d have to sell one book for each dollar spent). But for me investing in such milestone celebrations makes life sweeter, and with donations and discounts, I believe we’ll have a night to remembe...

You only have one opportunity to create “buzz” about your book, and you don’t want to squander it. The hope is to create enough excitement about your release so that it explodes from the gate. My gate opens—hopefully with a bang—less than three months from now, on January 28. Pre-sales As you can see by the number “14” applied to this monthly post, I’ve already been creating buzz for The Art of Falling for some time now. So much so that every now and then—when people say, “Didn’t that already come out?”—I have to remind them that the bees haven’t already fled the hive! Once you get fully invested readers to pre-order, however, you can stop worrying about that. Now that pre-orders are live and the final copyedits complete, my evolving author website devotes two pages to my novel.  The first  shows the cover, a brief synopsis, trade review praise and blurbs, and—for the first time—debuts the opening chapter. If the reader is favorably impressed, she need d...

This month, I'm giving the blog floor to friend, author, and public relations and business development consultant, Makasha Dorsey. Makasha Dorsey, managing partner of the Dorsey Group, is a public relations and business development consultant with more than 15 years experience in implementing communications strategies. With a keen talent for relationship building, Makasha creates alliances with thought leaders to get her clients the exposure they need. As a former Atlanta-based, public relations executive, Makasha wrote copy for various entertainment websites and worked on projects for LaFace Records, Coca-Cola, New York Life Insurance, and DARP Studios. Dorsey has cultivated relationships in collegiate sports, the publishing industry (books, music and film), information technology, and various media outlets. Her client roster includes award-winning singers, musicians, and producers, highly sought after public speakers and writers. ||||| I went to Makasha about a week o...

In this final of three installments, novelist Nancy Martin takes time from the release of her latest mystery,  Little Black Book of Murder , to talk with Kathryn Craft about her recent Facebook promotions. Now that we've heard about how fun and popular they were, it's time to scratch the bottom line ... Kathryn: Now the tough question—do you think your efforts have translated into sales? What lessons have you learned from these efforts that you can pass along to our readers? Nancy: Let me say first that I am usually embarrassed by plugging myself, and cringe when I see writers openly campaign for awards and reader attention. In a recent New York Times column, essayist Philip Lopate said there is nothing more becoming in an author than modesty, and I am firmly in that camp. Sure, self-promotion might work, but I am too Presbyterian to do it! I think too much unseamly shilling demeans the writing. And readers aren't stupid. They recognize ego and flop sweat when th...

In this second of three installments, novelist Nancy Martin takes time from the release of her latest mystery,  Little Black Book of Murder , to talk with Kathryn Craft about her recent Facebook promotions. We pick up where we left off , with Nancy telling Kathryn how she was inspired by Fifty Shades of Grey ... Nancy:  It hit me that I could do a countdown to my book launch and post a different pink dress every day for fifty days on Facebook. I wrote a couple of sentences about each dress and why it was iconic, but I always included info about my book, too—usually providing a link to a bookseller. Within the first two weeks, the campaign went viral. I started out with 600 "likes" on my author page, and by the end of the fifty days, I had over half a million people looking at my pink dresses—and seeing info about my coming book. My publisher jumped on the bandwagon and bought some FB ads, and we were careful to steer viewers to booksellers where they could pre-o...

In this first of three installments, novelist Nancy Martin takes time from the release of her latest mystery, Little Black Book of Murder , to talk with Kathryn Craft about her recent Facebook promotions. Or click through to read parts two and three . Nancy, welcome back! Kathryn: Nancy, Congratulations on your new release, the ninth in your Blackbird Sisters mystery series. New York Times Bestselling Author Susan Andersen said of your series, “Smart intrigue dressed in cool couture.” Was that true from the very beginning? When did you realize that you could turn that into a marketing advantage on Facebook? Nancy: Thanks for your good wishes, Kathryn. The use of haute couture clothing in my books began early in the creative process as I built my main character, Nora Blackbird. If Nora was supposed to attend fancy balls and galas for her job as a society columnist, she needed great clothes to wear. But the whole point of her needing a job in the first place is that her parents ...

One of the best things about the Internet is ease and speed of communication between book professionals (authors, agents, editors, publishers) and readers. I love social media connections like Facebook and Twitter. But direct mail is a great way to give and get pertinent information, and direct e-mail is no different. I've signed up for quite a few e-letters to receive news and information from authors I regularly read, as I appreciate having an early heads-up about new book releases and promotions. Do you have a newsletter you regularly email to a mailing list of fans you've gathered? If not, the best way to develop one is by subscribing to a few and analyzing what you do and don't like about them. One of my favorites is the long-running All About Thyme e-letter written by Susan Wittig Albert. It's billed as a "weekly calendar of times and seasonings" and it celebrates "the mysteries, magic, and myths of herbs". Anyone who reads Susan's C...

Last week, I released my first novella, Saying No to the Big O [ Amazon | Smashwords ]. Instead of reading a book description, you can view the trailer for SN2BO below. As I began promoting Saying No to the Big O , I thought about how I would use Twitter in the promotions. I tweeted the obvious posts that brought people to my Website to read the novella's description, to watch the trailer, to read a sample, and to read commentaries I wrote on the novella, but I wanted to do something that was fun and intriguing and that would be a challenge for me. Back when I was promoting my mystery Into the Web , I pulled several lines from the story and tweeted them along with the link to purchase the novel. Tweeting lines from the story generated a lot of interest. Many people messaged me to talk about how much they enjoyed the tweets, many retweeted the lines, and others went directly to the purchase link to buy a copy of the novel. With the success of the tweets, I decided to do i...

On day #3 of the blog book tour for Ripple's Effect , I thought it would be interesting to show some of the behind-the-scenes planning of "collateral assets" used to promote a title, as well as how "branded" products are created. There is more to what meets the reader's eye than what they see when they open the covers of a book. Lots more is going on behind the scenes to support the successful launch of a new pu blication ! Sarah Seward is the talented graphic artist who uses the artwork developed by the illustrators in creative ways on other company products. For example, she created the moving carousel on the Little Pickle Press website . She is also one of the talents behind the free lesson plans we talked about in a previous post , in which she embellishes the projects with images from each picture book. Here is the lesson plan for Ripple's Effect . But there's more. Even after the book is in print, the job of the publisher in...