Category Archives: Promo Tip

How I Marketed My New Book – Ask Alice Saturday

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Question: How did you go about promoting your new book?

Answer: I developed a Modulated Marketing Plan. I’ll share it with you?

Shout Out imageFirst I established a couple of basic principles. I discovered they are basic with me anyway. Maybe they’ll feel basic for you too.

Do what you’re most comfortable with at the beginning when you’re searching for your rhythm and your groove. Accelerate at your own pace after that. Don’t ever panic. This is three principles rather than a couple – the trio I kept in my consciousness all the way through.

What was most comfortable for me was to write blog pieces. I learned the art of the brief blog entry when I was down-for-the-count for a while with cancer and drugs had shortened my attention span. An editor friend taught me to write short and my blogging career was born.

More recently a well-organized friend got me on a three-posts-a-week schedule. This is Ask Alice Saturday of that schedule. I’m comfortable here so I created Riverton Road Monday too – named after my series – and the first phase of my marketing plan fell easily into place.

Meanwhile the initial step of accelerating at my own pace was to look at what I was already doing that had a marketing angle. For example – what was I doing on social media?

My granddaughter put me on Facebook in the same bedridden period I mention above. I wanted to keep in touch – especially with other writers. Facebook was a comfort zone that turned into a visibility place for me and my books. Though I learned early not to direct market much.

Twitter was another thing entirely. All those postoids streaming past bewildered me until a writer friend turned my on to TweetDeck. Suddenly the incomprehensible stream sorted itelf into manageable lists. I love Twitter now. Though I keep direct marketing at a minimum there too.

Let me speak about indirect marketing. What you’re selling/branding on these media is you. I try to be my best authentic self. My most positive me. If people are attracted to that person – maybe they’ll also want to read my books. Which I do market more directly for a bit at launch time.

Next I got a new website. My old one was about me in a former incarnation. This one is about me in my new incarnation – as a full-time writer. I hired good help and found a visual image I felt represented who I am now. You can check out the results at www.aliceorrbooks.com.

A newsletter is the latest step in my modulated plan. Research told me I like the Debbie Macomber model. Personable. Low-keyed. Not very sexual. The first issue comes out next week. Go to my website address above and sign up if you’d like to see my newsletter too. You could win a replica of my favorite coffee mug in my first-ever giveaway. “Have a Cuppa with Alice.”

This plus some Guest Blogging is most of my marketing so far. A media savvy friend says YouTube is next. That makes me shiver in my summer sandals. But the third principle of my modulated plan is never to panic. Let’s just say I need to work on that one.

RR

 A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 2 – officially launches THIS COMING MONDAY – JUNE 22nd! At http://www.amazon.com /dp/B00ZBOTH5O and lots of other places. This is my 13th novel and I thank heaven for my Modulated Marketing Plan. Feel free to make it your plan too – adapted to the comfort level and pace that’s right for you. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

 

 

 

Make a Plan – Hear God Laugh – Orr What? Wednesday

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God Laughs image“If you want to hear God laugh – make a plan.” I’ve heard that so often because I say it so often. Too bad I apparently didn’t listen to myself saying it. I went made a plan for launching my next book. A well thought out and specific plan – maybe even foolproof – or so I believed.

I alerted everybody. The wonderful women at The Killion Group Inc. who design my covers and format my books and get them into print. My website developer who is also at Killion. My brand new newsletter designer. And of course my controlling self.

“Let’s all be on the same page.” That was the message. We’d be coordinated and ready on the same day – Monday June 22nd  – absolutely not a minute before. I sincerely believed I could make that happen just because I said it would happen. Has anybody ever heard of Hubris?

I happened to be on line last week at the amazon.com site and there it was. The print paperback version of A Year of Summer Shadows. It’s been there since April. You can see for yourself at http://amazon.com/author/aliceorr. Not supposed to be there but it is.

What the hey! I say. The closest I was allowed to cussing back in the North Country when I was a kid growing up where my story’s also set. Let’s put out the eBook early too. Except – at last sighting – amazon had missed my memo. Print book and eBook aren’t on the same page.

I hear laughter. I can’t tell if it’s on high or only inside my head. I made a plan. I convinced myself it would work. Most foolish of all – I believed it made a difference. I forgot that when it comes to writing stories and putting them out into the world only one thing matters.

“You find your readers one person at a time.”

Remembering that jolted me to my senses. For one thing the words strike me as absolutely true. For another thing they prompt me to ask myself how we do that. How do we attract readers one at a time?

The only conclusion I can come up with is this. We must each turn the question toward ourselves individually. “How do I do that? How do I find my readers one at a time?” Which prompts other questions also.

#1. What is the special gift I have to offer others – one potential reader at a time?

Maybe it’s humor. Maybe it’s expertise and insights. Maybe it’s simply telling a damned good story. We must open our kitbags and examine the contents closely. What is in there that others might need? What is in there that others might want? Then we must resolve to give it away.

#2. What access can I create for giving my gift away – one potential reader at a time?

When searching for resources – we must first step outside our own front door and look up and down the street. Start local. Cultivate that ground. Plow on from there. Our own front door being any repository of information about people we actually know – or almost know – firsthand.

#3. What if someone says this is too slow to go – one potential reader at a time?

Personally I do my best every day to fight back that fear. Because I know full well in this internet place I am a single voice among a thundering avalanche of voices. But as a giver of my gifts to each single soul I am singular as well – as are you. And that single number counts.

So we keep on Facebooking and Tweeting and Uploading and all the rest. We keep on making plans. Maybe God is laughing but I believe that laugh has an affectionate ring. Meanwhile – down here in this crowded world – we would do well to keep in mind and heart the best plan of all. To have some fun as we reach out toward one reader – one person – at a time.

RR

A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Launches with summer on June 22nd – or whenever – at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 13th novel and while God may be laughing I can’t help but smile. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

A Whole Lot of Being Nice – Ask Alice Saturday

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Question: What does it take to get the most out of a writers’ conference?

 Answer: “What it takes is a whole lot of being nice.”

Hug imageI put that response in quotation marks because I heard those words from another author. Sabrina Jeffries giving an uplifting talk at – you guessed it – a writers’ conference.

Summer is conference time. Small retreats and huge gatherings punctuate June through August for many writers. Civilians – as in non-writers – are off to the shore or the mountains or the campsite. But we pack up our notebooks and our hopes and head for a convocation of scribes.

What most of us are hoping is that we’ll find the key to getting our work published or better published. I say that isn’t the most important thing we find at these gatherings whether they take place in a grand hotel or a modest cabin or anywhere in between.

The most important thing we find is each other. We make the most of a writers’ conference by maximizing that discovery. We writers are our own most natural allies. Why is that so true? It’s true because we understand one another from the inside.

We understand what it’s like to labor in the formidable publishing marketplace. We understand what it’s like to struggle toward getting our work published and keeping it published. We know how it feels to suffer rejection and disappointment. We also know how it feels to experience the joy of our accomplishments whether they’re large or small.

We also understand we need support in these hard struggles we’ve chosen. We understand that because we need the same support ourselves. With this understanding comes an obligation. Our obligation is to reach out and give what is needed – a little bit of niceness to our writer friends.

All it takes is a few words in a few sentences of encouragement and kindness. Over the several days or even the single weekend of a conference these few words at a time will add up to what Sabrina inspires us toward – a whole lot of being nice.

Our need to succeed tells us to be nice to the max to the agents and editors and instructors we line up for to pitch our projects or sit in front of taking notes. We long to recruit them to become our allies on the inside of the publishing world. In the meantime let’s not forget the allies we already have on the inside of the writing world.

Give what you can. A word of advice or a commiserating ear or a shared laugh – and definitely a hug. As you scurry from class to class or from appointment to appointment take a moment to touch another writer ally with your own whole lot of being nice. I guarantee you will experience a whole lot of feeling good in return.

RR

P.S. My biggest writers’ gathering gig this summer will be teaching a course titled How to Stop Shooting Career in the Foot. Six sessions of sharing everything I know about how to get out of your own way and get what you need out of writing and publishing. That happens July 24th through 31st at the International Women’s Writing Guild 38th Annual Summer Conference in Litchfield CT. For more information visit www.iwwg.org.

RR

My next novel is A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Launching with summer on June 22nd at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 13th novel and I couldn’t have done it without a whole lot of being nice from my author allies. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.