Book Talks

            I’ll be traveling around the Midwest and Texas in October giving talks at Rotary clubs and libraries.  I’d put the tour list here, but it’s long, and would take a lot of time for me to look up all the addresses and/or contact information, and no one goes to these events based on this blog, so I’m not going to take the time to list them now.

            Instead I’m going to talk about why I go to these clubs and give these talks.  I have found Rotary clubs, and groups like it, to be an invaluable tool for independent non-fiction promotion.  The organizers of these clubs need to find a new speaker every single week, and they’re trying to find subjects interesting enough to keep their members coming back.  Having a true story to tell is a blessing for them, as long as it’s an interesting one.  While I struggled for years to get bookstores to let me do signings, clubs that need regular speakers have been more than willing to accept me.  And some have even contacted me and asked me to come to their organization to speak, saving me the time of having to go to them.

            I haven’t been charging for these events as I want to get into as many as possible.  I make money by selling copies of my books at them, and sometimes I make a couple hundred at a single event.  It’s not enough to live on as the work required to set it up and to travel there winds up being inefficient.  However, it spreads the word of the book and of me as an author.  I often make friends and contacts who later join me on social media, and they see what else I’m writing.  Like most things in independent publishing, it pays to have a number of titles so each individual event doesn’t wind up being your only trick.

            I approach these organizations by looking them up, finding out who would be in charge of booking guests, (if I can’t find that, I just find the president or whomever is in charge,) and I email them.  I tell them what the story is and I provide a link to the web page where the information is listed.  I also mention anything that is sellable about the story.  (In the case of Two Gun Hart I tell them that it’s the first time a lot of information about the Capones has ever been revealed.)  And I make sure to mention anything that’s relevant to their area, as sometimes clubs prefer stories with a local connection.  (Oddly enough, most of the ones in Iowa wouldn’t have me as a guest unless I could show a local connection.)

            This doesn’t work so well when it comes to fiction because typically the best you can do is say you have a story you’ve made up.  The problem is, everyone has a story they’ve made up, and they don’t know why yours is extra special.  And besides, people at events like these usually want to hear about something that’s true.  They’re fascinated by true stories and will gladly invite authors with great true stories to their events.

Pre-Publicity Stage Complete

The first quarter of this year is fully dedicated to the book Two Gun Hart, which is about Al Capone’s long-lost brother, who was a Prohibition officer in Nebraska.  It releases March 20^th, and we are right now in the pre-sale stage.

There have been three stages to these promotions:

Pre-publicity – Where I get the first draft of galleys printed and sent to the people who will give it initial buzz, such as experts in the subject, listings, reviewers, and a few people who can give us blurbs to put on the book.

Pre-sale – Where the book is available for people to order so they’ll get it on the day it’s released.

Release – Where the book is available for sale, and I give talks and book signings.

The first stage was done during the last few months of 2014.  From 6-4 months before release, I gave out these early copies of the book to places that will list it, such as Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and ForeWord Reviews, as well as some places that will want to review it early.  As I mentioned earlier, it also went to people who could give it early buzz, such as experts, and people who have followings relevant to the book.  Many of these people I want to get blurbs from, but some of them I want to see it because they’ll start telling other people about it, and this was the point to start generating early buzz about it; just getting people to initially learn that the story, and soon the book, exist.  I’m also giving copies out to friends to put up reviews on Amazon.  The more that are up before the book releases, the better.  Reviews on Amazon, and on some other sites, are what sell a book more than any publicity can do.

In addition to all of this, I’ve begun spreading the word by putting up the cover on my own Facebook timeline as well as others’ groups.  There’s also an ad now running on Goodreads which gets close to 10,000 views a day.

All of this was just to get people talking.  That’s started, and now it’s time to move on to the next phase.  The book has gone onto pre-order as of Christmas Eve, so now the big work begins, getting everyone to pre-order.  The important part of this phase is to get people to make that purchase before it’s released.  The reason this is important is because all sales that happen during pre-order are considered as occurring on one day in relation to the bestseller lists, such as the ones in the New York Times and on Amazon.

#amazon #presales #promotions #goodreads #prepublicity #bookpromotion