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New Book Now What?

Jen Davenport, , , , , , Leave a comment

You’ve finished the book. You’ve got everything ready to go and hit publish. Now what?! You have to market that beast! All your hard work is really just beginning. In fact, I think a lot of authors will tell you writing the book is one of the easier parts of the process.

So you’ve got to pimp yourself. Pimp your book. And hope that all your pimping brings you sells. Lots and lots of them!

Here are a few marketing tips that have worked for me.

1. Blog Tours: You can use a company or put together a tour on your own with friends and fellow authors. A blog tour can be guest posts, promo posts, exclusive teasers, and giveaways. You can also do a cover reveal as part of a pre-release blog tour.

2. Newsletters: This is one of my more successful marketing tools. While my newsletter is small, it does help me get the word out on new releases and any fun updates I want to give my readers. I only send out one newsletter a month, sometimes fewer than that depending on what’s going on. Just be sure you don’t spam your followers!

3. Social Media: While I’m not certain how much this helps anymore, there are a few new social media tools that do work. Take Thunderclap for example. This is a great way to reach a lot of people all at once, if you can get a successful campaign. What I’ve found recently is Facebook is a great resource to find other authors to help out, like with Thunderclap. Twitter for me isn’t as productive any more, but others may find differently.

What works for you when it comes to marketing?

While we’re talking marketing, how about a bit of shameless promoting

Burning ThumbRebecca Waterstone left her high school sweetheart in Graysville ten years ago. At the time she had no plans to return home, ever, thanks to heartbreaker Jonah Caroway. When she receives a call from the hospital that her uncle has had a heart attack and may not make it through the night she has to go home and face her past once more.
Jonah Caroway regrets letting Becca walk out of his life to go to New York ten years ago. She wanted to be a teacher and explore the great city of while he wanted to stay home in small town U.S.A. Now she’s back and this time he won’t let history repeat itself.
When faced with the decision of staying in Graysville or returning to New York she’s not sure what to do. Will Jonah be able to convince her they are meant to be together or will she choose to leave the past in the past?
Available March 6, 2015

Pre-Order at Amazon

Knowing When It’s Time to Unplug

Nicole Evelina, , , 6 Comments

Image from Tereza Litsa who has great tips for unplugging on her blog: http://terezalitsa.blogspot.com/2013/09/is-it-time-to-unplug-from-social-media.html.
Image from Tereza Litsa who has great tips for unplugging on her blog: http://terezalitsa.blogspot.com/2013/09/is-it-time-to-unplug-from-social-media.html.

It’s kind of ironic that I’m writing a blog post about unplugging from social media, as it’s a form of social media. Plus, I’ve sent more tweets tonight than I have in two weeks, but that’s neither here nor there.

The point is this: over the last few weeks, I found that social media was doing me more harm than good, so I decided to back off of it for a bit. I think after five years on social media almost every day, I’m suffering from too much of a good thing.

Why? Well, some of it is the place I’m at in my life right now. The main thing is that my priorities need to be elsewhere. I’m also finding that some of my online friendships have turned from uplifting to toxic, so I need to take a break until I can see those people from a healthier perspective.

Plus, there’s always drama. Twitter seems to have a rant of the day, Facebook can be populated by people spouting off without knowing all the facts, and everyone has an opinion on the Amazon/Hachette dispute, which doesn’t even affect me. I don’t need that. Life has enough drama in it without hunting it down online.

So to avoid a mental meltdown but still stay active, I’m sticking to blogs, Pinterest and watching my basic Twitter lists: my agent/agency, local writers, and famous authors. That’s it. I’m even staying quiet with Team Awesome (which includes many of my fellow Spellbound Scribes) until I get my head on straight. It’s nothing personal, but it is for everyone’s benefit.

Sometimes we all need a break, that’s true for social media as much as it is for anything else. While it’s a great suite of tools for reaching/building an audience and interacting with other writers, it can also be a distraction and source of irritation. I, for one, would rather maintain a more limited positive presence online than have you see my nerves get frayed or the unguarded moments when I can’t control my (sometimes negative) opinions.

So if you’re wondering why you haven’t seen me as much, that’s why. I’ll be back, but I need some time to just be a writer, without the constant streams of articles on what I should or shouldn’t do to be successful or the relentless “look, I’m wonderful, now buy my book” tweets and posts. I need time to focus on me, my research and writing, on my life outside of the world wide web. Then, I’ll be in a better place when I am back full-steam ahead. But I wanted to be open and honest about it, rather than hide in the shadows.

Have you ever had a time when social media just got to be too much? How did you deal? Do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing to admit when you’ve had enough?