Promoting Book Signings by Davalynn Spencer

Marketing is a daunting task for authors, so it helps to collect as many tips as we can find. Today, author Davalynn Spencer offers helpful advice about press releases and book signings. -- Sandy

Davalynn: When I worked as a reporter and religion page editor for a small daily newspaper, I saw press releases every day. I received a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul before it went on sale, and I knew about JK Rowling before most people heard of Harry Potter—all because someone wrote a press release and sent one to the newspaper where I worked.

I’ve stayed in touch with my reporter friends, and when I have a new book coming out, I shoot them an email to see if they’re interested in an interview. But I never assume anything and always phrase the request in a way that offers an easy out for them to say no.

Whether I’m promoting online or in print, I always write a press release for my books, tailoring it to the specific area if possible, especially if I’m sending “blind” without knowing the editor.

For example, last year’s book, The Rancher’s Second Chance, was set in the California foothills where I once lived. The release I sent to newspapers in the area focused on the locale and my former residency there. Releases I sent to papers in my current location mentioned “local author.”

Here are a few pointers for the news media:

• Never assume anything – especially with friends. You can be more casual in your approach with friends, but show them the usual courtesy and give them a way out to graciously say no.
• ALWAYS address the editor/reporter by name. If you don’t know them, find out.
• Include “hooks” that will make an editor/reporter want to interview you either over the phone, in person, or via email.
• If you are having a book signing nearby, include accurate information about when and where, and any giveaways or drawings you plan to conduct.

Book signings can be intimidating, but they are a great way to meet readers. Set one up at your local library, book store, or gift shop.

I am always more comfortable if I don’t sit down (unless I’m actually signing a book). I enjoy browsing during the in-between moments. This also gives me an opportunity to interact with people who may not be there to buy my book, though I keep a watchful eye on my book table.

While browsing, I pass out bookmarks—an incredibly inexpensive way to advertise. I get 250 for about $50 from Uprinting.com and I often use them like business cards. My website is printed on the bottom so readers have access to a buy link for the ebook or online suppliers. That way, bookstore owners are not offended by me pushing the book from an online dealer. After all, we need book stores.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Stay on your feet unless actually signing your name. Keep an eye on your table when you’re away from it, but move around.
• Offer bookmarks to people not at your table, with a casual remark like, “May I give you a bookmark?”
• Place a bookmark inside the books you sign.
• If you have more than one book, display copies/bookmarks of previous titles at the corner of your table.
• Send the person who allowed your book signing a hand-written thank-you note. These little gems are becoming quite rare and the effort will make that person feel appreciated.

Do you have anything to add that will be of help to others? Have you sent press releases to newspapers and received interviews from them? Tell us your experience with press releases and/or book signings.

~~~

 

Davalynn Spencer’s love of writing has taken her from the city crime beat and national rodeo circuit to the college classroom and inspirational publication. When she’s not writing western romance or teaching as an adjunct professor, she enjoys speaking and leading worship at women’s retreats. She and her husband Mike have three children and four grandchildren and make their home on Colorado’s Front Range with a Queensland heeler named Blue. Connect with her online at www.davalynnspencer.com,  www.Facebook.com/AuthorDavalynnSpencer.com and on Twitter @davalynnspencer.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Ann Shorey

Ann Shorey

Recently I’ve heard from several fellow authors who are staggering under a load of family issues, illnesses, unexpected re-writes, and just general distractions. One thing they all have in common is looming deadlines.

Sounds like 2012 in my house.

My husband’s mother died at the end of February that year, after a lengthy decline. Our home filled with far-flung family members coming for the funeral and to help sort Mom’s belongings between them. My husband was appointed executor.

Five weeks later, my husband (a real estate broker) underwent surgery for a torn rotator cuff. He couldn’t drive for six weeks, and since the real estate business requires lots of driving, I was his chauffeur, both on business, and to physical therapy twice a week. For six weeks.

Fortunately, my next deadline wouldn’t fall until the end of the following January. Lots of time. Then I got sick. And sicker. When January 1, 2013, rolled around, I was 30,000 words short of completing my contracted novel. I felt overwhelmed, exhausted, and brain-dead.

I know from talking to other authors and reading their posts that the gut-clench that comes from being so far off the mark isn’t unique to me. So I did what King Hezekiah did in 2 Kings 19:14. I spread my work out before the Lord and prayed for His guidance. Here’s what He led me to do (with my suggestions included):

1. Most Important: Pray often!
2. Enlist a prayer partner to walk through the pages with you.
3. Take the total word count remaining and divide it between the number of days left. I don’t mean all the days of the month, because you should take a bit of time to check in with your family and attend church, if nothing else. So, in my case, 30,000 divided by 26 came out to around 1,100 words per day. No problem, right? Unless the brain-dead issue comes in.
4. Using a legal pad, I sketched out all the plot points that needed to be resolved by the end of the novel to be sure I didn’t leave any hanging threads. A legal pad may not work for you—whatever you use for note-taking would be fine.
5. I then arranged these plot points in their proper order. Point A needs to happen before Point B in order for Point C to make sense. Take time to think these points through to their logical conclusions. You may surprise yourself with some previously overlooked scenes.
6. Force yourself to stay at your keyboard until the day’s word count is completed. 
7. Share each completed chapter with your prayer partner for critique and encouragement.
8. Repeat Numbers 6 and 7 until you type “The End.”

This was some of the hardest writing I’d ever done, but at the same time the most rewarding. The Lord should have been listed on the cover of the book as my co-author because ideas flowed from His Creativity to my struggling brain.

If you’re in a similar hard writing place right now, let me testify that God is faithful. He does answer the prayers of his loved ones. Love’s Sweet Beginning is the result.

PS: My editor said this was her favorite book of the series. If she only knew . . .

About the Author

ANN SHOREY has been a story collector for most of her life, and has been a full-time writer for over twenty years. Her writing has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Grandma’s Soul, and in the Adams Media Cup of Comfort series. She made her fiction debut with The Edge of Light, Book One in the At Home in Beldon Grove series, which released in January 2009. The final book in the series, The Dawn of a Dream, released in April, 2011. Her latest, the Sisters at Heart series, debuted in January, 2012, with Where Wildflowers Bloom. The third book in that series, Love’s Sweet Beginning, released in February of 2014. She’s tempted to thank Peet’s coffee and Dove chocolates when she writes the acknowledgments for her books.

When she’s not writing, she teaches classes on historical research, story arc, and other fiction fundamentals at regional conferences. She lives with her husband in southern Oregon.

Ann loves to hear from her readers, and may be contacted through her website, www.annshorey.com, which also contains her blog, http://annshorey.blogspot.com/ or find her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/AnnShorey.

Love's Sweet Beginning
by Ann Shorey

LOVE’S SWEET BEGINNING

What will it take for a once-privileged young woman to make her way in the world?

It isn’t Cassie Haddon’s fault that she has reached the age of twenty-five without possessing any useful skills. Until the War Between the States, she always had servants. Since then, she and her mother have been forced to rely on family to care for them. But now the well of human kindness has run dry—and Cassie must find work to support them. Unfortunately, leaving the past behind is easier said than done, and Cassie must summon all of her courage and wits to convince local restaurateur and grocer Jacob West that she’s exactly what he needs.

Putting Romance into the Little Details by Clare Revell

Clare Revell

Hey friends, Annette here. Raise your hand if you write romance and/or include a romantic thread in your fiction. As Valentine's Day approaches, I thought it'd be fun to have a romance writer visit. Clare Revell has several romances out from Pelican Book Group. She's here to discuss how details can amp up the romance in your stories. Enjoy!

Putting Romance into the Little Details

by Clare Revell

Writing romance isn’t all hugs and kisses. Not the way I write—where the hero and heroine are running for their lives or chasing serial killers. So I find romance in other ways—in the details. Facial expressions, body language, all mount up until every little movement counts.

I remember my editor underlining a passage and asking me to expand what I’d written. Reading it back, I knew exactly what I meant, because I could see it in my mind’s eye. The hero had just received bad news “off camera” as we were in the heroine’s POV. And being a Brit, I’d put in typical Brit fashion, Luke stormed into the room and slammed the door. Sara knew he was upset by the way he sat, and took his hand gently.

Not very expressive. I could see the anger on his face, the way his jaw was set, the darkness of his eyes, and his hands curled into fists. He threw himself onto the couch, folded his arms tightly and scowled. And the way a light touch from the hand of the woman he loved could help calm him. But had I put that in the scene? No. As soon as I did, it showed that Luke was angry, but also that Sara cared enough to show compassion without saying anything to further aggravate him. Sometimes being silent is the best option. Take that from someone who’s been married twenty-one years.

Or something as simple as the hero and heroine go for a walk. Draft one, always in note form and hand written, says A and S go to a duck pond and feed the ducks. Not very romantic.

But… here’s where detail comes in again. Not only will details set the scene for the readers, they offer much-needed change of pace. A takes S’s hand, which is cool against his warm one. Tall trees surround the odd-shaped lake; Canada geese, ducks, and ducklings glide on the water and take bread from kids by the wooden barrier under over hanging weeping willows.

He sits on the bench, pats the space next to him for her to sit. He points out the way the sunlight hits the water, sparkling. Notes the way it hits her hair too. Quiet conversations about nothing in particular, or just sitting, being together. Blissfully unaware of the gunman behind them, or the photographer across the pond watching them. Or maybe A knows this, and is determined nothing is going to spoil the few minutes they have.

Treat your manuscript like a movie. Show the reader exactly what you see in your mind as you write the book. You’ll be amazed at the difference that technique can make.

***** 

Monday's Child

Monday’s Child must hide for protection... 

This was not the assignment Luke Nemec expected when he came to the UK—babysitting a beautiful widow. It wouldn’t be so bad if Sara wasn’t such a hostile witness. Despite her complaints and continued jibes, Luke finds himself falling for her. 


When, Sara Barnes is thrown into the witness protection programme, she becomes the “wife” of Lt. Luke Nemec, an American cop on temporary assignment with the British police. Despite Luke’s American bravado, she finds he’s kind and considerate in ways her late husband never was. 

But things aren’t always what they seem, and Luke soon realizes he’s fighting a battle of two fronts to keep Sara safe. Loyalties are called into question, and he’s no longer certain who he can trust. Luke is way out of his depth. As the threats against Sara escalate, it’s a race against time to find her husband’s killer before Sara is silenced forever. 

***** 

Clare Revell lives in a small town in England with her husband, whom she married in 1992, and her three children. Writing from an early childhood and encouraged by her teachers, she graduated from rewriting fairy stories through fan fiction to using her own original characters and enjoys writing an eclectic mix of romance, crime fiction and children's stories. When she's not writing, reading, or sewing, she's keeping house or doing the many piles of laundry her children manage to make. She has been a Christian for more than half her life. She goes to Carey Baptist where she is one of three registrars. 

She can be found at: http://www.revell124.plus.com/clarerevell/ 
https://www.facebook.com/ClareRevellAuthor 
https://twitter.com/ClareRevell 
http://telscha.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Acquiring an Agent by Katherine Reay

Katherine Reay

You may have been told that it’s important to sign with a literary agent. But what do you do? Where do you go to find the right one? Today, author Katherine Reay shares her personal experience.  Her story is another example of how God has an individual plan for each writer’s journey. ~ Dawn

Acquiring an Agent

When thinking about encouragement, I stumbled upon what most of us find or found discouraging: Acquiring one’s first agent. I queried many agents and received 38 rejection letters. Another author once praised my tenacity – that’s one word for it. But the reality is that, after you’ve put in all the work, it’s discouraging – and even upsetting – when you feel like you can’t get a foot in the door that fills your thoughts and dreams.

So that’s where we begin…. The process can be heartbreaking. Yet I do feel that if we are called by God to write – and we must be or we wouldn’t set ourselves up for such pain – then we write.  And we trust. We trust that, in some way and in some form, He will use our words and our obedience for Him.

My story is one I share because I can’t boast about it or take credit for it. God showed up, powerfully and with a sense of humor. The story is the encouragement…

In the summer of 2012, an editor I had met at a conference expressed interest in Dear Mr. Knightley. She sent a contract for a simple, brief offering – and yet it was 40 pages long and intimidating, especially without an agent to help translate. I was overwhelmed and discouraged. Within the hour of the contract’s arrival in my inbox, a newsletter from a writers’ group also arrived.  I reluctantly opened it when I really wanted to skip the newsletter and stop writing, forever. But upon opening the email, I found my picture, randomly chosen from a 2010 conference, staring back at me from the titled article “Why You Need An Agent.” Oh my…

I immediately wrote the head of the group and begged him to reply – after all, he’d used my picture. He graciously wrote back stating that I should not sign any contract without an agent.

Unwilling to return to my rejection pile, I searched my shelves and pulled down favorite books. Out of ten I respected, one agent’s name came up three times in the acknowledgments. I went to the agency website and found his picture. I read nothing because in that moment I heard loud and clear “That’s your agent.”

I then questioned – as I am wont to do.  “Seriously, God? One shot. That’s all I’ve got in me. This is the guy?”

Peace said “Yes.”

I called him. (Who does that?)

After leaving a frenetic three-minute message, I read the agency guidelines. It required one to be published to submit; it represented household names; it only received mailed queries from recommended authors. Dismayed, I realized that I’d already broken every rule.

           

Yet three hours later, he called me back.

I was so stunned I could answer few of his questions succinctly. At the end, he said “I am not taking you on, but I will read the manuscript and the contract and I’ll get back to you on Monday.” This was a Thursday. 

He didn’t call Monday and I thought I’d blown it, but he emailed the next day with “I’ll call Thursday. Hold tight.”

On Thursday, his opening line was “Where have you been?” I replied, “I’ve always been here.” He then said, “I don’t need new clients. I have a very stable clientele. I take on one to two each year at most… but I want to work with you.”

Two weeks and a forty-page proposal later, we met in Dallas at the 2012 ACFW Conference and pitched Dear Mr. Knightley to anyone and everyone who would listen.  And now… You can buy the book.

This is a “success” story because God pulled the pieces together. I did not. I was discouraged, frustrated and close to giving up. And it isn’t a usual story – technically I broke a healthy number of industry rules. But that’s my point. The journey to publication is as unique as the stories we write and we write those to stories to connect with and share a big God – and with Him all things are possible.

So keep writing, keep editing, keep seeking, keep searching and… keep trusting.

Thank you for reading. And please tell me your thoughts… You can reach me on Twitter @katherine_reay, on Facebook at /katherinereaybooks or on my website www.katherinereay.com. I would love to hear from you. 

Tweetables:

We trust that He will use our words and our obedience for Him. Click to tweet.

God showed up, powerfully and with a sense of humor. Click to tweet.

The journey to publication is as unique as the stories we write. Click to tweet.

Author Katherine Reay shares how God provided an agent.  Click to tweet.

Dear Mr. Knightley

Dear Mr. Knightley

Growing up in the foster care system, Samantha Moore found her best friends in the works of Austen, Dickens, and the Bronte sisters. The problem is that she now relates to others more comfortably as Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Eyre than as herself. While pursuing a graduate journalism degree at Northwestern University, Sam struggles to find her own voice and lay down those safe hiding places. And soon she begins to write her own story – by giving it to a complete stranger. 

Katherine Reay is a wife, mother, runner, and avid chocolate consumer. She has enjoyed a life-long affair with the works of Jane Austen and her contemporaries and, at the encouragement of her family, recently began an affair with food – cooking that is – and this new passion has strongly influenced her next novel, Lizzy and Jane, which will release in October 2014.

After living all across the country and a few stops in Europe, Katherine and her family live in Seattle, WA. You can also find Katherine at www.katherinereay.com and lurking somewhere within the pages of her first novel, Dear Mr. Knightley.