-
Intuition
the business of intuition
You don’t have to be a professional psychic to have an unexplainable hunch or feeling about a situation.
-
Hollywood
Hire Me Hollywood!
Want to know the super-secret to Stan Lee's writing process? What's for lunch on the set of The Walking Dead (hint: it’s not brains!)? How to sneak onto the set of Saturday Night Live?
-
innovation
iRenew Bracelets
iRenew suggests adding their bracelets to every Back to School Checklist to give students and moms a competitive edge this school year!
-
Beasley Real Estate
House of the Day
Beasley Real Estate is a boutique property brokerage firm with a global reach, specializing in the greater Washington DC market.
-
Corporate Psychics
When the Outlook is Hazy
Executives are turning to business psychics such as Victoria lynn Weston for help making tough calls: "Should I hire this job candidate?", and, "When will my company turn a profit again?"
-
Social Media
Facebook Customization
Companies, authors and filmmakers seeking to have a professional presence on Facebook can get help from MediaQuire.
-
Musical Brains
Harnessed
Language and music are central to what it means to be human. But where did they come from?
-
Share
Print 
Email
RSS Feed
.jpg)
Meet Gail Kearns. MediaQuire's featured blogger. Whether you have an idea for a book or if you have just finished writing your book, Gail's knowledge and experience will be invaluable.
Writing a book is one thing … getting it out into the world is another.
With well over 400,000 new titles published each year, you’ll want to be ahead of the game. So as you’re writing your bestseller (why not think positive!), developing an author platform, especially if you’re a first-time author, is essential.
Let me tell you a story about a recent client, which illustrates how important it is to begin building your platform early on, as far as a year ahead of your publication date. In my client’s case, she wanted to go the agent/publisher route with her memoir. After a year of working with her as her book coach, and editing and polishing her “baby,” she flew off to the Hawaii Writer’s conference with manuscript and proposal in hand.
Happily she got a lot of buzz. (It didn’t hurt that she’d had a T-shirt made up with her book title on it and she wore it every day!) She met with a number of well-known agents and a few editors from the big houses. About half of them expressed sincere interest in her book, but told her she needed to go out and build an author platform, get 10,000 followers and then come back to them! The editors, by the way, said she’d need to approach them through an agent.
The lesson of this tale is that launching a book in today’s marketplace requires a fair amount of pre-promotion. That’s right. Unless you’re a Stephenie Meyer or Neil Gaiman, you can’t afford not to be thinking far into the future when it comes to publishing your title.
Your publishing strategy should include:
1. An author website where you offer an e-book, a special report, and/or a sneak preview of your forthcoming book.
2. Launching a blog.
3. Facebook fan page.
4. Twitter account. You can connect your tweets to show up at your Facebook fan page, blog and LinkedIn using a service like hootsuite.com.
5. LinkedIn and joining appropriate groups who have discussions that you can participate in, providing other members with nuggets of your wisdom.
6. Posting videos on YouTube, your website and blog.
7. Commenting on high-traffic blogs and forums that reach your specific audience and to support fellow bloggers in your niche.
8. Writing informational and how-to articles for sites like Ezinearticles.com, articlecity.com, hubpages.com, etc.
9. Early press releases announcing your title’s publication date using MediaQuire.com for press release distribution as well as offering advance reader copies to interested media and opinion makers.
10. Speaking gigs (for non-fiction authors).
Social networking is fun but it’s also a commitment. To garner the book sales you’re hoping for, you will need this kind of pre-marketing, promotion and publicity support for your title. There are mentors (including myself) who have been around the block and know the must-haves for a book’s success. I would urge any aspiring author (and even seasoned ones) to engage the services of someone to guide them all the way through the process of producing a book. I’ve seen too many books cross my desk where the author made many costly mistakes that easily could have been avoided.
Here’s to your success!
Next week’s topic: Why you need a professional editor.
Got a question for Gail? Simply post your question in the comment section and each week Gail will address one or two to include in her blog.
To Press & Beyond are experts in book publishing consulting and support services who will take your book project and shepherd it through writing, editing, design & layout, printing, distribution, sales and promotion, both in trade and niche markets and on the Internet. They have worked with over 300 authors and independent publishers as far away as London, Switzerland, Egypt and Thailand.
To learn more about Gail and her company To Press and Beyond, visit ToPressandBeyond.com
Special Note from Victoria:
Meet Kathryn Stockette, she is a first time author of THE HELP. Her book is now distributed globally in more than a dozen languages. THE HELP is about black Southern maids who reveal what they really thought of working for white people. Yes, a movie is in the works!
Write a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.
Posts: 14
Reply #14 on : Thu September 02, 2010, 03:59:49
Posts: 14
Reply #13 on : Fri August 20, 2010, 21:56:49
Posts: 14
Reply #12 on : Fri August 20, 2010, 07:11:16
Posts: 14
Reply #11 on : Sun July 18, 2010, 14:00:44
Posts: 14
Reply #10 on : Sat July 10, 2010, 22:28:58
Posts: 14
Reply #9 on : Sat June 26, 2010, 20:12:06
Posts: 14
Reply #8 on : Wed April 28, 2010, 12:29:31
Posts: 14
Reply #7 on : Wed April 21, 2010, 17:04:43
Posts: 14
Reply #6 on : Sat April 17, 2010, 16:53:52
Posts: 14
Reply #5 on : Thu February 11, 2010, 21:44:19