your book is published; now how to promote it?

If a book is going to sell, it needs to be promoted. Some publishers do a lot of promotion for books they publish. Others do little beyond putting the books in their catalogs. In either case it's helpful for authors to do what they can to promote their own books. You can promote in ways that suit your personality. Play to your strengths. Here are ten promotion methods that come to mind:

1. Speaking in public.

2. Doing interviews.

3. Schmoozing with people at conferences, talking up your book and selling copies if the opportunity presents itself.

4. Having a web site and or blog in which you discuss topics that relate to your book. People start reading because they are interested in those topics. Hopefully they then take the next step and buy your book.

5. Writing newspaper and magazine articles on topics that relate to your book. Hopefully the same thing happens as above.

6. Asking suitable friends and acquaintances to write reviews of your book and get them published online and or in print periodicals. 

7. Belonging to online and or face-to-face writers' groups. In such groups you're likely to make friends who would be glad to write reviews for you and talk your books up. [The idea would be that you would do the same for them.] One of the best things about belonging to online groups is that you make contact with people from different parts of our country as well as other countries. They can talk your book up where they live.

8. Having bookmarks made and distributing them in various ways.

9. Entering your book in contests for published books. If you win a contest or even get an honorable mention, it's great promotion for you.

10. Teaching an online or correspondence course about some topic that relates to your book, or teaching a course about aspects of writing. Some of your students would probably be interested in buying the book.

 

novel reading & writing as per Labonté, Weir, Schroeder, & Galloway

Looking for exciting new Canadian novels to read? Have questions about writing and marketing your novel? I recently attended a workshop addressing those interests. The workshop, held at the university in Kamloops, BC, featured:

- Chris Labonté, associate publisher and acquiring editor, Douglas & McIntyre of Vancouver and Toronto

- Ian Weir, whose novel DANIEL O'THUNDER is a "rollicking, comic, and ultimately haunting tale of fist-fighting, faith, and fine madness" set in 1800s England and British Columbia

- Adam Lewis Schroeder, whose novel IN THE FABLED EAST is about a young widow who in 1909 flees to French Indochina seeking a fabled spring of immortality. She disappears and in 1936 an academic goes looking for her—with surprising results.

- Steven Galloway, whose novel THE CELLIST OF SARAJEVO features "three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst." It's set during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s.

Editor Labonté provided excellent pointers for authors seeking publication. Among them:

- Get feedback from others on your writing. Revise as appropriate, but don't forget it's your story. You call the shots. Write the novel you'd like to read.

- You can develop a writing profile for yourself by trying to get short stories and/or novel chapters published in small literary magazines such as THE MALAHAT REVIEW, THE ANTIGONISH REVIEW, and PRAIRIE FIRE.

- The Association of Canadian Publishers provides a wealth of information on its web site, www.publishers.ca.

- There are several routes to getting published. You can try: querying a publisher directly, getting a referral from a published author, and finding an agent to represent you. The process can be frustrating, almost akin to trying to win the lottery. But to win you need a ticket, which is your novel, written and revised so it's the best you can possibly make it.

The three authors read from their novels, after which Mr. Labonté led a panel discussion. Some gems that emerged:

- To be a novelist, "you have to like sitting in a room by yourself living in an imaginary world."

- On writer's block: Get on with it whether the "vibe" feels right or not. People in other jobs don't have the luxury of not working when they don't feel like it. They get on with teaching math, collecting garbage, filling teeth—whatever they need to do.

- "In moments of crisis, we discover what we're made of."

what a friend we have in Grandma

Memories of my Grandma Elizabeth inspired me to write this little retrospective. What grandparent memories do you have to share?

In the days following the baby's death, Helena often wondered what she'd do without her mother. Her mom brought her tea on a tray, helped her wash her hair in a speckled basin beside the heater, and took care of four-year-old Aaron. She often sang as she worked: Welch ein freund ist unser Jesu. What a friend we have in Jesus.

Helena's mom's hair was a wavy river, brown at the waist, graying as it approached her face. Every morning Helena and Lenny watched her brush it by the heater. "Don't roll it up, Grandma," Lenny pleaded as the practiced hands gathered the river and braided it into a bun at the back of her head. "Let it hang down."

"Too much to do," said Magda, inserting the imprisoning pins and rhinestone studded combs.

more links for writers—and readers

Worst storyline contest: http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/The+Third+Worst+Storyline+Ever+Contest.aspx

Favorite childhood books. Does this article bring back memories? What were your favorite books as a child? http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/ShelfTalker_A_Children_s_Bookseller_s_Blog/31500-Favorite_Childhood_Books_No_One_Else_Knew_Picture_Book_Edition_.php?nid=2286&source=link

Thoughts on backing up your work on the computer:

http://emilyakin.com/do-you-have-backup/

Using your keyboard to type symbols:

http://www.yourdictionary.com/dictionary-articles/Keyboard-Symbols-Glossary.html

random useful websites for writers

Invitations to submit to anthologies, notices about contests and writers' conferences, etc. http://www.writersrelief.com/blog/post/Anthologies-Contests.aspx

Free downloadable English dictionary and thesaurus [I have it on both my computers and wouldn't want to be without it] http://www.sequencepublishing.com/thesage.html

Jobs of yesteryear http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124251060&sc=nl&cc=nh-20100305

giving credit for sources used in your writing

If you're writing a book for publication and you quote directly from another book or other source, you should either cite your source right there or use a footnote number. If you use a footnote number, place a corresponding list of sources at the end of each chapter or at the end of your book. If you quote more than a sentence or so, you need permission from the copyright holder of the source from which you quoted. Getting this permission is often not a big deal. Just request it, telling how you want to use the quotation, and they may give it to you for nothing—or they may charge a fee. If you think the fee is too high, you can try to negotiate or just not use that particular quotation.

On the other hand, if you refer to several sources and use what you learn to write your own stuff in your own words, you don't need the footnote numbers. However, it can be a good idea to list your sources in a bibliography, often placed at the end of the book. Listing sources gives credit where credit is due, i.e. acknowledging that you found them informative. It can also lend greater credibility to what you write, i.e. suggesting that your work is based on reliable sources. The standard format for bibliographical entries is illustrated in the following invented examples:

Grainger, Thea. Massachusetts history inside out. Boston: Seabreeze Press, 1999.

Millet, Petunia. "Stone circles of the western plains." In Regina Times, May 2010.

Nesbitt, Edgar, editor. Saskatoon berries: Presbyterian pioneering stories. Calgary: Zimmer Publications, 2010.

Sommerfeld, Sonia. Salt sage. Coyote, Montana: Windham Press, 2003.

Note that in the last case, the place in Montana is small and not well known. Therefore one adds the name of the state or province as the case may be. The Chicago Manual of Style is a standard reference regarding such matters. It provides other examples covering other kinds of cases.

history of aprons

My husband's Aunt Ev Jeck is a source of lots of fascinating information including retrospectives. She just sent me this "history of aprons." I've shortened and adapted it slightly.

The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath. Because she only had a few, it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for  removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. When company came, aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. And when the weather was cold, Grandma wrapped her apron around her arms.

Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove. Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folks knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.