Tallfellow Press Blog

Publicity Tip of the Week

Why not look into online book clubs? These are avid readers and pretty enthused writers. I'm sure many would be pleasantly surprised at an offer to subsidize their discussions with a delivery of free books.

Here are some links to get you started in your search:

• The Book Clubs Resource A nice overview of some General Interest and Special Interest book clubs out there on the internet.
• Book Talk A very interesting forum dedicated to the intelligent discussion of non-fiction titles.
• Blogshares' list of book club blogs A good place to track growing (or declining) readerships.
• Book-clubs.com Self-explanatory!

Good luck, and let us know if this works for you.

Publicity Tip of the Week

Hey folks!

No specific publicity tip of the week, but here are some links for you to check out. I'll put some of them in our sidebar for permanent reference.

Enjoy!

Blogs

Tenebris

Online Forums & Community

Writing.com
American Zoetrope

Publicity & Marketing

BookMarket.com
Book Promotion Newsletter
Publishing Poynters

Resources for Writers

Authorsden.com
The Writer's Life
Wordsmith Shoppe

How to Write a Tips/Trends Oriented Press Release

The best way to float your company's name and products into the media without spending any money is to put out press releases.

But there's one little problem: you don't always have a new product or big event to announce.

A possible solution: Find something interesting say. Then say it in a way that relates your information to a current trend or topic of interest. Here's an example.

I'm going to be putting out a Tip release sometime this week. I'll post it here when it's done.

How to Pitch Journalists Over the Phone

I hate nothing more than making those phone calls, and I'm sure others feel similarly. So here's a link to a good article that offers a script for the kind of things you ought to say.

Radio Works: The Hannity Show

This isn't news to anyone in book sales, but I thought I'd reiterate the point that you really do need to get on radio if at all possible.

Steve Young was on Sean Hannity's show yesterday, and now the hardcover edition of Great Failures of the Extremely Successful is hovering at around 1100 on Amazon.

That means only 1099 books sold more than we did yesterday. Most of those are probably pre-established Best Sellers.

How to Promote Your Children's Book

Check out Barbara Cohen's article here.

Google News Alerts

If you're trying to get into the media, you really need to subscribe to Google News Alerts.

Google News Alerts let you subscribe to an as-it-happens, daily, or weekly newsletter digests that send you links to news stories featuring certain keywords you select.

For instance, if -- like me -- you're trying to promote a book on grandparenting, enter keyword "grandparenting" and every news story on the net that mentions "grandparenting" is yours for the picking. National news, local news, internet-based news, major market newspapers and magazines... it's a catch-all for everything, and it's immediate.

Doing this lead me to a motherhood and pregnancy portal that just yesterday published an article about creative ways to break the news to your family that you're pregnant.

One of the article's suggestions was to buy books on grandparenting and give them as gifts. Recognizing an opportunity to mention The Grandfather Thing, I went onto the portal's web site and submitted a pitch for our book via the on-line form. The Editor-in-Chief responded immediately and agreed to run a photo and blurb about our book in a followup story on her html newsletter -- which went out today.

That's right -- less than 24-hour turnaround.

So this is what it feels like to be of-the-moment. It feels pretty good. I'm going to be signing up for more Google News Alerts ASAP.

If you're interested in trying this out, go here to get started.

Publicity Tip of the Week: Every Writing Career is a Small Business

Here's an article from Filmmakers.com that includes a great tip: treat your writing career as a small business.

Publicity, marketing, A BUSINESS PLAN, are all essential to anyone engaging in any sort of industry, be it a solo operation or a mega-conglomerate.

What I like about this article is that it refers readers to a website where they can download a business plan to help them get started.

I also like it because it underscores a message that Hal delivers in his public appearances: every film is a labor of creative love to its writer, but a small business plan to its producer and distributor.

Hal calls this "Making Passion into Product," and that's a good term for it. A certain amount of practicality is necessary for surviving in the arts. Unless you really enjoy chewing on your boots and pretending it's jerky.

And that, friends, is the Publicity Tip of the Week. Have a great weekend!

Publicity Tip of the Week: Multiple Publishers

Hit up multiple publishers. Here's more info on that, courtesy of Foreward Magazine's online edition:

"Multiple publishers are companies that publish clusters of weekly community papers. Liberally scattered throughout the United States, multiple publishers vary in size, some churning out as many as two to three dozen neighborhood weeklies. One of my best-kept secrets has been how to use multiple publishers to jump-start p.r. campaigns," relates Blanco in her book THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO BOOK PUBLICITY (Allworth Press).

Typically, a multiple publisher will print a separate, regionalized edition of the same weekly paper for each individual suburb in its territory. If you are able to secure an author interview with a multiple publisher, which Blanco assures us is a cinch now that you are an "Award-winning" author/publisher, that article is likely to appear in every edition they issue. If you live near a multiple publisher in a bigger metropolitan area, the effects could be amazing. And given the nature of the newspaper business and conglomeration-even smaller regions have great potential to create momentum for notoriety and tremendous sales. Go to the library and/or surf the net to find the multiple publisher in your area."

How to Work with Your Publisher

There's an excellent article in the Nov./Dec. issue of Poets & Writers in which the current predicament of book marketing is outlined in detail. The basic gist: even the big houses have no time or money to sell an author's book for him/her.

The bottom line is that in today's world, a writer who wants to be successful needs to switch roles once her book has been picked up for publication. Self-promotion and aggressive internet marketing are key. None of this is news to us, of course; we've been working our butts off to get our authors reviewed, interviewed, mentioned in blogs, discussed in chat rooms, etc. I'm a writer myself, and through this job I've learned a lot about what a person needs to do on the author end to help her book sell. That's why I'm opening this blog up to Q&A.

If you're a writer -- aspiring or published -- in search of tips on how to market yourself or your book, leave your question in a Comment and I'll answer it to the best of my ability in the next post.