What Have I Done?

My husband has participated in a few for his online business, so I asked him about them. He said he has paid long-distance fees for the calls before. Do you have a cell phone with plenty of minutes? Use that and it might save you the fee.

He also warns that the eventual goal of most of these is to sell you something that could be pricey, so be on your toes.

He gives away some free useful information and charges if you want more. If you've published a book it's probably worth the cost of a long distance call.

You might be able to phone in using Skype if you really don't want to pay a penny. (Someone who knows more about Skype can help you with that.)

I have the free version of Publishers Lunch and I see those come-ons quite frequently. Don't really have the cash to pay for an extended phone call. I see those ads in the AW newsletter at times, too. I just can't tell you about the experience of such a seminar.

But I had my own ideas on how I would assist my publisher. I had to get permission first. So....

Thus far I have sent press releases to 540 major daily newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. In the email body of the letter I invite the editor/reviewer to call or email my publisher for a free review copy of my book. Then I give a brief description of it to entice interest (two sentences), followed by my best review on Amazon, along with the contact information. So if any staff are relunctant to open an attachment, which most of them are, I have it covered in the body of the email.

My attachment has a brief synopsis, the book's cover, my human interest biography, and my creds--along with the urls of my website, publisher's site, and my agent. So if they're brave, and their system denotes no virus, they'll go ahead and open the attachement.

I personalize each invitation by getting the name of the respective editor that I'm interested in contacting--book reviewer--features--lifestyle--arts & entertainment, for the most part. If I can't find the right contact person, I intro with "Dear Editor", which I don't like to do. I try to put in a personal line specific to that editor, commenting on a recent article they've done, compliment them on their layout, or make reference to a story I enjoyed by one of their staff. This is hellacious and requires a tremendous amount of keystrokes per press release (also reading). It's taken me 18 days, six hours a day, just to get this far, but I've saturated all of Canada, New York, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, and I'm now half way through Illinois. (I start with the most populace states, and those that I feel are more liberal, since my book runs with those colors).

About 10% of all the dailies require you to fill out a form, supplying your name, address, phone number, and message. My message is a cut and paste of my email content, only. Again, this requires time, and these messages usually go in the general newsroom bin. But...I'll address it to the appropriet editor in that message so it's at least routed properly.

I word the email in such a manner that the editor/reviewer really has no reason to contact me back. However my response so far has generated interest (letters to me) from nine majors, including the Mid West Book Review. I know that my publisher has even received a massive contact experience, and they haven't told me who has gotten a hold of them on their end (they are too busy in the mailing department keeping up with the requests--I'm starting to run them ragged).

(In this fashion, there is no need to send out review copies cold, with the hopes of pulling a review. This technique requires the editor/reviewer to make an effort to solicite the book).

All I know is that it has worked a little bit better than I thought. It's that 1--5% rule of advertising--you just don't know WHO is going to respond--so you hammer all of them. In my case, state by friggin' state.

This is not spam. Each letter is different and requires a certain amount of creative diversity. That's important. Although the energy expended for such a campaign is tedious, boring and hell on the system, I feel that it is working and I'm learning a lot about what promps or piques an editor's attention. Canada, for some reason or another, has been the biggest supporter and responder. This is probably due to the fact that my publisher is Canadian. And my home state seemed to be more receptive, naturally.

Didn't mean to jack this thread. But I didn't know where else to explain this experience.

I also can't explain, or do I know the reason, why I have taken over the #1 bestseller position on Amazon out of my own publisher's 41 titles. I tend to think that those author's books are just doing more poorly than mine, and that I am not selling tons of books. But I sure would like to know if this campaign had ANYTHING to do with it. What a neat case study if I could lay down the facts, figures and percentages!

Thanks for your time. And good luck on the promotion road. I'll create a new thread when I'm finished with this and report on the findings.

Tri

There's a downside, Pop. There's a downside. It chews into my WIP BAD. It chews into my agent's requests for rewrites. Bad. I do six hours of on-line marketing, and six hours of WIP time. By the time I'm finished, I'm cross-eyed, cross, and in search of the aspirin bottle. It's not for everyone. It's a first launch book. I doubt that I will ever duplicate this feat. Ever. From 1988 to 1991 I sent out 350 press kits (hard mail) covering both of my non-fiction books. It was costly, those days before the internet. At the end of it all, I generated 1,100 additional sales. Yeah, I made my money back for the trouble, but not a whopping amount. Of course, this is an internet campaign I'm on right now, strictly speaking, so it costs me time--which translates to what? Eh, money in writing time, I guess.

Besides that...in all honesty, my publisher is kind of a slug when it comes to promotion. So what's left? Little ole me, that's who.

Another thing I noticed with doing this...I've received four letters which explained their regret of not being able to request the book (for various reasons), but three of them told me that they would pass the word on to friends/readers. Now that is a little jewel of networking I didn't expect at all.

Tri

Sounds great. I'm trying to pull as many general feature interviews as I can. Had about three so far--no review copies had to be sent for them. I think I'm listed on no less than 12 free display sites, and find it very hard to interact on their boards and network. It takes up so much time to do so.

Tri

Virtually, you have to dabble in just about everything to see what works best for you. It's the most unexpected sources that end up giving you some of the best results.

Selling 15,000 copies before you start to earn royalties? Wow. What happened there? Sounds like your hams-strung before you get out of the gate. Is that up-front promotion dollars that have been invested?

Tri

I have listened in on a few of these types of calls, generated by Steve Harrison. I have lots of "free" minutes saved up on my cell phone, which also has a speaker phone button on it. So, I basically cook dinner or clean up dinner, with a notepad nearby while I listen in. About 10% of the information is useful to me, since I already have a background in marketing. Some of the information is trite but I've definitely gotten a few gems out of it. I keep calling in.

I cannot afford Mr. Harrison's $5,000 fee for his publicity summit in New York. It sounds worthwhile because I know that meeting someone face-to-face is better than an email. However, he claims that this is a low price to make sure that all kinds of people can attend, not just rich folks. Excuse me? How many writers or average Americans have five grand sitting in the bank. Not me. Maybe I'm divulging too much personal information but I was so disappointed to hear the price because I knew I couldn't go.

Absolute Write's Jenna Glatzer has a testimonial on the website of the folks who are hyping the "38 days to #1 on Amazon" gig. Using their methods, she went to #1 with one of her books. Financially this might not be a windfall but if you are a career writer I understand the importance. It seems as though you do it to catapult yourself to the top to add credibility to your name. A worthwhile investment for sure, but I'm going to stick with my own style of grassroots marketing and may pay the fee for these types of programs if I can't pull it off myself.

What I find slightly misleading about the "38 days" gig is that authors claim to have sold 5,000 books in one day, with $100,000 in sales (let's say $20 a book). The mentoring package - offered at the end of the call, I'm sure - only cost them $2,900. I am a business person who happens to be writing a book. I have an agent and a publisher. By my estimates, I'll make about a buck a book. So...my piece of the action is more like $5,000 on 5,000 books. Subtract the $2,900 and I've made $2,100. Not bad but not exactly stellar. Could my $2,100 have been better spent elsewhere? Of course this is different for self-published authors.

I don't know. I want to believe the hype but my bank account is holding me back. If I had the extra money I might give it a try. For now, I'll use my own bag of tricks. For authors who are clueless about marketing, can afford to write a big check and take the risk, or don't have the time to do their own leg work - it sounds like a good deal.

Any other thoughts?

kimmer

Okay, I gotcha. Now that makes sense. Man, that was a nice advance. I got only a couple grand apiece for my NF books.

Tri