Author: Allie P.

Marketing and Outreach – Now what

by Allie P., posted in General Tips and Tricks, Writing and Publishing Tips

Patience has never been my virtue.

Perhaps this is one of the reason I have never followed my husband in his marathon training – I have a difficult time pacing myself. Ok – so my lack of patience is probably the least of my reasons for not running marathons with him, I just can’t get my head around voluntarily running that far when your life didn’t depend upon it.

Since publishing, I’ve launched www.anuncertainfaith.com, been active on goodreads, created a Facebook page, a google+ page, have begun networking in earnest, contacted reviewers, and have even launched a book giveaway contest on goodreads, which you also enter from my events page from this blog. I’ve thrown myself completely into the promotion, promotion, promotion mindset, but will all my efforts be enough?

Unfortunately I won’t find out for sure until the end of the quarter when the retail numbers begin to roll in – a wait that is completely agonizing. I am now having to research ways to de-stress in addition to everything else.

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Promoting myself as an author for the first time

by Allie P., posted in Life as I know it

I was recently invited to participate in my city’s Chamber of Commerce networking group for Working Mom’s. This is a normally a great group because when all else fails you can ask about a person’s children whenever you are in need of an icebreaker conversational starter and I’ve very much enjoyed that my hometown offers this program. I’ve been a participant for years; however this was the first time I was going not in support of my day job, but as an author.

I had had the brilliant idea that I would donate a couple of copies to be raffled off because my novel does deal with the stresses of being a working mom then nearly had a panic attack waiting for my additional copies to show on my doorstep from my publisher. These copies did show up the evening before the event, but it was a nail biter.

It was finally time for the big event. I arrive, copies in hand, and am invited to drop my business card into a bowl for other giveaways. Suddenly I was faced with a dilemma – what business card do I put in the bowl? Obviously I want to sell my book, but I have years of equity in my other professional brand. Would my announcement of my new endeavor help or hinder?

In the end, I decided to promote both of my jobs. These were working moms after all – very used to performing at least two jobs – of course they would understand, and in fact it gave them an opportunity to tell me about their own side projects and/or bucket list goals. For example, I met one woman who having just left a position within operations of a major computer company was now starting her own business selling baby blankets with built in cushioning, and learned of an IT manager who actually has published three books herself.

Hopefully I gained a few sales, but if nothing else, at least I gained more experience.

It does make me wonder how other writers, especially those who have day jobs in vastly different fields than writing, felt after their first public outing.

If this describes you, I would love to hear your stories.

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To sequel or not to sequel?

by Allie P., posted in Life as I know it

My debut novel is approximately 30 days old this week, and like any new baby, is still keeping me up at night. My gut tells me that by this point my friends and family who were thinking about purchasing it probably already have, and so any sales from this point on would be from strangers. This is a prospect that both excites and alarms me.

I unfortunately have a taste for writing now, but do I truly have the skills necessary to convert it from hobby to business? Only time will tell for sure, but until history decides to weigh in I am faced with some difficult questions:

Should I begin work on a new project knowing that energy spent on that project will take away from energy being spent on promoting my first book? Another blogger, Chris Ward wrote about his views on writing a sequel, and I definitely am taking his experience into consideration.

If so, though I never identifed my inital work as being part of a series in order to give would be readers a reason to leave it on the shelf, should I focus on creating a sequel to the first book not knowing mass market acceptance, or should there even be a sequel (have I not already put my protagonist through enough) or should focus on bringing forth one of the other ideas currently co-habitating my brain?

Can I use a life line to phone a friend?

Supporting other indie authors!

by Allie P., posted in Indie book promotion

The Zombie AxiomGoodreads has a number of groups which are free to join, and I happened upon a group called Pure Indie Promotion. The rules are simple: A group member’s work is selected for promotion, then all group members do what they can to help improve the visibility of this work in the hopes that their work might be selected next. I am more than happy to do my part as it is very difficult to get noticed when there are so many other books out there with larger marketing budgets than available to most indie authors.

This week the group is featuring a book called The Zombie Axiom by David Monette (http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Axiom-Time-Dead-ebook/dp/B00FJDF2DS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1381484812). Halloween might be over, but I still enjoy the occasional zombie fix (unfortunately I missed The Walking Dead this week) and this book has alien’s to boot! I am adding this book to my rapidly expanding “to read” shelf, and may review it at a later date.

Did you know that there is a real risk of a zombie epidemic rooted in science? It seems that there is a bacteria that infects and takes over the bodily functions of a caterpillar, causing them to climb high up into the tree top where their bodies dissolve until they ultimately plummet back down to the ground in a pile of goo, repeating the process by infecting healthy hosts. For the other comic book nerds out there, think of Venon from Spiderman. You get the idea.

Could you have gone your entire life without knowing this? Probably.

Should we be worried that the bacteria could evolve and impact more developed organisms? Maybe.

Want to think about something else now? Should you pick up a book by an indie author to read? Definitely.

If you are an indie author, and if you help promote my book, I’ll help promote yours.

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Gaining Reviews – The Quest Continues

by Allie P., posted in General Tips and Tricks, Writing and Publishing Tips

One of the tips sent to me on soliciting reviews when you are self publishing was to join the author program with www.goodreads.com. Up until very recently I was unaware of this site, but I am happy that other bloggers were helpful enough to suggest it as an option. I have joined the groups and have already gained some traction from interested parties. I have heard that some authors view other writers as the competition, and I have to admit that until I had a project ready to send to an editor I was very nervous about sharing it – worried that I would be discouraged by the success of others. Obviously in storefronts we are competing for limited shelf space, but I am glad to see that there is a huge community out there willing to help offer advice for us newbies.

I am looking forward to a future where I too might be able to help another struggling new author. If the statistics are anything to trust, there should be a fair number of us out there.

 

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