Twighlight Manor Press

Marketing Your Book

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 04:31:00 -0100

I found this question on LuLu Forums:

[quote="Alex Martin"]I'm 15 years old, and I need some help with ideas with marketing, even though I'm doing pretty well promoting in school.

The book is science-fiction, called 'SHADOWS: THE NARLAN WARS'.
Tons of action and suspense

-Alex Martin[/quote]

Here is my answer:

A thing that works for me and several other writers I know personally, is to print up about 10 copies of your book, and than giving a free copy to each library in your local area.

O.K. First off... be sure to include a page in the back of your book, that lists the selling price and your LuLu.com storefront URL so that anyone who reads your book in the library will know how to buy themselves and their friends a copy of it.

Now, just walk into your school library and hand your librarian a copy of your book and tell him/her that your would like to donate this book to the library's collection. Be sure to give a copy to each of your school's libraries (the elementary school's library, the middle school's library, and the high school's library), and give one to your town's local public library. These tasks are simple, you just walk in and say you'd like to dionate a book to the library collection, hand them the book and you are done.

But don't stop there.

How many towns boarder your town? One? Two? Three? More? Each one of them has a library too.

Expand... find out how many town's there are in your state county, each one of those town's has a library: print up at least one copy for each library.

Send at least 3 copies to the state's library.

Are there any local colleges? Colleges all have libraries... send out a copy to each one.

Now.... this may sound like a daunghting task, but you do not have to actually visit each of those libraries. All you have to do is get a local phone book, and look up libraries in the yellow pages. Count how many libraies are in your part of the state: that is how many books you will need to print up.

Type up a letter. One page. Keep it simple. State your name. Say that you are a local author and that enclosed is a copy of your latest book. Tell them that you are donateing this copy to their collection. Include your mailing address in case they want to contact you. (they may want to order more copies from you or they may want to set up a book signing... libraries love to get local authors to come in and talk to readers.) Print up one copy of the letter for each library. And that's it. You are done.

Now, you will need to run out to WalMart or Staples or OfficeMax or some other such place and buy a box of bubble-mailers. 12x15. They come in boxes of 10, 25, 50, ect. Buy as many as you need. Put one letter and one book in each envelope. Address one envelope per library. Now go to the post office and mail them. It's going to cost about $4 each evelope, more or less depending on the weight of your book. Be sure to ask to send it by "Media Mail" as this is the cheapest way to send books. (Otherwise you're looking at $7- $8 per book).

Anyways, you'll be mailing out 10 - 30 books free of charge, and in the end (not including the cost you paid LuLu for your books) this is going to cost you $50 - $100. However, it will get your book into the hands of 30,000 - 500,000 people depending on how big your local towns are. Most people who see a book they like in the library, try to find that book for sale so they can buy their own copy of it.

I know this seems like a lot to do up front, but remember too, that you do not have to mail them all out at once. You can do it a little bit over the course of a couple of years even. Say, mail out one book to a library each month. Doing it that way is slower, but only costs you about $4 shipping, $1 for the evelope, plus the cost of the book. At a rate of one book per month, you won't break the bank and you'll keep word of your book out for a longer period of time.

I hope this helps.

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?
*I Love Phookas!*
Got Writer's BlocK? Kill It Today!
Need A Quiet Place To Write? Find Help Here!
Need Help Creating Characters? Check This Out!
Want to Do a Good Deed? Save the Goldeneagle.

What Have You Learned from NaNoWriMo?

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:31:00 -0100

So you have finished NaNoWriMo. Maybe you reached 50,000 words, maybe you did not. Either way NaNoWriMo ends in 20 hours, 26 minutes and 3 seconds. Now it is time to look back on the month and your novel and reflect upon what you have done and where this contest has taken you. What have you learned in this challenge?

I learned the 50,000 words when you look at them all together, looks awful skimpy.

I learned that 50,000 words reads more like a short story than a novel

I learned that I reached 50,000 words and am not even half way through my story.

I learned that I need to write another 75,000 words (or more) in order to reach the end of my novel.

What Have You Learned In this Challenge?

-------------
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?
*I Love Phookas!*
Got Writer's BlocK? Kill It Today!
Need A Quiet Place To Write? Find Help Here!
Need Help Creating Characters? Check This Out!
Want to Do a Good Deed? Save the Goldeneagle.

Real Places in fictional stories. Good thing or bad?

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:51:00 -0100

Another question from NaNoWriMo forums:

[quote=purplejaz]For those of you who are using real cities
and towns as settings in your novels, will you be using actual businesses and such in your story? I'm setting my novel here, in Rapid City, South Dakota, and I wasn't sure whether I should use the actual bars and stores and restaurants or make up fake ones for the purposes of the story. To be honest, I'm not sure that it even matters, but I'd love to hear how everyone else is approaching this. Do you use them as is, or create entirely new
ones? Or do you use the businesses that exist and change their names? I suppose if you're going to go so far as to manufacture fake businesses you might as well just create an entire fictional
town, huh?

Anyways,
enough over-analyzing on my part...tell me what your
plans are!

-Brianna
----------
- Brianna

[/quote]

I write local for about 98% of all my books, articles, and stories. Very local. Most of my stories never leave the tiny 7 mile long, 3 mile wide beach-strip town I live in. And in most cases, they never even got 100 feet away from my front yard: I actualy dismissed the fact that my house was there and stuck a big manor-house in the same spot! Because I live here, real events... like Ice Storm '98 and the ravenges of Hurrinaine Bob in '91, actualy make it ito my books. I end up writing entire stories based on local events. In my stories you'll often find the OOB Pier, Palace Playland, and Bill's Pizza . . . let's not forget the beach itself!Rarly do I write a story that does not include Old Orchard's Old Orchard Beach. Odd thing is, some 400 miles to my North is Arcadia National Park and it's famous Thunder Hole, and yet, in my stories, I've got the Thunder Hole note more than 500 yards away from the OOB Pier! And the White Mountains of New Hampshire? Yeah, I moved them too.

Now to answer your question: How to handle writing about real places:

A lot depends on one question:

Are you planning to publish this story, or is it just for your eyes only?

This is a very tricky area, that the best answer for is:

when in doubt -leave it out.

Why? Because while a few places may be glad for the free publicity, just as many will be quick to slap you with a lawsuit. I know that sounds silly, but it is a sad true fact that many writers learn this the hard way, the same day the sheriff knocks on their door and tells them they must appear in court. This type of lawsuit is far more common than a copyright infringment lawsuit, and rarly goes in the author's favor.

Now you are asking: "Why would they sue me? If I owned their busines I'd love to be in that book!" ...hhhhmm... step outside of yourself and think about it for a minute: Would you? Would you REALLY like it if you were reading a book one day and suddenly found that your home was in the book, and everything from sex to murder was going on in your kitchen?

A lot depends on the nature of what you write.

For example: If you MC says to another character: "I eat at Moe's Pizza on Third St, rwice a week . . . you should go there, they make the best pizza!"Than the two go there and remanice good times over a mushroom and cheese deep dish. Foor something like this (which was actualy done: read -'Mystic Pizza') You are not going to have any problems. In this case you may even wish to give the business owner a copy of the book and ask if they'd sell copies of it off their tables/counter. In a case like this, your book is good publicity for them, and they'd love to ppromote it.

Let's consider instead this example: While eating a Moe's Pizza and remaniscing about good times, a masked robber comes in, blows Moe's brains out, steals the cash drawer, and runs out shooting five more people on the way out the door. This is what would be considered bad publicity, and well get you in a 3 to 5 year slander lawsuit, that could end up in you oweing for "emotional damages and loss of customers", which usualy is a number well over half-a-million US dollars, and nearly all judges and juries answer in the business owner's favor. In a story like this, you would want to change the name of the business to something fictional.

The worst case synario would be if you wrote about a shooting and than a shooting actually did happen. There was a case a few years back when such a thing occured and the court found the author "guilty of neglagence". (Said he should have used some common sence before useing a real place-setting to set a murder in.) He got suspened prison time and owed not only the business owner, but also the murder victim's family. (Family accused author of putting the idea in the murderer's head and the court agreed.) While these type of lawsuits are not as common, they do happen, and the author is usualy found guilty.

[quote=katiemorton]

Since it's fiction, that means there are no rules.
Run with it!

[/quote]

This is the kind of attitude that will get you in court quicker than you can blink. Remember, people are still people and most people do not like to be talked about behind their back and they hate it even more if you talk about them in the media. Remember too that every business has an owner, and anything you say about the business is taken as if you said it about the owner.

-------------
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?
*I Love Phookas!*
Got Writer's BlocK? Kill It Today!
Need A Quiet Place To Write? Find Help Here!
Need Help Creating Characters? Check This Out!
Want to Do a Good Deed? Save the Goldeneagle.

Layout Editing Underway....Watch for Falling Widgets

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:37:00 -0100

Okay, this blog's template is officialy back in "edit" mode. Expect colors, icons, and layouts to be changing at random for the next few hours (or days?)

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Got Writer's BlocK? Kill It Today!
Need A Quiet Place To Write? Find Help Here!
Need Help Creating Characters? Check This Out!
Want to Do a Good Deed? Save the Goldeneagle.

Is there anything that you canâ€™t say or do in your writing?

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:02:00 -0100

Some writers, well most writers, I think, find that they have these little quirks about what they can and can not write. Some things that are "taboo" in the writer's personal life and often slip into the author's writing, wither they realize it or not. Have you ever found this to be true of your own writings? Is there anything that you can not say or do in your own writing?

Here are a few things that I have noticed when I write:

(that's 264 names I can not use... my mom is #8 of 12 kids, and each of them averages 12 kids... the most being 15 kids... those kids in turn average 8 kids each.... and I didn't include the 4th and 5th generations, which would take the number well over a thousand... luckily for me, about half of those names come out of the Book of Mormon anyways, so I'd never think to use them as character names anyways.)

-------------
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

-------------
Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Got Writer's BlocK? Kill It Today!
Need A Quiet Place To Write? Find Help Here!
Need Help Creating Characters? Check This Out!
Want to Do a Good Deed? Save the Goldeneagle.