January Update of Promotions

Two Gun Hart has been available for pre-order for a month now and I’ve been doing all the pre-release publicity for it.  Every day it’s been going out to various locations to get attention for it.  Since we’ve been in the first of three months of promotions, I’ve been primarily focusing on places that need time to have an effect.  They include the following:

Reviews:  I went down the list of reviewers on The Indie View (http://www.theindieview.com/indie-reviewers/) and I listed each one that showed some interest in non-fiction historical.  (Oddly enough, it’s a very small number.  Most on The Indie View are interested in sci fi and fantasy.)  I then went through each one on that list and followed their submission policy, sending the book when requested.  I was not very picky, but I weeded out any that I figured wouldn’t have much of an interest.  There was one, also, that I weeded out because her instructions were written in a way that can only be described as “bitchy.”  She almost seemed to be daring someone to ask her for a review.  I’m not afraid of bad reviews, but I don’t have time for people who have a bad attitude from the outset.  I also sent the book to several select places that would be interested in this subject, such as the Lincoln Journal Star in Nebraska, and a couple places in Chicago.  One of my next steps is to send it to newspapers and other places with reviewers and hope that it can get reviewed in time.

Speaking Engagements:  I’ve contacted a number of bookstores and libraries to have talks after the book releases.  I’ll be having an event here in Burbank when the book releases in March.  I’ll then be heading to Nebraska and Iowa in April, and will have an event in Chicago in May.  I’ll then be speaking in San Francisco near the end of May, and will have a couple more events in Nebraska and one in Austin in October.  Several places are lined up, but I’ll have more specifics later on.  In trying to plan these, I’ve discovered that a lot of locations prefer to have multiple authors do readings/signings at the same time, as individual ones don’t usually bring in crowds unless they’re somehow a celebrity.  As such, I’ve been trying to emphasize the fact that I’ll be coming with the son of Richard Hart, (and nephew of Al Capone,) via Skype.

Interviews:  I’ve been following up former leads to do interviews; people who have asked me to let them know when this specific book was coming out.  I wanted to make sure they had the first opportunity to get the story before anyone else.  One of the podcasts, Outlaw Radio, will have an interview with me the weekend before it releases, (March 14.)

Goodreads giveaway:  I began a Goodreads giveaway that will end on February 1^st.  I will then get the book to those who won it so they can start talking about it.

Press release:  I did a press release through PRWeb and got a very good response.  Tens of thousands saw it, and close to 5,000 read the article.  Then a few hundred ran the story.  It said simply in the headline “Al Capone Had Long Lost Brother Who was Prohibition Officer”.  That caught a lot of people’s attention, so it was easy to do.  This is a story that is easy to sell to news stations because it is real news.  The difficult part is then converting readers of those stories into buyers of the book.  It also helped that I purchased the $250 level from PRWeb, which expanded the viewership.  The only problem is that few people seem to have purchased the book after the story ran.  I’m thinking it might have been a little too far away from the release date.  I’ll probably run one more story, this one focusing on his involvement in getting the money back from the largest bank robbery in history, closer to the release date.  This time I’ll probably just use the $100 release.

Preparing for Bookstores:  I’ve been studying what needs to happen to get books into bookstores.  The main ingredient is getting it listed with Ingram Spark.  Ingram Spark makes it sellable at bookstores because it will take returns.  This unfortunately means I have to pay $150 to register with Ingram Spark, and another $125 for an ISBN.  This ISBN can only be used for one format, so I chose to have it be hardcover.  That way the hardcover will sell at bookstores,  the paperback will be available through Amazon, and the ebook will be available through Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Smashwords, Apple, Google, etc.

Physical pre-orders:  So far, Amazon only allows ebooks to be pre-ordered.  However, I want people to be able to purchase hard copies in pre-order.  Therefore, I’m going to be having a Kickstarter campaign which is not intended to raise money for the book, but rather to have a place where people can order paperbacks and hardbacks.  Getting the orders through Ingram Spark is expensive and difficult, so the books for this campaign are being printed through Lulu.  It doesn’t come with a barcode, but books going through them are only intended for giveaway type situations.

So January comes to a close with the initial phases of beginning word of mouth being done.  Now it'll be time to start ramping up interest in the push to release.