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.

Pre-Publicity Phase Complete

The first quarter of this year is fully dedicated to the book Two Gun Hart, which is about Al Capone’s long-lost brother, who was a Prohibition officer in Nebraska.  It releases March 20^th, and we are right now in the pre-sale stage.

There have been three stages to these promotions:

Pre-publicity – Where I get the first draft of galleys printed and sent to the people who will give it initial buzz, such as experts in the subject, listings, reviewers, and a few people who can give us blurbs to put on the book.

Pre-sale – Where the book is available for people to order so they’ll get it on the day it’s released.

Release – Where the book is available for sale, and I give talks and book signings.

The first stage was done during the last few months of 2014.  From 6-4 months before release, I gave out these early copies of the book to places that will list it, such as Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and ForeWord Reviews, as well as some places that will want to review it early.  As I mentioned earlier, it also went to people who could give it early buzz, such as experts, and people who have followings relevant to the book.  Many of these people I want to get blurbs from, but some of them I want to see it because they’ll start telling other people about it, and this was the point to start generating early buzz about it; just getting people to initially learn that the story, and soon the book, exist.  I’m also giving copies out to friends to put up reviews on Amazon.  The more that are up before the book releases, the better.  Reviews on Amazon, and on some other sites, are what sell a book more than any publicity can do.

In addition to all of this, I’ve begun spreading the word by putting up the cover on my own Facebook timeline as well as others’ groups.  There’s also an ad now running on Goodreads which gets close to 10,000 views a day.

All of this was just to get people talking.  That’s started, and now it’s time to move on to the next phase.  The book has gone onto pre-order as of Christmas Eve, so now the big work begins, getting everyone to pre-order.  The important part of this phase is to get people to make that purchase before it’s released.  The reason this is important is because all sales that happen during pre-order are considered as occurring on one day in relation to the bestseller lists, such as the ones in the New York Times and on Amazon.

#Prepublicity #Presales #Kindle #Amazon #Barnesandnoble 

Social Media and Building a Platform

I'll be honest with you, I hate dealing with social media in regards to my business.  I would far rather be writing, completing a book or beginning a new one.  After all, it's the product I want people to see, not my online persona.

But alas, I must build my platform through an online presence in order for my books to have any chance to be noticed.  Connecting through social media goes far further today than advertisements, especially in the book world.  And so I set about having an online presence on several networks.  At first it was chaotic and scattered.  I did it when I could, but in doing this I would put it off, forget to do it, or do something that was half-assed.  I often entered conversations and disappeared from them.

I had to make a plan that would be effective.  The biggest obstacle for me is the way I work.  I'm the sort of person who can sit down and concentrate on one project for hours and hours.  If I stop, getting back into it takes a huge amount of time and makes the process very inefficient.  So I finally settled on one day a week in which I would work on social media, Sunday.  I created a list and go down it.  The most important things are at the top, and the priority list drops the further you go down the list.  It's too long a list for right now.  Perhaps I'll put it up another day.  But here's the gist of it:

Blogger:  I write the blog.  Today, it's this one.  I do this first because it has to be kept up each week.  I then put the link to the blog on the connected Google + page, the Twitter feed, and a Facebook group I created called Bandwagon Books.  I also place it on my Goodreads blog, and occasionally try to put it on Reddit.

Scan social media networks:  I then go through my various social media networks to see what everyone else is talking about, and I respond to them.  It's important to not always be about yourself, so I go in and find things people are talking about and only talk about them, not about myself.  If they're interested in me, they'll come check me out.

Update projects:  I then go into each major project and upkeep the social media and websites for them.  This includes blog posts, connections I've made, and groups I've joined.

Lately, I've discovered one major flaw.  I've been doing this all under Bandwagon Books.  The reason I did this was to keep my business separate from my personal life and other projects.  I wanted to keep my own name free to post about various things.  However, it's recently become clear that people are looking up authors when they like their work.  They're not going to look up Bandwagon Books so much as they're going to look up Jeff McArthur.

Therefore, I'm going to have to post as myself.  I don't want to drop this blog nor anything associated with Bandwagon Books because I think it's a good way to make a distinction that I'm writing about publishing.  So what I'm going to do instead is do the same blog as myself and as Bandwagon Books.  That way I'm posting in both places without overworking myself.  (Spreading myself more thin is the last thing I need.)  So if you see this blog post up twice, it's because I'm putting it in both places.  Every now and then I'm sure I'll have separate things to post, but most of the time, it's up there both times so one can find me either as an independent publisher or as an author.

I'll probably be connecting with people more as myself, too, but I haven't figured that one out completely yet.  Bandwagon Books sounds more like an authority figure, and you know what it's about just by its title.  However, it's good to get my name out there.  So that might wind up being double the work.  I'll let you know how it goes.