The Trouble with Blurbs and Pitches

~Sia McKye~

I’ve only gotten serious about my writing the last couple of years. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done a lot of writing in my professional life for articles, seminars, radio, newspapers, and industry styled periodicals--that's work. While I’ve told stories all my life and written down many of them, it’s only been a recent thing for me to consider fulfilling my dream of writing novels and having them published.

I have several friends who are authors and who have been a big encouragement to me. They’ve taken an interest in my writing and try to help me improve. One asked me to give her a brief blurb about one of my stories. I’m thinking, brief? You see, me and brief, we have problems and we’re not exactly close friends. I thought, hey, I can do this. After all, I wrote several 90,000-word books, so how hard can it be? I hunkered down and got to it.

Three days and seven drafts later I gave her what I thought was brief. Ahem, need I say it was in need of a major blood transfusion when I got it back? Then she added the word “concise”, sigh…I thought two pages was concise.

She then gave me a helpful clue; think of the back cover of a book. Two days and twelve drafts later I hand her the blurb. Her response? Sia, just how big do you think a book cover is? Oh-oh. The next day and we won’t mention the draft count, I handed it back to her. Good word count, however…then came all this stuff about character goal, motivation, conflict, word choices, and yeah, it was still bleeding to death.

My friend is tough and has pushed me to be the best I can be and not to give up. She also thinks one should always practice pitches—who knows when you might meet an acquiring editor? I have a lot of respect for her. So, you know whom I went to when I was preparing a 50-word pitch for an editor. This time it only took me one day and four drafts—I had been practicing. I got it back, “close but not quite.” I growled—hey it impressed my dog. I went for a walk, did the dishes, polished my nails and sat down, determined to get this thing right.

My final draft? “Wow, you got it!” Shock, followed by the wet noodle thing, and then elation.

If an editor does more then just read the manuscript, and offers me a contract?

I’ll tell you what it feels like to win a lottery.



Sia McKye has spent over twenty years in marketing and promotion. She's written and published various articles on writing, marketing, and promotion. She's a Marketing Rep by profession and also writes fiction.

Writing Amid Chaos and Coffee Shops

My guest today is Christie Kelley, award winning Historical Romance author with Zebra Books. When Christie and I first spoke of visiting Over Coffee, she mentioned that she had written her lastest release, Every Time We Kiss, in a coffee shop. Being a writer myself I could appreciate the difficulty with writing to a deadline in a coffee shop, or anywhere public. I thought it a wonderful story to share with my readers.

Thank you, Sia for having me today!

I have a dear friend who tells me she writes so much better when she is out in public at a coffee shop or café. I have admitted that I never understood her reasons. The idea of being in public where people are always walking in and out, plus the conversations and the general distractions would make me crazy.

Or so I thought.

In the fall of 2007, my husband and I decided to do a major renovation to our 60’s split-level home. I don’t think we really knew what we were in for. I was just starting to write my first deadline book, Every Time We Kiss, and my husband worked from home. Within a month, we had no choice but to move into our 12x14 living room with our two boys. Suddenly, I had no place to write.

I started going to Atlanta Bread or Panera every morning once I had my youngest off to school. I quickly discovered one plus of writing in cafes: Free refills on coffee! I was in heaven.

The first few days were a little stressful. The mornings were usually quiet but then the lunch crowd would come in. Big groups and much more noise. I tried the library one day but found it was actually louder with all the little kids who didn’t know how to use their library voices. Determined to make this work and with a deadline I couldn’t miss, I went back to the cafes.

I discovered the joy of Internet radio and headphones. Thank goodness for the Internet! I would plug in a classical station (I can’t listen to music with words when writing) and start typing. The hardest part about writing in the cafes is writing a love scene. I kept feeling like people were trying to look over my shoulder, even though I knew they weren’t. But by getting into the café early, I could usually pick a seat where no one would really look at my screen.

The only other problem I found was one I couldn’t get away from: Friends. While I live in a big metropolitan area, the section I live in is very “small town.” Inevitably, I would run into someone I knew while I was writing. Most people didn’t know I was published so then they wanted to sit down and talk about it.

But in some ways, I think the experience made me a better writer. I can focus more when my son has a Nerf battle going on his room with two friends. Or when my oldest wants to come in and talk. I always stop typing for a 16-year-old boy who wants to talk to his mother.

I just finished book 3 in my Spinster Club series and that book I was able to write in my new office, which even has a door! Although, some days, I was tempted to pick up my laptop and head to the café. Maybe I just wanted the free refills.

So for the writers out there, where do you write? And for the readers, I noticed many people coming into the coffee shops with books, where is your preferred place to read?

***

Christie Kelley was born and raised in upstate New York. As a child, she always had a vivid imagination and the bad dreams that go along with it, or perhaps the dreams were caused by the five brothers and three sisters she lived with. After seventeen years working for financial institutions in software development, she took a leap of faith and started her first book. Seven years later, her first book, Every Night I'm Yours was bought by Zebra books and won the New Jersey Romance Writer's Golden Leaf Award for Best Historical.

Every Night I'm Yours: A WOMAN YEARNING FOR A TASTE OF THE FORBIDDEN; A MAN READY TO TEACH HER MUCH, MUCH MORE.

Every Time We Kiss: GUILT KEPT THEM APART PASSION BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER. WHEN DESIRE’S THIS SWEET, ONE TASTE WILL NEVER DO...

Christie now lives in Maryland with her husband and two future romance heroes. Come visit her on the web at www.christiekelley.com or http://www.romancebandits.blogspot.com/

Refilling the Well—Caution: Don’t fall in!

Today my guest is Magdalena Scott, author of several anthologies, and The Blank Book, her first single title Romance. Today she talks about how she recharges her creative spirit.

If you’re a writer, maybe you’ve been there. It seems as if you’ve used up all your words. You’re empty. You need to refill your "well" so you have new images to work with. Julia Cameron, in The Right to Write, encourages writers to take Artist’s Dates. Those are great—but I do Artist’s Dates solo. For a recent Saturday’s trip to the well, I had help.

More than anticipated, actually.

My husband and I drove the hour or so to Kentucky Flea Market in Louisville. The serious shoppers were pulling wheeled carts brought from home, to fill with new and exciting stuff. (One lady was pulling hers along with the wheels in the air and the metal screeching along the concrete floor. That was pleasant.)

I mostly watched people. The one purchase I considered for myself was a sign that said, “AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.” I bought my cousin’s birthday gift, then called her immediately and told her. She gave me some grief over that, since her birthday is in December. Now she'll wonder all year...

When we finished the flea market, we did some other shopping. It was a nice outing—saw interesting people and stuff, had a yummy meal.

That night, the dog and I went out into the yard so he could take care of business. I thought business was finished, and was ready to head back to the house. But he saw a rabbit, and took off. Although he only weighs about forty pounds, when he moves like that, suddenly extending the retractable leash to its full length, it's all I can do to stop him. And this time I hadn't seen the rabbit in time, so I wasn't ready. Off he (and the leash) dashed for the rabbit, and down I went into the iris bed. One knee definitely collided with a geode. (These are knobby round rocks.) The rest of me was splayed all over a four-inch PVC pipe, other geodes, and the limestone cistern cover.

Do you know that a cistern is another type of well? Yep. I was so fortunate that:

A) No bones were broken, and as I’m writing this a few days later, the soreness is almost completely gone; and

B) I didn’t fall into the well.

I wonder if the dog heard my stated plans for the day—refill the well—and was trying to help out?

He’s just that sweet.

***

Magdalena Scott lives in Southern Indiana, where she does a marginal job of being a wife, mother, and writer.

She’s in the process of reinventing herself (results: marginal), and blogs about that, and whatever else comes to mind, at http://magdalenascott.blogspot.com. (Sometimes her dog also blogs there.) Her website is http://magdalenascott.com.

Magdalena has written an anthology, Ladies of Legend: Finding Home, where four women from different backgrounds find purpose, love - and their future - in a town intent on preserving its past. She has published her first full-length novel; The Blank Book--What would you do if you could write your future? Her work is published through Resplendence Publishing and is available in paperback and e-book format available on Amazon and Fictionwise.

BEING A SUCESSFUL PUBLISHED AUTHOR—MAGIC OR WORK? (Part Two)

~Sia McKye~
As an author, nothing can be quite as exciting as receiving word you’ve sold your book and it’s going to be published. You are over the moon and flying high. Maybe even dreaming of the NYT Best Sellers List. Finally, you’re getting validation for all your work and hours of writing. Everyone you know hears about it. You’re discussing galleys, Arc covers, the artwork, blurbs, and author endorsements on your cover. Tossing terms around like Pub dates, Arc mailings, targeted print campaigns, web promotions and Reviews, library marketing, and author events. Your book finally hits Barnes & Noble and you find yourself going in just to look at a book with your name on it. You take pictures. You start being obsessed with Amazon figures on your book’s placement of the day or week. You’ve got it made, right?

Keep in mind that just having your book in print doesn't mean it will automatically sell—books don't sell themselves, even if they are listed on Amazon—or on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. As a friend of mine recently reminded me: “Over 195,000 new novels are published by publishers in the U.S. every year. Of those, 70% sell fewer than 500 copies.” A sobering thought.

Here’s another reason to aggressively promote yourself and your books and the importance in building a reader base.

Debuting authors are lucky enough to get a first print run of 10,000 for their book, depending upon the genre and your publisher’s confidence in your work (some can be as high as 25,000). You might think 10,000 is a big number until you start calculating book stores and Amazon. It’s really a small run and it’s not going to hit the best sellers list with that number. If they sell only 500 copies or less, then the publisher eats the cost of having the other 9500 shipped back to them, at full cost, and made into pulp. Publishers are not happy when this happens, but they have a contract with you, maybe for a three-book deal. Maybe they’ll recoup their losses on the second book? If they don’t will they take another three books from you? Or drop you like a hot potato? Can you see where active promotion and publicity is vital?

On the other hand, you’ve worked your butt off with promotion. You’ve built up name recognition on the Internet through Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter, and Gather, MySpace and other social networks. You’ve worked hard at blogging and building presence and attracting your consumers—readers. You started this long before your book was even sold. You continued even after your book was sold. You’ve written book reviews on books similar to yours, written anything and everything related to your books and also to you as a person. You’ve made yourself a personality, with likes, dislikes, and interests. In other words you’ve become a real person to your readers. They see you share the same interests as they do, you chat with them. You build characters in your books; surely it isn’t that hard to project yourself to your readers?

Because your potential readers like you and have gotten to know you somewhat, they do name-dropping about their “good friend, the author.”

“Oh yeah, I know Anna Campbell and she just released TEMPT THE DEVIL. Highlanders, honey, you have to look for it.”

“I just read the best suspense/thriller recently, A SPARK OF HEAVENLY FIRE, by my friend Pat Bertram. We’re talking danger and a story of ordinary people becoming extraordinary to survive. You’ve got to order it.”

“My good friend Judi Fennell wrote this cool series about sexy mermen and a kingdom under the sea. The first book is called IN OVER HER HEAD, you gotta read it!”

“Cheryl Brooks is just the nicest person evah. She writes some real sizzlers, we’re talkin’ hot and sexy. She writes The Cat Star Chronicles and just released ROGUE.

It’s that simple and any debuting or popular author’s name can be slipped in there. Why? Because you’ve worked hard to be assessable and real to your readers. Because once you knew your release date, you started building anticipation for your book. So now, your book is released and sells through at 80%, or 8000 books. Your publisher is very happy and is patting him or herself for their ability to find talented writers. They decide a second print run is good business. Because you’ve built a buzz you probably will do well on the second run. Your publisher decides for your next book (for a debuting author that can be as soon as two-three months later) to start out with a first print run of 25,000 and a much larger presence on the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble and more pressure for the staff to push your book.

By the way, to hit the NYT best sellers list? The book needs a first print run of at least 35,000 plus. Maybe Nora Roberts or Christine Feehan may get first runs in the 1-300,000 book range but look at all the time they invested in marketing and promoting themselves and their books. As a debuting author, you’re not going to get that with a first run.

This type of marketing/promotion also works for POD authors. True, you don’t have to deal with print runs and costly returns, but if your books are on the shelves in bookstores, the return cost are still a bite and one you as the author have to foot. In reality, most Print On Demand books are not on the shelves of National bookstores. You can order them from Barnes & Noble, or Borders, but due to the higher price for the average trade paperback, they aren’t always carried physically.

It’s smart business; again it’s your business, to have these books sell through. You want to be successful and to do that you need a solid reader base as much as, or perhaps even more than, a traditionally published author. Collecting dust is not the image of your books you want in the bookstore management’s eyes or your own, especially if you want them to continue to carry your books. Shelf space is not a guarantee of sales any more than having a book with your name on it is.

Stirring up publicity and marketing yourself as an author and promoting your book is, many times, the least favorite task for an author. The point is if you want to be a success as an author then it’s going to take hard work. A third of your time is spent in writing the story and the rest is spent in selling it to a publisher and then promoting the book and yourself as an author. Building that all important reader base. It’s a necessary part of business.

Writing is a business. The author is the proprietor of that business. Products have to be promoted to be a success. It’s as simple as that. Once we realize that, we put ourselves in the right mindset to be a success.
There are no magic wands, treasure maps of shortcuts, or guarantees to be a successful author. Or to being published.

Just a dream and a lot of hard work.
***
Sia McKye has spent over twenty years in marketing and promotion. She's written and published various articles on writing, marketing, and promotion. She's a Marketing Rep by profession and also writes fiction.

Setting the Mood

My guest today is Dana Fredsti, author of MURDER FOR HIRE: The Peruvian Pigeon. Dana also writes erotica under the nom de plume Inara LaVey. Her latest release is Ripping the Bodice. Dana is a fascinating woman who has worn many professional hats in her career, but today she talks about the contrast of writing before being published and what it's like to write under contract.

When I write, I like to set the stage. Kind of like a woman preparing for what she hopes will be a super romantic date. You know, candles, the right music, the perfect food, and no distractions. Creating an atmosphere conducive to a particular outcome.

When I lived in Glendale (part of Los Angeles, near Griffith Park and the L.A. Zoo), we had a fireplace in the house so on days that were chilly enough (we don't really do 'cold' in the majority of Southern California); I'd build a fire. I confess to using a lot of non-environmentally, unfriendly faux fire logs back in the day. I’d draw the curtains to shut out the noise of the neighborhood (we lived on a busy corner, complete with bus stop and the only roundabout in Glendale), light some candles, and settle in on the couch with my computer and whatever music best suited the mood of my current project. The cats would curl up the couch next to me or in front of the fireplace and I'd write for a couple of hours. It didn't always insure a productive writing session, but it generally helped keep distractions to a minimum. The fact I worked at home doing freelance transcription also helped; I could pick and choose my writing schedule.

Then I moved to San Francisco and I lost the fireplace, but I gained a four-block walk to the beach, a quiet neighborhood and several cats. Easy access for a beach stroll and the lack of shrill, obnoxious teenagers improved the ambiance for writing. The cats? Not so much. Nothing says 'distraction' like a thundering herd of felines racing through the house, using one's lap and laptop as part of the racetrack. And I can light all the candles (and matches) I want, but when you're fostering kittens during the phase of weaning them from kitten kibble to adult food...there aren't enough matches in the world to mask the gaseous warfare that ensues.

Now if I'm working on one of my hard-boiled cozy mysteries, kitty poots can inspire such lines as 'he hung around like a fart in a phone booth.' But when working on erotic romance for Ravenous...not so much inspiration as watching my muse hightail it out of the room with a promise to come back when I've bought her a gas mask.

I also gained a full time job; including a 40-minute commute each way. The necessity of paying bills not yet covered by my writing income has severely cut into my creative schedule. However, over the last year and a half, I've been published three times. One traditionally published mystery novel, and one short story and novel for Ravenous Romance, an erotic romance e-publisher, co-written a non-fiction book about what women really want in bed (sleep!) with my childhood pal Cynthia Gentry http://www.cwgentry.com/ and have a contract for seven more books with Ravenous.

I don't have time to create the perfect ambiance for my writing now; I get home from work, toss down some dinner, park in my rocking chair, and fend off felines while working for a couple of hours. Sometimes I work with one or two cats draped on the top of my arms, my hands and laptop keyboard barely visible below the furry bodies.

Weekends are better: I get up and go for a long walk on the beach (Must. Collect. More. BEACH GLASS!), come home and putter for an hour or so, and then settle in around noon to write for most, if not all of the afternoon and evening. Some days I listen to music. Other times I have a movie playing quietly in the background. Something about bad Sci-Fi original movie about giant snakes/dragons/alligators/spiders and zombie movies just fires the creative juices. I think it best not to analyze why this helps me write erotica. Some things are better left to the mystery of the muses, doncha think?

What does this all mean? I'm not entirely sure, but it seems the less time I spend trying to set the perfect mood for my writing, the more time I spend actually doing the work.

And I finally understand what people mean when they say 'writers write.' It still makes me want to smack 'em, mind you.... but at least it makes sense now!

***
Dana has been involved in the entertainment world for many years as an actress in film and theatre. She has worn the hat of actress, producer, and writer much of that time.

Dana's love of all things feline has involved her in volunteer work with both large exotic cats with Exotic Feline Breeding Facility/Feline Conservation Center, and ongoing urban feline rescue. She has been writer and associate producer of several award winning documentaries on the subject.

Dana was co-producer/writer/director for a mystery-oriented theatrical troupe based in San Diego. These experiences were the basis for her mystery novel MURDER FOR HIRE: The Peruvian Pigeon. She is at work on the second in the series, Murder for Hire: The Big Snooze. Writing as Inara LaVey, she has a short story, Succubusted, and a novel, Ripping the Bodice, and is currently working on Champagne with Ravenous Romance, http://www.ravenousromance.com/ a new e-book site focused on erotic romance.

MURDER FOR HIRE: The Peruvian Pigeon is available through all fine bookstores in the US and Uk, on-line through amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and other internet sites. Also available direct from the publisher at www.rockpublishing.com

Doggone Writing

My guest today is Lesli Richardson, the author of Trouble Comes in Threes, which was released February 20, 2009 and sold 600 copies the first week.



It’s a quarter till five in the afternoon and the insurrection has begun. Bubbles the bulldog starts “talking” to me in the whining bark that she only uses for dinnertime. To anyone else, it’s merely annoying. To me it screams, “Get your fat ass off the laptop and FEED ME, Mom!”

Of course, when Bubbles starts, that’s the signal for my other five dogs to chime in. (Yes, I have six dogs. No, I don’t want another one. Yes, it’s a lot of dogs. And yes, it’s a long story. Actually, I currently have seven dogs because I’m babysitting one for a good friend of mine.)

I wouldn’t get up from behind the computer if it wasn’t for my dogs and my husband and son. And trips to the coffee pot.

Coooofffeeeeee.

Ahh, the elixir of life.This is my day job. I’m a writer. I knew way back when that I wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was a kid. (And my twentieth high school reunion is this year, if that tells you anything.) Yes, I spent a few years writing non-fiction full-time. I let my fiction slip to the side because I didn’t have time to “play” with my writing. I never stopped honing my craft, never stopped learning, and never stopped trying to better my writing and editing skills.

I’m nobody special. I’m a wife and mom and staff to six dogs (and two birds and a cat that shall remain nameless because he’s the spawn of something evil). I have worked my patookie off to get where I am today. Am I making Stephen King money? No. (I wish!)

Am I paying my bills? Thankfully.

What frosts me is sometimes when people hear that some of my books are e-books, they say, “Oh, I thought you wrote real books.”

Um, according to my mortgage company, it’s real money.

I love what I do. I am living my dream—writing fiction full-time. I love that I can take people and drop them into an imaginary world and they willingly come along for the ride. I really love it when I get an email from a reader saying they couldn’t put my book down.

My equivalent of scoring a touchdown and getting to spike the ball is when a reader emails me and says I made them laugh or cry or that they read my book more than once and can’t wait to see what happens next if it’s a series.

I love that.

Not that my dogs could give a hoot. As long as kibble magically appears in their bowls by the appointed hour, they’re happy. Otherwise, the daily insurrection starts.

My dogs don’t care that I’m a writer. It’s humbling. No chance of me getting a swelled head when a black Lab has his nose stuck in my face while another tries to make off with my trackball. I tried to explain to them and negotiate with them that by writing, it allows me to buy them the quality homeopathic kibble that doesn’t contain chemicals, and hence maybe just once the insurrection could happen a little later, at least until this scene is written?

Bubbles and the gang couldn’t care less.

I love that I can wear my Sponge Bob pajamas all day and have a ten-foot commute. I love that I don’t have drive to get to work. I love that I can spend all day long playing with imaginary people and get paid to do it.

I love making people feel the way I feel when my characters come to life in my imagination. It’s a good feeling. Especially in economic times like these, knowing that I’m taking someone’s mind off of the “real world” for a while is really cool. I feel honored that people trust me with their time.

And I’m thankful beyond measure to readers, who are the reason I’m blessed enough to be able to do what I do. I can’t begin to express how much I appreciate that.

My dogs appreciate it too, although they might not say so in quite that way. Now please excuse me while I go rescue my MP3 player from a felonious canine.
***

Lesli Richardson is a bestselling author writing in several genres as herself and under the name Tymber Dalton. She's a snarky, stubborn native-Floridian Taurus who lives in southwest Florida with her husband, son, and a houseful of neurotic, misfit animals. She currently has over a dozen current and contracted releases, including "Doggy Style," "Love Slave for Two," "The Reluctant Dom," and "Cross Country Chaos." Available on Amazon.com. You can find her websites at: http://leslirichardson.com and http://tymberdalton.com

GETTING PUBLISHED—WHAT MAGIC WAND?

I’ve been in marketing/publicity for quite a few years. I’ve sold, promoted, and publicized various products and services over the years. To be effective one has to know the product or service being offered—which in this case is selling you as an author and your book. Knowing the business end of the product you’re selling, which in this case would be publishing.

I write quite a bit about marketing, promotion, and publicity. I work with a couple of small independent publishing companies to promote their authors and increase sales. I am also a writer. So learning about the publishing field is a must. As I learn about it, I write about it. I get comments, sometimes emails from aspiring authors who want to be published and want to be a success. I’ve had questions from published authors on suggestions I might have on marketing.

One unpublished author wrote to me: “I am an aspiring writer. However, I am having a bit of a time getting published. I know it is nearly impossible to connect with a large publishing company. So I am trying to decide if I want to do self-publishing or use a print on demand service. Any suggestions?”

I hear things like this frequently. Everyone wants a shortcut. I have no magic wand. I share what I learn. This is actually a two-part question. The first part is how to get published and the best route to accomplish that. The second part is how to be successful as an author once you are published. I thought about it and answered.

As an aspiring author trying to get published, the main thing is belief in yourself and in your ability to tell a story. The second thing is polishing your craft. That means learning and applying—what works and what doesn't. If you receive critiques or suggested changes from editors, agents, or your writing group, don’t get on your high horse and think your words are sacred and descended from God. Be willing to look at the critiques and suggestions and see if they’re valid. Third, keep an eye on what’s selling out there. What do you see on the bookshelf—especially in your genre? How does your writing compare in premise, character development, and presentation? Fourth, as a published author, building a reader base by marketing yourself and your book.

POD (Print On Demand) isn’t a shortcut, although many think it is. A shortcut denotes a quicker way to get from point A to point B and going POD isn’t going to give you that, other than you have a book out there with your name on it. POD can be a good place for some to start. You can build a readership base, see what works with plots and story lines and what doesn't. An author has more control over their books and any profits generated, which is why some choose that route. Many POD publishers also make the books available as an E-book on places like Amazon. POD has changed considerably over the years and it's not at all like the old Vanity press of years gone by when a person could self-publish anything—most of it poorly written. They went the route of self-publishing because they couldn’t get a contract from a larger publishing house and part of the reason was the story was not saleable due to the way it was written. What came first? The chicken or the egg?

Unfortunately, some POD books out there are still poorly written and there is a reason for that. If you choose to go the route of Print on Demand, be careful which POD publisher you go with. If you have to pay them to publish your book, this is not the one for you. If you find a reputable POD publisher your work is still cut out for you. This is where an author discovers that POD isn’t a shortcut. There are very few POD publishers with an editing staff to filter your writing. That’s up to you as the author. They’ll print your book at no cost to you, they will also offer you a contract—be sure to look it over carefully—and they will offer a percentage of the profits on each book sold and send those royalties to you either monthly or quarterly. Once you receive the proof book back from the printer, be sure you really proof your story well before it goes to final print. Presentation is everything and in this case, it’s up to you to make sure it looks professional and error free.

The thing to keep in mind with POD is it will require an enormous amount of work on your part to promote yourself and your writing. You don't get an advance to work with and funding for publicity and promotion is very important. You don’t have the avenues available to you in promotion and publicity that a traditional publisher can offer. You are writer, agent, and business manager, all wrapped in one person. Getting your name known is daunting but necessary. This actually needs to be started before you have your book in print. Build an interest in you as an author, and create expectation for your book. Creating that interest can seem overwhelming to a debuting author, regardless of whether you are published traditionally or POD. But, it can be done through the Internet, via blogging and social networks such as Facebook, Gather, Twitter, MySpace, and a host of others. Keep in mind; you still have to allow for time to continue writing. Producing a product to sell. That isn’t an easy juggling act as most authors also have a day job and families.

If you don’t want to go POD, and there are many who don’t, make it a point to look into some of the smaller Independent publishing companies. There are a few good opportunities to get on with one if you write genres they publish. Still, even with a small publisher or even a major publishing house, you will be required to promote yourself and generate publicity for your book—unless you’re a debuting Dan Brown—there isn’t much in the way of dollars for marketing/promotion available for debuting authors.

Regardless of the route you take to being published, caution is necessary. Make it a point to check out the company or agent you’re considering with Editors and Preditors. Consider them the Better Business Bureau for writers. There are a lot of scams out there, predators with basically a storefront, whose sole purpose is to make money off your dream and give little or nothing back. The horror stories I’ve heard would curl your hair.
Agent Query has a good list of agents and their submission requirements and they also have a good list of small independent publishers as well the big boys. It’s worth looking at and then doing some research on them. Writing isn’t just a creative endeavor. It’s a business. You are the proprietor of that business.

So, as an aspiring author, you need a strong believe in your ability to tell a good story, spend time perfecting your craft as a writer, and keep abreast with what’s currently selling in your genre on the market. Be willing to invest time in building name recognition long before you’ve been published.

But what if you’ve already sold your book? What can you do to help sell your books? I will discuss this in part two, Being a Successful Author–Magic or Work?
***

Sia McKye has spent over twenty years in marketing and promotion. She's written and published various articles on writing, marketing, and promotion. She's a Marketing Rep by profession and also writes fiction.