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One of the promo materials I created for STAMPEDE! POEMS TO CELEBRATE THE WILD SIDE OF SCHOOL was a book trailer. (See the Bubble Stampede index to find all the posts Fiona Bayrock and I did about book trailers.) Way back when, my publicist at Clarion mentioned that they had had a meeting about online marketing and were planning to start submitting stuff like this to Amazon, which was going to start posting auxilliary material on book pages. I sent her the file and kept my fingers crossed. Nothing happened. (Not like they had any other books to promote at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, right?)

Then in early August, I came across a book trailer video on some other book's book page, and I thought how cool it was. So I sent a brief email to my publicist asking if there was anything I could do to help get my video online. I acknowledged that all her energy was likely now focused on the fall list and beyond and gave her a link to the sample I had seen.

She quickly replied that they were trying to streamline the way their company submits materials to Amazon, and that she'd try to make it happen within the week. It took a couple of weeks and some tweaking (by my husband) of the video, including the file format, the resolution, and the removal of the url of the third party site where I created the video. But HMH/Clarion submitted the video to Amazon, who approved the material, and now my book trailer is live on STAMPEDE's Amazon book page. Cool!

If you've created any kind of multimedia teaser for your book, ask your publisher about submitting it to Amazon. Apparently, the material has to come from a publisher, not the individual author. Anyway, it's just one more way to catch the eye of someone who's browsing books, and it's one more place to put the book trailer that you create but wonder if anyone's going to see!

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So your book is coming out in less than a year. Hurray! What do you do now?

A. Panic!
B. Nothing. You know your publisher will make your book a bestseller.
C. Get organized and get busy!

If you picked A, I hope you finish the Panic stage soon and move to something more productive:>)  If you picked B, then (sorry to be rude), you're misinformed about how the publishing industry works! If you picked C, you're on the right track. And here's something to help.

Over at Bubble Stampede, Fiona Bayrock and I shared our ideas, plans, and techniques for marketing our first trade books, both of which came out this spring. And now Fiona has created a nifty Bubble Stampede index to make it easy to find exactly what you're looking for. Check it out!

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Bubble Stampede is drawing to a close! Today, Fiona Bayrock and I sum up our book promotion efforts over the past 6 months. What worked? What didn't? And what surprises did we have along the way? Check it out at today's Bubble Stampede.

I'm off today for another week of school visits in western/southwestern Minnesota. I'll blog if I can, but I'm not sure I'll find Wifi everywhere. Once I'm back home, I'll blog about my two weeks' visits!

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Fiona Bayrock and I had very different book launches over the past few weeks. Come see what we learned (and maybe share what you already know) at today's Bubble Stampede.

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We've talked about traditional book launches, but what fi the thought of being the star of a party makes you feel ill? Check out our post on online book launches at today's Bubble Stampede!

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How can you try to catch an editor's eye in hopes of some press coverage? Tune in to today's Bubble Stampede to see what Fiona and I are trying.

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All this promotion stuff is new to Fiona and me. Today we're updating how we've done on our book trailers and blog tours projects. The results are mixed. Stop by Bubble Stampede  to share, commiserate, and cheer.

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Hiding behind online promotion is something I tend to do, since it's less threatening than talking to real live people. So this week's Bubble Stampede is a good nudge for me, as we chat about some basic offline promotional efforts. Come join the conversation!

 

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We have mixed emotions about Amazon.com, the behemoth online bookseller. But Fiona and I present some free ways to use it to market your books at Bubble Stampede. Come join the conversation!

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Is it possible to work too hard at promoting yourself? Yes! Don't be one of THESE people, the ones we talk about at Bubble Stampede today.

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What can you hand out to grown-ups and kids to help them remember your book?  Drop by Bubble Stampede, where Fiona Bayrock and I are talking about it!

 

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• Dec. 8th, 2008 at 5:45 AM

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Drop by Bubble Stampede, where Fiona Bayrock and I are updating you on our triumphs and travails in the social networking scene.

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Hi! Now that you've come down from your Halloween sugar rush, maybe all those great, outgoing marketing plans aren't sounding like quite as much...fun. Can pairing up with another writer help? Pop in at Bubble Stampede and share your thoughts!

P.S. The time change is only an hour! Why was I awake two hours early at 3:30?

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Hi! It's Marketing Monday again, and Fiona and I are talking about who we need to market to. Because just marketing to other writers isn't really enough--yikes! Pop in at Bubble Stampede and share your thoughts!

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Hi! It's Marketing Monday again, and Fiona and I are talking about social networking this week. If you have experiences you're willing to share, come on over! And if you're fairly clueless about it (as we are)...well, come on over! Pop in at Bubble Stampede and share your thoughts!

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Hi there! It's Marketing Monday again, and after a busy week talking microsites, Fiona and I are keeping it simple this week! Pop on over to Bubble Stampede for a list of links about promoting your children's book.

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Come on over to Bubble Stampede for a discussion of microsites and whether or not they make sense as a book-specific marketing tool!

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MARKETING MONDAYS I am not a marketing/promotion type person. If I had to sell things for a living, I would surely be sleeping under an overpass somewhere. But, as we're all too aware, making a career as a writer requires you to support your work by promoting it. And with my first trade poetry picture book collection collection coming out from Clarion next spring (STAMPEDE: POEMS ABOUT THE WILD SIDE OF SCHOOL), it's time for me to get busy. So, on some Mondays, I'll be posting Marketing Monday posts, where I share what I'm doing and learning about marketing my forthcoming book.

Thank you for stopping by...and on a holiday, too! But, really, I got you here to send you there. Where's there? Well, Bubble Stampede, of course! What the heck is Bubble Stampede? You'll have to click on the link to find out.

See ya there! And don't get trampled on the way. 

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MARKETING MONDAYS I am not a marketing/promotion type person. If I had to sell things for a living, I would surely be sleeping under an overpass somewhere. But, as we're all too aware, making a career as a writer requires you to support your work by promoting it. And with my first trade poetry picture book collection collection coming out from Clarion next spring (STAMPEDE: POEMS ABOUT THE WILD SIDE OF SCHOOL), it's time for me to get busy. So, on some Mondays, I'll be posting Marketing Monday posts, where I share what I'm doing and learning about marketing my forthcoming book.

First, a quick update on my most recent goals:

Read through my email inbox folder titled: Marketing - Future Tips. - Did this...kind of. I'm about halfway through this task. Most of the emails are actually long marketing newsletters I saved. So now I have to skim through each newsletter and figure out what, if anything, applies to something I might do for Stampede and copy and paste that into a Word doc.

Contact the illustrator of the book (Steven Salerno). - Check! He's under deadline but said he'll get back to me soon.

Talk with my agent and editor/publicity person about which trade show should be my top priority in 2008. - Check. I haven't actually talked with my editor yet, but after hearing from some other writers and talking with my agent, my tentative plan is to try to attend IRA (here in Minneapolis) and ALA (in Chicago). Will need to do more planning and information-gathering on both of those, but at least I've narrowed it down some.

But now for my big news--Fiona Bayrock, fabulous nonfiction author and all-around cool person, and I are going to be teaming up on something so top secret I can't announce it yet! But watch this spot for more news soon! 

And that's my main goal for this coming week--work on our joint project so that we can debut it next week (fingers crossed).

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