Hold the school bus!

by Suzanne Young Cordatos

Many authors would rather write an essay than get handed a microphone to speak in front of a crowd. With a little prep work, you might enjoy it.

Word-of-mouth is still alive and kicking in this digital age.I found myself donning a Hawaiian lei at a middle school’s “Literacy Luau” after selling a couple stories to Highlights magazine. The stories have yet to be printed, but my excited kids told their teachers, who turned around with invitations to speak.

After the thrill of being a writer in someone’s eyes--besides my own--passed, panic set in. What do I do with a class full of kids? The following information comes personal experience and from sessions at conferences of SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

 1. Don’t go empty-handed. Kids like free stuff. Create bookmarks (cheap and easy to do online) with your contact info, website, blog, email, book titles if any, publisher store, etc. Even if you don’t have a book yet, you can use a photo of yourself, a few lines of poetry, photo of your story's setting, etc.

 2. Leave lectures to their teacher. As Katie Hines pointed out in her great 4RV blog entry in March about library visits, make your time interactive and fun. Forty-five minutes can drag. Mix it up. Be creative. Ask them to close their eyes and listen to music for 2-3 minutes, then make up a scene that the music inspired. Dramatic? Dangerous? Spellbinding? Hand the kids the microphone and watch them glow.

 3. Skype visits Many successful authors offer free Skype visits instead of traveling out of state. They might offer a free half hour and arrange with the teacher ahead of time to order books for the classroom so the kids are familiar with it before the visit.

 4. Ahead of time  Arrange with the teacher or school to distribute a flyer (that you copy and provide) to make kids aware of your upcoming visit. One prominent author spoke at my daughter’s school. A flyer came home about three weeks in advance with a tear-off order form, asking for the money to cover the cost of a book that the author would sign in front of your child. It was optional but a no-brainer. The school ordered many books in advance and the author gave them a bulk discount. She sold hundreds of copies in a day.

 5. What topics are students covering in school? A class I visited was in the process of editing. I brought the first page of my new novel and said, truthfully, I was having trouble with the beginning. I could use their “expert” help since it was a book for their age level. Teach kids how to give “friendly” critiques. (1) say something you liked (2) say something you would change if it was your own work (3) did it raise a question? The kids did a fantastic job and offered great solutions to a real problem.

 6. Use math. Multiply your presentation opportunities. If you arrange for a school visit, call area schools, libraries and bookstores to add stops to your itinerary. Ask the classroom teacher who invited you for names of other teachers, nearby school districts, etc. who might be interested in a visit.

 7. Offer extra value.  Teens might be curious about the journey to publication. Younger readers might like a craft, song, or snack that goes with your story. My dragon character, Willard, loves pepper jelly. I could offer a bowl of pretzel sticks that kids can dip in a jar of pepper jelly—if they’re brave like Willard. Visit Suzanne's blog Ideas Tingle and Bite at www.suzannecordatos.blogspot.com

Plan a Book Tour: Be a Gracious Guest and Effective Promoter

Plan a Book Tour: Be a Gracious Guest and Effective Promoter
By Karen Cioffi

You researched and planned a unique and engaging book tour. Your hosts are booked, the schedules are prepared, and you chose on-the-mark prizes to give to random winners who will take the time to comment on the tour stops.

But, whether you created and are managing your own book tour, or you’ve hired a publicist or book touring service, there are a few additional touring tips you should consider in order to be a gracious guest and effective promoter:


•    Have all your promotional material readily available, including pictures of you and your book cover, reviews, a synopsis, and excerpts. The same goes for any articles you’re providing. Make your guest spot as easy for the host as possible; this means emailing your host any content agreed upon in a timely manner. Give your host plenty of time to prepare his/her post for you. Many bloggers like to pre-post their posts; having the content early will be helpful.

•    Be sure to make note of each site you will be on and the date you’ll be featured. I have a daily calendar book that I enter all important information into. I also got a monthly desk calendar that I leaned against the wall next to my computer – the bigger the better. But, you can use any form of calendar or schedule, as long as it will work for you. 

•    Prepare and publish a press release that lists all the information for your tour. You will need to post your tour schedule on your sites, and ask your hosts if they would post it on their sites also. I took advantage of Donna McDine’s Author PR Services (http://authorprservices.com). Donna did a great job; the release was professional and effective. I highly recommend her services.

•    Promote each tour stop on your social networks.

•    It’d also be a good idea to send a reminder to each host a couple of days before his/her day. It may happen that one or two hosts will forget and that reminder will be very helpful in keeping your tour on track.

•    The day of each guest spot, be sure to visit the site throughout the day to answer any questions from visitors who take the time to comment, and thank them for stopping by. It’s important to also thank each of your hosts in the comments area. You should also send each host a thank you email, after the spot.

•    In addition to thanking each host (during and after the tour), let them know that you would be happy to reciprocate.

•    Finally, go back to each tour stop daily to see if there are any additional comments. If there are, respond to them and add the visitors’ names to the list you should be using for the contest.

Note: Anticipate things coming up and the tour possibly going off track here and there. While each of your hosts has every intention of following through, sometimes things happen. Just go with the flow, shrug or laugh it off.

Winding it Up

After your tour, send an email to the prize winners to let them know they won and include which prize they won. You should also create a post naming the winners. Finally, be sure to follow through and send the winners their prizes.

For a week-by-week, step-by-step, comprehensive article about a book tour, you can check out Mayra Calvani’s article: “Demystifying Virtual Book Tours” (http://mayrassecretbookcase.blogspot.com/2008/04/demystifying-virtual-book-tours-by.html).

~~~~~~~
Learn about writing and marketing with Karen Cioffi at http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com. Sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World, and get TWO free site-related e-books for subscribing, and ONE more just for stopping by.

Plan a Book Tour: Attract Followers

Plan a Book Tour: Attract Followers
By Karen Cioffi

Your book will be released soon and you decided to have a virtual booktour, and you decided to do it yourself. You did some research and took the necessary steps to garner hosts for the tour stops. And, each host knows what will be presented on his site: an interview, or a review, or an informational article.

You also created a Word doc or spreadsheet with the schedule and details.

Now you want to take it up a notch to ensure readers will be motivated to follow your booktour, actually comment, and hopefully buy your book.

Offer Book Tour Prizes

While there are some readers who are interested in learning about new books, for the majority of readers you will want to offer an ‘ethical bribe’ to follow along on your booktour.

An ‘ethical bribe’ is a freebie, gift, or prize that you will offer to entice readers to follow along, and just as important, to comment, and most important, to buy your book.

There are a number of prizes you can use: books (not the one you are promoting though, the chance of winning a book will discourage readers from buying the book), gift cards (to Amazon, Target, etc), informational e-books, or items related to your story. If your book is about a child wanting to learn how to fly, you might have a toy plane or puzzle as a prize.

For my middle-grade virtual booktour I choose two $10 Amazon gift cards – they can be purchased and emailed directly to the winners. I also offered three copies of a 100+ page ‘writing for children’ e-book, and four copies of another e-book. So, you can see the gift can be of value, but doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive.

It’s also advisable to make your prizes enticing to the market and reader you’re aiming at. If you’re promoting a children’s book, your marketing efforts should be aimed at parents, grandparents, teachers, school librarians, etc. So, offering gifts that kids will appreciate or are helpful to the potential purchaser in some way will be beneficial.

Just remember that for merchandise (physical gifts) you will need to mail them to the winners. This will be an added expense. Gift cards on the other hand can be purchased and emailed directly to the winners. So, take this into consideration when deciding on the prizes.

Spread the Word About Your Book Tour Prizes

Be sure to add information about the prizes in your promotional content, your tour schedule, and in your press release. Explain that the winners will be chosen randomly and will be emailed within a week or two after the tour ends.

Usually, the prizes are given randomly at the end of the tour to those who comment on the tour stops. Create a Word doc or spreadsheet to keep track of their names and the stop they commented on. This will help you later when you have to pick the winners and contact them.

You can also choose to have prizes awarded at certain intervals throughout the tour, or even on a daily basis. It’s your tour, your rules.

Make Your Book Tour Unique

Author Kathy Stemke planned an amazing booktour. She promoted her newly released children’s picture book, Sh Sh Sh Let the Baby Sleep in June of 2011 and added interesting and fun contests with ‘add your input’ questions that amused and engaged the visitor/reader.

This marketing strategy was successful in bringing traffic to the tour stops and having a good number of comments, not only on the tour stop sites, but on the social media and group sites she promoted them to.

So, check out other tours, read articles about virtual booktours . . . do your research. Be sure to think it through and plan it out carefully, so you too can have a unique and engaging tour.

~~~~~
Learn about writing and marketing with Karen Cioffi at http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com. Sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World, and get TWO free site-related e-books for subscribing, and ONE more just for stopping by.

Plan a Virtual Book Tour: The First Steps

 by Karen Coiffi  


You’ve taken the initial steps to begin your book marketing journey. The first rung on your marketing ladder is to create a quality product, in the case of an author, that would be a book. You need to create an engaging story, be part of a critique group, make sure the manuscript gets edited/proofread, and have a knock-out cover.

Creating the book might be considered Research and Development under the Marketing umbrella, and the foundation of a marketing strategy.

The second step or rung on the marketing ladder is the actual book promotion: creating a platform and brand for you and your book. This is accomplished through visibility which includes: creating a website, adding content to your blog on a regular basis, doing article marketing on a regular basis, and garnering guest blog spots on quality sites, among other strategies.

Once all the above is underway and your book is going to be available for sale, even if it’s for presale, now is the time to go on a virtual book tour.

Plan a Book Tour
A virtual book tour can be an effective promotional strategy, and you can initiate one on your own, or pay a publicist or book promotion marketer (tour service) to do it for you. Obviously, depending on your financial situation, you will need to decide which will work for you.

The advantages of hiring either a publicist or tour service is their wider audience reach. If the service is a quality one, it will have quality sites for featuring you and your book. When choosing a publicist or tour service find out exactly what you’ll be getting for your money. You might also ask around for recommendations.

I know of three reputable book tour promotion services:

The World of Ink Author/Book Tours
Pump Up Your Book Online Book Publicity
Author Marketing Experts

You can check them out or do a search for “book promotion,” or “virtual book tour.”

On the other hand, if you’re intent on initiating and managing your own tour you will need to post messages in all your social networks asking for bloggers to participate. If you are active in your groups, and have been paying-it-forward, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Try to aim for bloggers who have followers in your target market. While most writers belong to writing groups, try to expand your reach to groups and bloggers who actually have readers who will be interested in your book.

For example if your book is targeted at the middle grade crowd or children who read chapter books, you might look for bloggers who are involved in parenting groups, grandparent groups, teacher groups, etc.

You should begin this process at least a month or two (two is better) before you want to launch your book tour. It may take a while to get all the hosts on board, decide who will feature what, have reviews prepared, answer interview questions, prepare a press release, and so on. Give yourself enough time so you’re not rushing.

Once the Book Tour Hosts are Booked

For the tour of my children’s middle-grade fantasy book Walking Through Walls, as each blogger accepted my request for hosts, I created a list of their names, the dates I’d be on their sites, and what would be presented on each host’s site: a book review, an interview, an article (with the title), or a combination.

A note here: Offer a variety of content during your book tour. While your initial thought might be to promote, promote, promote, readers will quickly get tired of reading review after review, or umpteen interviews. Offer writing and marketing articles in addition to the reviews and interviews, and alternate their postings. Try to keep the tour fresh.

For the interviews and articles, you can add your promo at the end of the content. You might include a brief review, synopsis, even a favorable email a reviewer sent you (just be sure you get the person’s permission first).

~~~~~~~~~~
Karen Cioffi is an author, ghostwriter, and freelance writer. For more on writing and marketing visit http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com and sign up for her FREE newsletter, A Writer’s World. You’ll get TWO free e-books on writing and marketing in the process.