• Rose Valenta is giving away a paperback copy of her humor book, Sitting on Cold Porcelain.
• Allan Leverone is giving away an e-copy of his thriller, Final Vector, and 6 e-copies of Postcards from the Apocalypse.
• Frank Edwards is giving away a paperback copy of his medical thriller, Final Mercy and a paperback copy of his poetry and short story book, It’ll Ease the Pain.
• Pamela Samuels Young will be giving away a paperback copy of her legal thriller, Murder on the Down Low, and a copy of her audio CD, How to Write a Novel Despite Your Day Job.
• Sheila Hendrix will be giving away both a paperback copy and e-book copy of her YA paranormal, The Betrayal.
• Cynthia Kocialski will be giving away a paperback copy of her startup business book, Startup from the Ground Up.
• C.W. Gortner will be giving away a paperback copy of his historical mystery, The Tudor Secret.
• Vincent Zandri will be giving away 2 autographed copies of his thriller, Moonlight Falls & 2 autographed copies of his thriller, The Remains!
• Jeanne C. Davis will be giving away a paperback copy of her psychological mystery, Sheetrock Angel!
• Frank Scully will be giving away an e-copy of his mystery novel, Resurrection Garden!
• Pump Up Your Book will be giving away a $25 Amazon gift certificate!!!!

To find out the details, visit the Pump Up Your Book Promotion Facebook Party page here!

A good working relationship between an author and his publicist needs to be established right up front – - since so much emotional energy is tied up in an author’s work, which needs to be well communicated to the media representative. The laborious perseverance of a professional book  publicist blossoms when it is combined with an artful balance of patience and continued with daily input from the book’s creator.

I have developed a handful of useful tips the author needs to always bear in mind when decide to engage the services of a professional publicist. The publicist should know the media well and can map out a plan in writing, with a free phone consultation before the author even decides to move forward. If followed, these tips will surely increase the likelihood of a successful marketing
campaign that will both boost book sales and also expand the awareness and perception of the author and his or her works.

• Input and planning: The author and the publicist need to have a clear plan of attack mapped out in advance before embarking on their PR journey together. Authors need to be mindful to keep their publicist informed of any ideas they too have to publicize their book since it’s their creation and no one is closer to it then they are. Authors need to give the plan time to fulfill itself and work; and never, ever should an author be “pushy” with their publicist who understands and knows the media much better than his client does. Pushiness and impatience can derail a good plan. Authors need to make sure their book publicist keeps them informed regularly of what is being done as their carefully crafted plan on paper plays itself out. An author can certainly suggest media the publicist can contact on their behalf too, especially if, for instance, a CNN or Fox News story might be relevant to the author’s book’s theme or message. A well played out and thoughtful, strategic campaign is one that will up the chances for success with media outreach and book sales too.

• The creative publicist: A creative, worthwhile professional publicist is one who develops both traditional and non-traditional pathways to publicize a book. Sometimes authors may not agree to all that is suggested by the publicist, but they should always listen and, then, turn an idea down if its one they feel they do not want as part of their PR strategy. Ideas lead to other ideas…it is a refining process and the publicist always needs to come up with fresh, provocative ways to get their client’s book beyond the sharp competition. A good book publicist will – - seizing upon a media opportunity they see – - often come up with “on-the-spot” ideas beyond the written plan. This is demonstrated if there is a breaking national news event and maybe, for example, MSNBC needs a psychologist/author to comment as an expert on the impact of survivor’s guilt in perhaps a fatal plane crash, a killer flood or terrorist attack.

• The expert publicist: Don’t e-mail or call your publicist every other hour and tell him or her how to do their job with your book. Remember you have hired a professional and they know best how to proceed once the groundwork and tools for the campaign are in place. An author hires a publicist for their knowledge, experience and media savvy. A publicist who feels a client is a “control freak” will probably end up with poor results and in many cases will cancel their contract with the author. Nagging and complaining, negative clients spell a campaign that will fall far short of its goals.

• Flexible author schedule: The media is a fast moving machine – - especially today with all the electronic advantages we all have.  Authors who hire publicists need to keep their personal schedules very flexible and ready often within a few hours notice – - to take advantage of, say, an impromptu phone interview with a radio station, or an interview with maybe Ladies Home Journal or a live guest spot on the Today show via a guest spot at the local NBC affiliate to maybe discuss the rise of AD-HD disorders in school kids, etc. Make sure to keep your cell phone with you at all times during and even after business hours if your publicist needs to reach you to confirm you are available while the media person on the other end is holding. Often good media opportunities are lost due to an author who does not make sure he or she can invest the time needed to work with the contract commitment they have made with their professional publicist.

• Reasonable returns: One of the most common questions I am posed by potential clients is, “Can you get me on Oprah?” Sometimes I bristle when asked this because some authors have no sense of reality about their book or the media marketplace that serves books and writers. Yes, I have certainly had clients on “Oprah”; in fact, I was one of the publicists handling her 2008 ABC-TV series “Oprah’s Big Give.” Ms. Winfrey’s “Oprah” show has only a handful of months left before it goes off the air. The show is focusing right now on highlights of their years on the air and some authors will be booked. Emphasis now is launching Ms. Winfrey’s OWN network on cable television with Discovery Networks. OWN will premiere shortly and bookings are underway right now. I believe one of the most difficult parts of a publicist’s job can be to manage the demands, expectations of an author client. Having realistic expectations in an industry in which it’s virtually impossible to predict and know for sure what will happen is vital and crucial. Book marketing is to say the least, a most challenging business. The competition is fierce, and success in terms of huge book sales numbers is often elusive. A balanced, reasonable, honest understanding of the challenges and opportunities of a book promotion campaign will inevitably improve the odds of an author being satisfied with the work of a publicist.

• Long Term impact: Recently I heard of an author hiring a publicist for one month, spending $2000 for a one-page media alert sheet that was sent out, guaranteeing six national radio interviews. With this, the author expected to be an overnight media sensation. This is a ridiculous and absurd concept. A good and worthwhile book media campaign can take anywhere from 90 to 120 days to cover all the bases such as getting the media friendly release written and distributed, pitching all the media (print, electronic, digital/social media) and lining up interviews, author media training with the publicist, obtaining meaningful book reviews and then gathering up all the results with media coverage copies, reports to the author client, etc. A successful campaign will also have lasting results both as a way to introduce a new author to the media as well as creating a strong and visible Internet presence. An author hiring a publicist needs to ask himself what are the goals and what do I want out of this when the campaign is completed?…is it just strong and robust book sales, or is it a book deal with a major new publisher or maybe be the sale of a book for movie rights. A book could even be a way to get an author established in television news quarters as a given “expert” in his or her area of expertise or to help the author launch a speaker’s career. In any event, a successful book publicity campaign can open many doors and opportunities for an author and have long term impact.

Charlie Barrett
The Barrett Company Communications

ABOUT…Charles Barrett formed The Barrett Company in 1991 as a full service public relations and marketing communications agency. The Los Angeles headquartered firm offers integrated media marketing and marketing research expertise, with an emphasis on public relations, for the entertainment and leisure time/travel industries — serving celebrities, motion pictures, television, radio, new media, authors, hotels and tourism. Since our creation, we have served such companies as Warner Brothers to American Movie Classics cable channel, celebrities such as Johnny Carson to the Internet studio Z.com (David Spade, Alanis Morrisette), and Hilton Hotels to Paramount Pictures.

And…I’m on a deadline.  The few relationship experts I have in my rolodex are either out of town, won’t answer their phone or are tired of being harassed by weekly supermarket tabloid editors.

Whatever the reason, I’m sweating, hyperventilating and don’t have a moment to spare.  Then, a light bulb goes off.  This isn’t old journalism, I scream!  Get with the times!

I know which search words I want to use and I fly over to Google and put them in.  “Relationship expert” seems to be the operative phrase here and I frantically type it in their search box.  As I’m busy, I stop at the first 3 pages of search and jot down what names I find (btw, the average Internet user finds what they are looking for in the first three pages of search).

And…I send out emails.

Less than 24 hours later, a “relationship expert” responds to my email.  She is more than happy to give me a quote and I give her a call.  Bingo bango, I have her quote and I send them off to the presses just in the nick of time.

A week later, the tabloid is sitting proudly on grocery store and bookstore shelves and I thank God for the wonderful powers of the Internet.

I can personally relate to this story because I am the relationship expert that the editor of OK! Magazine phoned whose quote appeared in the October 12, 2006 edition of one of the most popular tabloids on the supermarket shelves.

As an author who was learning how to promote her books online, I knew the powers of adding key search words to my press releases and blog posts, or anything else that was posted online.  I knew I had to focus on the set of key search words that people (in this case a very important editor) would be using to find me.

And this is what I do for my clients at Pump Up Your Book Promotion.  Before you even think about promoting online, you must come up with a set of key search words that will bring people to your website or blog where they can find out more about you and your book.  Your name out there isn’t enough.  Your book’s title out there isn’t enough.  Whether you write about relationships or historical fiction or poetry or the latest antics of your dog, if you want notoriety, if you want your star to shine, you must add to your online exposure by incorporating those key search words so that not only will your readers find you, but those hungry editors and journalists who write for big time newspapers and magazines, will too.  Who knows?  Maybe you’ll get that email or phone call that will have you thanking God for the wonderful powers of the Internet just like I did.

Do you incorporate key search words in your blog posts?  Have you ever been contacted by an editor because they found you online?  We’d love to hear from you!  Please leave your comments below so that others will learn by your experiences.  Thank you and we’ll see you next month!

Dorothy Thompson is CEO/Founder of Pump Up Your Book Promotion with eight years experience in online marketing. What began as an experiment after self-publishing her promotional e-book A Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook and 101 Internet Radio Shows to Promote Your Books turned into her thriving new career as an online book marketer. She is also the author of the children’s book, No More Gooseberry Pie, the relationship anthology, Romancing the Soul, and the pararanormal comedy novel, The Search for the Million $$$ Ghost which is under the consideration of a playwright in New York. Dorothy has written hundreds of online marketing articles and has been quoted in the celebrity tabloid, OK! She has also appeared on dozens of radio shows including Lifetime Radio, Single Talk, and Achieve Radiowith Fran Silverman. Dorothy runs several blogs including her marketing blog, Book Marketing Buzz, The Writer’s Lifeand Beyond the Books which are syndicated into USA Today, Chicago Times, Washington Post and other national magazines. Dorothy resides on the beautiful island of Chincoteague, Virginia. Her offline interests include traveling, biking and sitting at the end of her dock and watching the sun go down.

Connect with Dorothy…
You can email her here.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thewriterslife
Twitter: www.twitter.com/pumpupyourbook

Today more and more authors are realizing that the internet is a wonderful place to promote their names and books.  With all the online social network groups/tools, book blogs, and websites, it is silly not to take advantage of the world wide web (hello…this reaches the world!)  So today, I have a special guest who has also become a great friend over the past year.  Dorothy Thompson from Pump Up Your Book Promotion is here to share her take on virtual book tours.

Dorothy Thompson is CEO/Founder of Pump Up Your Book Promotionwith eight years experience in online marketing.  What began as an experiment after self-publishing her promotional e-book A Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook and 101 Internet Radio Shows to Promote Your Books turned into her thriving new career as an online book marketer.  She is also the author of the children’s book, No More Gooseberry Pie, the relationship anthology, Romancing the Soul, and the pararanormal comedy novel, The Search for the Million $$$ Ghost which is under the consideration of a playwright in New York.  Dorothy has written hundreds of online marketing articles and has been quoted in the celebrity tabloid, OK! She has also appeared on dozens of radio shows including Lifetime Radio, Single Talk, and Achieve Radiowith Fran Silverman.  Dorothy runs several blogs including her marketing blog, Book Marketing Buzz, The Writer’s Lifeand Beyond the Books which are syndicated into USA Today, Chicago Times, Washington Post and other national magazines.  Dorothy resides on the beautiful island of Chincoteague, Virginia.  Her offline interests include traveling, biking and sitting at the end of her dock and watching the sun go down.  You can email her here. Connect with Dorothy at Facebook at www.facebook.com/thewriterslife and Twitter at www.twitter.com/pumpupyourbook

NOW DOROTHY THOMPSON’S GUEST POST…

My Story into the Virtual Book Tour World and Finding the Magic Key to Selling Books

Years ago, before book tours – virtually, that is – and before Twitter and Facebook even – when an author wanted to promote her/his book, they had very few choices in which to do this namely – e-groups, writer’s boards and forums, and wherever else they could find to get their book mentioned. They bought ads in writer magazines (some resulted in little or no sales), they started websites and later, blogs, and they hunted down websites that they could advertise their book, mainly free listings to save them some money.

When my first print book, Romancing the Soul, came out, my publisher was very supportive; however I know she felt like Octomom with all the authors she had to represent. I pitied her actually because I know it must have frustrated her as she could never do everything she wanted for all her authors and take care of a publishing business, too.

That’s when publicists come into the picture.

You either hire someone to do some publicity for you or you study online marketing and do it yourself.

I have always been a hands on kind of person. Perhaps it’s the frugal side of me, who knows, but maybe I just knew there had to be a magic key to open the door to those huge sales I wanted to be making. I had read every book promotion article there was out there and I just knew there had to be more to it. And I knew the secret had to be somewhere in that vast space they called the Internet.

Not too long after my print book was released, I studied the Internet and, eventually, a pattern was starting to evolve. If I list my book here and here and possibly here, I might see my book climb into the top rankings of the search engines which I believed was part of the equation. But might was a mighty big word.

Like all authors, I knew I had a good book which is the first step in assuring success in the sales department, but it wasn’t enough to have confidence in your book, you must take action to stand out from the pack and the secret I believed was in online book promotion. But the key, the magic key, where was it?

A few years ago, I found the answer and it happened quite accidentally. My online writing group and I self-published several e-books and I knew I wanted to use these e-books as an experiment. If my theory worked, I would have found the magic key. Whether it would open all the doors, that was debatable, but I figured I’d give it a shot and see what happens.

I had a basic formula written down. I would do A and B and see what happens, but I wanted to take it an extra step. What if I didn’t stop with A and B? What I discovered was that it wasn’t enough to do A and B, you had to do the whole alphabet if you wanted the formula to work.

This formula I speak of is a highly guarded secret, but…I do have to tell you in 24 hours all three of our self-published ebooks, and on separate occasions, ended up #1 in the search engines for their key search words. Twenty-four hours.

So what could I learn from this? By using these key search words as my selling tools, I could sell my books just by having the thousands upon thousands of Internet users find my book in the search engines. Today, there’s Twitter and Facebook and blogs, but the old system is only reinforced by this new technology.

Getting back to my story, when word spread about how I managed to get these ebooks into the first position at Google (and which I did later on with a self-published ebook I sold and still sell on my website), I had a woman phone me asking for my help. She wanted her book #1 in the search engines and told me she would pay me if I could do it for her, too.

And that was how Pump Up Your Book Promotion was born. We opened doors with one tour coordinator besides myself and now my staff has grown to five of the most wonderful people on the face of the earth – Cheryl Malandrinos, Jaime McDougall, Tracee Gleichner and Rebecca Camarena. You can find out all about them at http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/aboutus.html.

We started out with one author on tour and now our tours consist of anywhere between 15 – 20 authors a month.

Authors are finally learning it’s not enough to go on live booksignings. They’re learning it’s not enough to put up a website or blog and call it a day. They’re realizing it’s not enough to think for one minute their book is going to sell out of all the thousands of books on the market today. And this is where virtual book tours give them that chance.

Before I go, I would like to take a minute to thank Farrah and all the book bloggers who have hosted our authors. Without you, all of this wouldn’t be possible. I bow to all of you.

If you have a question about virtual book tours or anything online book promotion related, please leave it in Farrah’s comment box below. I’d be more than happy to explain anything you’d like to know.

Thank you and see you in the blogosphere!

Thank you Dorothy for taking the time out of your busy day promoting authors.
I know you just got back from a trip last night but you were so willing
to make sure to get back with me to share your tips.