According to Karen Syed, CEO of Echelon Publishing, promoting your writing could be a fulltime job, and the most important one, if you want to sell books. At the past weeekend conference of the SoCalWritersConference in San Diego, I was bombarded by information and ideas on how to market your book. People were there with business cards, post cards, stand ups, bookmarks – all promoting their book. Some would collar you to tell you about their book and not so subtly suggest that you buy it. I felt like a waif, totally unprepared to do any of that. And I’m a former publicist (and was a very good one too!)
Karen stressed that you have to be shameless if necessary to get your book sold. Nothing illegal or illicit, but everything else in between. Putting my book along with dozens of others on a table that was crammed together was not the way to get sales. Not being a speaker or a group leader also relegated me to an unknown position. Still the weekend, in addition to give me the chance to meet Karen and some other agents, especially Adrienne Rosado of PMA Mgt. That and being surrounded by nothing but people who care about writing and reading – a great opportunity.
Now I have to get back to writing, BUT save time every day for some kind of internet push. Oh God, if only I were twelve years old, so it didn’t all seem so overwhelming.