Category: Guest Posts

How to Hook the Media by Sabrina Sumsion

Sabrina Sumsion
Author Sabrina Sumsion

As a publicist, I’ve had several people ask me for tips on gaining publicity in the media. One of my responses was always “you have to get the media’s attention”. No matter how amazing your press release, without a hook that catches the media’s attention, forget interviews and coverage. Your job is to reach out and grab the media by the nose hairs!

Here are some tips to help get their attention:

Tie Into Current Events in the Media. Watch the media and see what they are talking about. Find a way to put a unique spin on the story with your expertise. When the Hudson River emergency plane landing occurred, one of my clients was contacted by Fox News almost immediately because the media discovered his book about a similar crash in 1974 online. Be aware of breaking events and contact media IMMEDIATELY if you can tie in to the story with a unique spin. Continue reading “How to Hook the Media by Sabrina Sumsion”

Reviews Are Mixed. How To Deal by Arline Chase

Go Down, MosesQUESTION from the e-mail: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Recently I finished my first book and got it published. Like most, I tried to promote it by getting book reviews. I got several three and four-star reviews, but many of the reviewers had a lot of negative things to say, too. Sure, they praise my story. They all like the action and suspense. But then they complain about my commas, and my “point of view,” and my characters all talking alike. I went to college. I got good grades on all my term papers, so I ought to know a little about how to write. This negative stuff is hard to hear. Half the time, I don’t even know what they’re talking about. How can there be “too many semi-colons?” You use them when they’re needed, right? Maybe I should just forget about this whole thing.

ANSWER: Good reviewers almost always talk about both the positive and negative aspects of a book. If they don’t, they are usually friends of the author who go and place a glorious, 5-star review just for friendship’s sake. So first thing I know from what you said is that these are “good, honest, unbiased” reviews, not the kind you pay for. They looked for things to pick on as well as nice things to say. That’s “fair and balanced” and tells folks right away that your reviewers are being honest with their praise. Every first novel gets hit hard by reviewers. Continue reading “Reviews Are Mixed. How To Deal by Arline Chase”

Preparing for Your KDP Select Free Days by Rex Jameson

[Editor Note: This step-by-step list is a great guide for promoting your free book through KDP Select. We used Rex’s methods to promote BAD BOOK at the end of June and had good success.]

Back when I first started using KDP Select, I used the Squidoo list by theinformationlady to promote my KDP Select promotion periods. I have had some pretty lousy results from Select recently, and I decided to revisit this and try to ferret out the proper way to do this. Here is my current process for promoting KDP Select titles:

Step 1: Make sure you have reviews BEFORE you settle on your promotion dates

Shortly after I published The Goblin Rebellion, I scheduled a KDP Select 2-day promotion over a month later and informed all the major sites without having any reviews for the book in place. I didn’t receive any emails back from ENT or POI, but I was in conversations with 2 book bloggers and had given away 50 copies at LibraryThing to try to garner some reviews. There were at least five people, counting the book bloggers, who told me they should be able to hit the promotion deadline.

None of them came through. Continue reading “Preparing for Your KDP Select Free Days by Rex Jameson”

Big. Fat. Mouths. by B.C. Brown

Author B.C. Brown

What do writers do? We write; we sculpt and mold words into breathtaking displays of art that will, hopefully, endear themselves to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world.

How do writers do this? We touch fingertips to keypads, or mar clean, white paper with ink or graphite sticks; we lay down lines of scratchy, spidery letters or pound out digitally-formed words until letters transmogrify into ruthless villains, romantic love interests, or thrilling action sequences.

What keeps a writer from doing all this? Our Big. Fat. Mouths.

I’ve been in the writing game a lot of years. I picked up a pencil to write before I understood rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling properly. Those things are important to publishing but not to writing. What is important are the stories. Continue reading “Big. Fat. Mouths. by B.C. Brown”