10 Media Relations Tips for Authors and Publishers

The Publicity Hound

Writers and publishers in the St. Louis area are blessed to have the active and resourceful St. Louis Publishers Association right in their backyard. In addition to monthly meetings and an annual class on getting your book published, occasionally a national speaker is brought in. Such was the case last Saturday when Joan Stewart, aka The Publicity Hound, came to St. Louis for a jam-packed three hour workshop on tips for profitable self-promotion. Joan is a publicity expert, speaker and trainer who works with businesses, authors, marketers and many others who need assistance with their publicity endeavors.

Saturday's workshop covered working with the media, creating video and audio, blogging (and repurposing your own content), press releases and pitching to journalists. Here are my top ten takeaways from Joan's presentation:

10. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing forms of social media. This visual platform is predominantly used by females.

9. Join LinkedIn groups that contain influencers who can help you with your promotions, not just author and/or publisher groups.

8. The Freelance Directory of the Society of Professional Journalists can help you locate journalists who write about your topic.

7. Once you have identified the journalists who represent what you write about, then read their blogs. Research them before you pitch to them.

6. Authors need to blog. Ideally, a blog post should be around 700 words so Google can find it.

5. Repurpose your content. Turn blog posts into podcasts, create YouTube videos, put tips on Pinterest.

4. Review existing podcast topics. Small, niche topics do well here because not too many people are doing it.

3. Complete a Google profile, and make sure that you have linked all of your websites to it.

2. Creating videos and audio content is imperative if you want to be found on Google, and to be recognized as an expert in your field.

And the top tip learned from Joan...

1. Promote yourself as an expert, do not promote your book. If the media sees you as an expert, they will call upon you for stories. The publicity for your book will follow.

Joan's presentation was professional, entertaining and enlightening. The fifty some attendees were attentive and engaged. What a productive way to spend a Saturday morning.

If you are not currently following Joan, I would highly encourage you to do so. Her publicity tips are priceless, though many of them are offered for free. To receive her free DIY publicity tips, you can subscribe here.

Getting Your Book Published

book publishing class

Last weekend the St. Louis Publishers Association again offered the class "Getting Your Book Published: What You Need to Know" at the Meramec campus of St. Louis Community College. This is the fourth or fifth time we have done this, and the student reviews are quite positive. My role is pretty simple: I coordinate with the community college and moderate the four hour class, keeping things moving and offering comments as appropriate. After first having the students introduce themselves and tell what they are writing about, the following topics are covered: traditional publishing versus self-publishing, getting a book into print, book design, ebooks, and getting a book into the marketplace.

It is a lot of material to cover in four hours, but our goal is to get writers thinking about what they will do with their books once they are finished writing. We also offer resources on where they can find more information about publishing, including how to evaluate legitimate services versus the companies who are out to take advantage of new authors. As always, we had an interesting group of students who asked great questions, and it was a joy to take part in the class again this year. Hopefully a few of them will come to an upcoming St. Louis Publishers Association meeting, where they can find many people who are willing to share their own experiences in publishing or working with authors. If there is a similar organization in your town, I highly recommend checking them out.

Bloggy Bootcamp St. Louis

Danielle Elliott Smith

As writers and authors we know how terribly important it is that we build our platform prior to publishing our book. Myhousehistory.net became a reality in 2008 as I was writing my book about researching house history. I like to keep up to speed with all the changes to blogging and social media by attending workshops on the topics. So on Saturday I headed out to St. Charles to attend Bloggy Bootcamp. Organized by the SITS Girls, Bloggy Bootcamp is a one day blogging and social media conference for women. I attended this event the first time it was held in St. Louis two years ago, and picked up many new tips and met some amazing bloggers. That was also the first time I was introduced to Mirassou wines as they were a conference sponsor and hosted a wine tasting at the end of the meeting. As a self-proclaimed wussie wine drinker, I was ecstatic to find the Moscato wine by Mirassou. It is my go-to wine for everything, and I have introduced many of my family and friends to it. My husband is a fan of the other Mirassou wines as well.

Mirassou Moscato

When I went to the conference in  2012, I was definitely the oldest woman in the room. A lot of blogging space and attention is given to the mommy bloggers, and while I am a mom I was definitely not anywhere near the same stage of motherhood as the other women in the room. I am an empty nester, but not yet a grandmommy blogger either. But that didn't stop me from getting to know some truly interesting gals with whom I still interact today. You can read a recap of my first Bloggy Bootcamp here.

As I was driving to St. Charles I had the 70's station on in the car, and it occurred to me that I was listening to music older than most of the ladies I would soon be meeting. That is pretty humbling. But what I noticed immediately upon arrival is that there were a dozen or so older bloggers attending this year. (And I was not the oldest!) In fact, this was a pretty diverse group, including two males. I think it made for a richer conference, with folks commenting from many different perspectives.

Here are my top ten takeaways from Bloggy Bootcamp 2014

1. By the year 2018, 80% of the content we consume will be video. Guess I better get busy on the tutorials I keep saying I am going to make.

2. Google fonts are viewable across all platforms, so use those fonts in your blog posts and websites.

3. eBay.com has free tutorials on taking better pictures. Who knew?

4. If Plan A fails, remember that there are 25 more letters.

5. If you want to some day represent brands, start writing about the brands you love and that matter to you.

6. Look at blogs that are successful and see what they are doing right.

7. Facebook is about being relevant in the moment. Share content other than your own as Facebook loves this.

8. Check out picmonkey.com as a free photo editing site.

9. Call yourself a social influencer, not a blogger.

10. And my favorite? If it is not a "Hell yeah!" then it is a no. We need to be okay with telling people no. Amen.

If you are a blogger or involved in social media at all, I would highly encourage you to check out local or regional conferences. They are a great way to learn new skills and network with other like minded individuals.

Danielle Elliott Smith & me

Missouri Authors Expo

my book table

Last Friday night the Webster Groves Public Library held its first Missouri Authors event. Nearly three dozen authors gathered to meet readers and sign copies of their books. In addition many of the authors signed up to read a sample of their books. All genres were represented including fiction, non-fiction, mystery, children's and young adult. Wine and light food items were available in the lower level of the library. The event was very well organized, and valet parking made set up a breeze for the authors.

It was interesting to meet the other authors, some of whom I know from the St. Louis Publishers Association. While the attendance was probably lighter than we all would have liked, despite some good publicity, the people who came out were genuinely interested in talking with the authors. I had some great conversations about WWII and also house research. I even sold some books, so that was a nice bonus. It was gratifying to hear several members of the library staff tell me that my house research book is one of the most referenced (and stolen!) books in the library. It is nice to know that it is reaching the people who are trying to find out who lived in their homes.

The most amazing thing for me, though, was seeing Patricia McKissack. A renowned children's author, Patricia has also taught classes on writing for children. More than 25 years ago I took her class, along with another woman with whom I worked. Through the class I wrote a book entitled "Pierre, the Cat with No Hair." It was an anti-bullying book before this was even a buzzword. I even submitted the book to numerous publishers, to no avail. Sadly, Pierre only exists on the hard drive of my old Mac SE, which has long since given up the ghost. I cannot locate a hard copy of it anywhere. I introduced myself to Patricia, explained that I had taken her class, and told her that while I have written three books, none of them are for children. She smiled and said, "Maybe someday." Maybe someday, indeed.

For a first time event, I think it was quite a success. I certainly hope that another one is held next year so that I can participate again.

Getting Your Book Published

Kim Wolterman, Getting Your Book Published

On Saturday the St. Louis Publishers Association held a four hour workshop on what authors need to know about publishing. Held at the St. Louis Community College Meramec Campus, the course covered traditional versus self-publishing, getting your book into print and the marketplace, making your book look good from a design standpoint, eBooks and book marketing. We had 27 attendees of all ages and writing backgrounds, and they certainly had a lot of wonderful questions. It is always fun to hear what other people are writing about, and this group was no exception. I am hoping that we see some of them at future St. Louis Publishers Association meetings!

Sock Puppets

Sock Puppet

Do you know what sock puppets are? I thought I did because we made some with my Brownies while working on the Puppets, Dolls & Plays Try-It. Apparently it means something else that authors need to be aware of when seeking book reviews. Urban Dictionary defines sock puppet as "an account made on an Internet message board, by a person who already has an account, for the purpose of posting more-or-less anonymously." As it applies to books, these would be people who post reviews writing under false names and/or false pretenses. There are services that pay people to write favorable book reviews with or without the benefit of having read the book. And authors are the ones who are paying for these services.

As someone who has published several books, I know how hard it is to get someone to write a review on your book. I can see that it might be tempting to pay a service to solicit reviews. It is hard to garner attention for a new book, and certainly having positive reviews can help especially if you are selling on Amazon. But paying for reviews certainly seems disingenuous to your readers. There are many legitimate people online who will review books, including a multitude of book bloggers. As with all other things in the self-publishing world, there are no shortcuts.

Pinterest for Authors

Pinterest page of Kim Wolterman

Recent statistics show that Pinterest is the third-largest social media site, with 104 million visits per month. Facebook clearly leads the way with 7 billion monthly visits, while Twitter comes in second with 182 million visits. Pinterest visitors stay on the site longer than any other social media sites, and users are predominantly females between the ages of 25-44. It is easy to open a Pinterest account, and then you can begin creating your boards and start pinning.

One of the biggest benefits of Pinterest for users is that the system automatically links back to the source of the pinned photo or article. So if you have a board of photos from your blog, for example, when someone clicks on the photo they will be taken to your blog. And if they pin the photo to their Pinterest board, then all of their followers are now potentially exposed to your blog. There are some copyright issues floating around right now, so I mostly pin my own photos or those where I feel proper credit has been attributed to the photos.

Here are some examples of how authors can use Pinterest boards to either assist in the writing process or promote (subtly) their books:

- Show some visual elements from your books, either actual photos from the books or images that inspired you when writing them. For example, since I write about house research, I might want to create a board of photos of historic homes. If you write historical fiction you might have boards of photos from the time period in which you are setting your book.

- Pin the covers of books in your same genre, including your own.

- Pin photos from your book signings or speaking engagements, as well as those you have attended from other authors.

- Get creative. Where do you want to travel? In what location would you rather be writing? How about one for cool libraries?

Pinterest is one more bullet in the social media arsenal for authors. As with other forms of social media, the emphasis should be on "social". Interact with your followers, and find others to follow as well.

Why Authors Should be on Pinterest

While at a blogging conference a year ago one of the attendees introduced me to Pinterest and sent me an invitation to join. I signed up without really understanding what the site was all about because this blogger told me how much fun she was having with it. While I have created numerous boards and enjoy looking at the pins of others, I have not focused on using Pinterest to make me more successful as an author. The October issue of the Independent, a monthly publication of the Independent Book Publishers Association, arrived in the mail today. An article entitled "Promoting with Pinterest How to Get the Most from This Hot Social Media Network" caught my eye, stating that Pinterest is now the third-largest social media site behind Facebook and Twitter.

I decided to look into the statistics a little bit and found an article about Ben Silbermann, one of the co-founders of Pinterest. The article stated that Pinterest grew from 5,000 users in August 2010 to 17 million in April of this year. That's a lot of eyeballs! I will be researching how authors can use Pinterest to connect with their readers, and will follow-up with some tips in an upcoming post.

Blogging for Authors

Blogging for Authors

Saturday Linda Austin, who blogs at www.moonbridgebooks.com, and I conducted a two hour workshop for St. Louis Publishers Association members who were interested in learning why it is important for authors to blog. Originally we intended to limit the group to fifteen, but we had eighteen people eagerly sign up and we even had to turn someone away. It is obvious that our members have an interest in social media but due to variations in the level of knowledge it is hard to talk about these subjects at our monthly meetings where the attendance is much larger. Having a smaller session geared towards beginning bloggers definitely helped us to define what should be covered.

The workshop began with me covering the reasons why having a blog instead of just a website makes more sense for authors, free versus paid blogging platforms along with the pros and cons of each, why and how to purchase a domain name, and considerations in deciding what to call your blog. Because I have two blogs on a free platform (Blogger) and one on a paid platform (Wordpress), I briefly pulled up my sites to give the attendees an idea of what they look like.

Linda Austin & Kim Wolterman at Blogging for Authors

Linda followed up by using the blog of her publishing company, Moonbridge Books, to illustrate the different segments that authors might want to have on their blogs such as blog posts, an About page, a listing of blog posts, pictures of book covers, and ways for followers to share posts on social media. She also discussed what to blog about, how often to post and the importance of interacting with readers. The audience was very engaged and asked a lot of good questions. We received seventeen completed evaluation forms, which is outstanding, and the feedback was very positive. So I do believe that Linda and I will be conducting future workshops together, with the next most likely being Twitter for Authors.

It was interesting to prepare for the workshop as I learned a few things myself. I will probably be re-working myhousehistory.net a bit, and I definitely want to purchase domain names for my two Blogger sites. In fact, I bought the domain name for this particular blog Saturday night. As of today, the new name is still getting the dreaded 404 code error - the requested URL was not found on this server. I will talk about this more in my next post.

Book Signing

As I had mentioned in an earlier post the lovely folks at 6 North Cafe invited me to hold a book signing and presentation about researching house history at their Ballwin location. We had selected this morning as the date, and what a beautiful day it turned out to be. Sometimes that can be bad for an author event because people want to be outdoors during these lovely fall days. The event was promoted by the cafe through their social media and local contacts as well as by me.

Things started out on the wrong foot for me as my mapquest failed me. It said it would take me 17 minutes to arrive at my destination, and that 6 North Cafe would be on the right hand side of the road. I allowed 30 minutes for arrival, thinking that on a Saturday the time would be adequate. First I was overshot the address. In my defense, not too many of the businesses have an address large enough to read while operating a car. A few more trips up and down Clayton did not reveal the business to me. I finally stopped and asked the kind lady at Clarkson Eyecare if she knew where the cafe was located. Fortunately I was close, and it was on the left hand side of the road, not the right. Bottom line is that I was 20 minutes late and I was mortified by that. As there was no long line of fans waiting for my arrival, it was not that big of a deal. My tip of the day is to always ask your host for help with directions! I do not know why I didn't do that since I was unfamiliar with the area.

As it turned out no one arrived to buy my house history book or to hear my presentation. (Though I did sell one copy of From Buckeye to G.I.) So you might think that I am disappointed in the outcome. But you would be wrong. Four other authors came to the cafe, two because I had been announcing it and two by coincidence I believe. We had a wonderful discussion about traditional publishing versus self-publishing, ebooks, marketing, printers - you name it. It was fantastic! In fact, I would love to see all of us, and more, get together for coffee once a month or so to share ideas.  Even though the St. Louis Publishers Association meets once a month, there is never enough time to have the kind of conversation we were able to have today.

Top all of that with a fantastic cup of brewed tea and an amazing pumpkin scone, and my author event was great!

My Students are Awesome!

Wednesday night's class was just amazing! Fifteen of my sixteen students came back, so I guess I did okay last week on my first night of teaching. Their homework was to read a certain portion of the textbook, come up with a sentence to describe their book, and try to answer ten questions in the textbook that are a precursor to writing a book proposal. All but one of the students in attendance had a sentence composed, and eleven of them answered the ten questions. I am so proud!

Going through each person's sentence took a large chunk of the class time, surprisingly. Everyone was great about asking for clarification on the topic and offering suggestions on how to tighten up or improve the sentences. It was really great feedback, so I hope the students found it to be beneficial. We also covered ways to organize your writing both on and off the computer, and covered the principles behind a well-written book proposal.

One of the questions that came out of this week's class is whether or not you can copyright the title to your book. Two of the students understood that it is not possible to copyright the title, so I did a little research on this issue. Here is a quote from the U.S. Copyright Office website:

How do I copyright a name, title, slogan or logo?
Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases. In some cases, these things may be protected as trademarks. Contact the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, 800-786-9199, for further information. However, copyright protection may be available for logo artwork that contains sufficient authorship. In some circumstances, an artistic logo may also be protected as a trademark. 

According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a trademark generally protects brand names and logos used on goods and services. A copyright on the other hand protects an original artistic or literary work. In order to be granted a trademark, your title must have a distinctive mark that is distinguishable from other titles. In other words, you cannot use terms in the title that are considered to be too generic or arbitrary to warrant protection.

So there you have it - you cannot copyright the title of your book. I guess that explains why there are books in print that carry the same title. 

We Are All Students

My first adult education class on writing, publishing and promoting your nonfiction book was Wednesday night. The roster from the college indicated that 14 people had signed up for the class. But I actually ended up with 16 students! How amazing is that? After I had each person introduce him/herself, mention the book topic and what he/she hoped to get out of the class, I asked if everyone knew the difference between fiction and nonfiction. The class does not cover fiction writing because it is written and marketed differently than nonfiction. This opened up a lively discussion of the subtle nuances, sometimes, between the two types of writing. Several class members want to fictionalize parts of their stories due to the sensitive nature of their topics.

Isn't that interesting? Personally, I don't have a problem with the concept of adding fiction to a nonfiction story. But I think the author needs to make it very clear to potential readers what has been done to the story.
The book should not be promoted as nonfiction. Most everyone has heard of the stink created when author James Frey released his book "A Million Little Pieces" as a memoir, when in fact is was later disclosed to have many fictionalized parts. Readers were mad, book reviewers were mad and Oprah Winfrey, who had promoted the book in her book club, was livid.

At first I thought that if you combined nonfiction and fiction you ended up with creative nonfiction. However, according to the creativenonfiction.org website, "The word 'creative' refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction—that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible."

Obviously that is not what we are talking about doing here. We are talking about mixing fact and fiction. So what kind of writing is it? I found this related article on the Writer's Relief, Inc. blog to be very insightful. And the reader comments are all valuable as well. Sounds like my author/students have some soul-searching to do! I believe we will all be learning something.

Book Expo America Day 2

I've been delayed in posting this because my flight home from New York was canceled and I had to spend an extra night with a total stranger in a hotel by LaGuardia - but that is a whole different story covered in my personal blog at http://tinyurl.com/27muns8, if you are interested. Back to Book Expo...I attended the adult author breakfast first thing in the morning. While standing in line waiting for the doors to open three men came down the stairs of the convention center. The center man began yelling, "Yes! Yeess! Yeeesss! This is going to be great!" The ladies in line ahead of me had to inform me that he was Jon Stewart. Being a person who spends way more time in front of a computer than a t.v., I did not recognize him. But I could tell it was going to be fun to have him moderate the roundtable discussions. And fun it was! He kept the audience in stitches during his monologue as well as his introductions of the other speakers, which included Condoleeza Rice, John Grisham and Mary Roach. My favorite Jon line was "Hope you enjoy the show, the boat show comes in at 2:00 so get the hell out!" Although his reference to our "breakfast in a bucket" (referring to the fact that breakfast consisted of a few muffins and bagels served in a basket) was pretty amusing as well. And you could just tell that as the other speakers gave their presentations he was gathering fodder for the next "Daily Show".

Condoleeza Rice gave a poignant talk about her upcoming book, which describes how she went from being a poor black child in Alabama in the '60's to working in the White House. She describes her parents as being extraordinary ordinary people. When she concluded, Jon Stewart said, "Don't....make....me like you!"

John Grisham didn't really talk much about his new book but instead described how the idea for the only (?) non-fiction book he has written came from a newspaper article about a man who had been on death row was found to be innocent and set free, only to die a few days later of a disease. This got him wondering about how many other innocent people are on death row, and he now works for an organization trying to help death row inmates.

Mary Roach is an author I am not familiar with, but she was hilarious. Her new book, "Packing for Mars", will be out in August, though we were given an advance copy. She commented that if you think it takes a long time to send a man to Mars, just try waiting for a response from NASA when you send them an email with the subject line reading "Intercourse in Zero Gravity."

Best advice from the Q. & A. session:

Grisham: Until you are writing a page every day, you are not a writer. Have a routine.
Rice: Seek your mentors as people who are interested in you, not people who look like you.
Roach: Trust your instincts, believe in yourself.

Following the breakfast basket, I again made my way through the exhibit hall. I met with some fantastic authors, enjoyed my time chatting with other attendees as we waited in the lines, and picked up some interesting marketing materials from publishers and authors. As I had an afternoon flight (or maybe I should say what was supposed to be an afternoon flight), I only was able to spend half the day in the hall before shipping my prized autographed books home to St. Louis. Book Expo America was a fantastic experience and now that I know the ropes I will be able to get the most out of future BEA meetings. Congrats to all on a great meeting!