Mary Louise Kelly proclaims the book tour not dead yet

HALLIE EPHRON: Every once in a while, an article “goes viral” behind the scenes here on Jungle Red. Last week Hank sent us a link to an essay by Mary Louise Kelly (author of THE BULLET) that ran in the Washington Post. It had the long and provocative (especially to an author) title:

Do book tours sell books? Maybe not, but that shouldn’t stop you from having a good time The book tour ain't dead yet

What she had to say struck a nerve. So true and so funny. Timely, too, because one of the Reds is invariably “on tour.” (Rhys is out with MALICE AT THE PALACE; in October Hank will be launching WHAT YOU SEE and Susan will be launching MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE)

And on tour, the one… make that TWO things we invariably ask ourselves:
- Are we having fun yet?
- Is anything that I’m doing making a difference?
Along comes Mary Louise Kelly’s hilarious essay with a few answers of her own. She’s just coming down from launching THE BULLET, her tour taking her from Atlanta to Seattle to Damariscotta, Maine, and she shares her insights and 7 stellar tips.

I especially love this quote she got from David Baldacci, whose books will hit the best seller lists whether he goes on tour or not: “It’s far better to go out on book tour than it is to sit and tweet.”

Mary Louise, Now that you’re back from book tour, do you agree?

MARY LOUISE KELLY: Most definitely. There's always a moment at a reading where I have to stop and pinch myself, because it hits me all over again: these people are here to talk about a book that I WROTE! And look, there it is, my book! Sitting there all perky on the shelf in an actual bookstore!

I don't know how many bestsellers you have to write before you stop being struck by that sense of wonder, but I'm not there yet. Speaking of bestsellers, my favorite quote from Baldacci was that he once flew to Nebraska for a pot roast dinner, served at a book club with all of three members. Now, THAT is book tour dedication.

HALLIE: You advise us NOT to read from our books, unless we pick a really provocative passage. Just wondering, can a passage be too provocative?

MARY LOUISE:  Yes, it does make you wonder how E.L. James (of Fifty Shades of Grey fame) fares on book tour, doesn't it? I did a book event in Atlanta recently, and the venue was a lovely big hall inside an Episcopal church. My books aren't especially racy, but the passage I'd chosen to read contained some, ahem, shall we say salty language. I got halfway through it and thought -- I can't read this out loud to all these nice church ladies! I toned down a couple of words and just let roll with the rest. The crowd appeared to enjoy themselves, they bought lots of books, and I'm happy to report I was not struck down by lightning.

HALLIE: I laughed when I saw your advice #6 Don’t say yes to every invitation followed by #7 Say yes to every invitation. That nailed it.

MARY LOUISE:  It's like Whitman says:  "Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." Walt Whitman must have been a force to be reckoned with on book tour, by the way.

HALLIE: And I love your advice, “Don’t wear stilettos.” I only wish I still could. Any advice about sharing the stage with other writers?

MARY LOUISE:  One reader complained to me about that stiletto comment, harrumphing that I was being sexist and setting different rules for male and female writers. I assured him that I would advise male writers to stay away from stilettos too...

As for sharing the stage with other writers, I love it. I always learn something. I did an event this spring with Julia Dahl (author of the clever Brooklyn-based thrillers Invisible City and Run You Down). We hadn't met until five minutes before we climbed onto stage, but we hit it off and had each other doubled over in giggles. I can only hope the audience had half as much fun as we did. Afterwards we sneaked off to a French bistro, polished off a bottle of good wine and swapped book tour stories until she had to run for the train.

HALLIE: SO jealous! I'm a huge Julia Dahl fan. We hosted her in this very space not that long ago.

I’m betting that your Washington Post article sold a lot of books, more than an appearance for sure. But you’d never have been able to publish the article if you hadn’t done the appearances. Another Catch-22 of book promotion.

What feedback have you gotten?

MARY LOUISE: The thing is that it's impossible to measure, right? I hope the Post article sold a lot of books, but other than furtively checking my Amazon rankings -- a bad habit I fight valiantly to suppress -- there's no way to know.

I do believe, though, that book publicity is a cumulative affair. Meaning: maybe no one buys my book because I wrote an essay in the Washington Post. But maybe they read that essay, and then they find your way to this Q&A on Jungle Red (which only happened because of the Post article), or they come hear me talk at a big mid-Atlantic book festival (an invitation which arrived because of the Post article)... And all of it adds up to convince people that they want to read my book. And if not, well -- as an author I can only say that I feel extraordinarily lucky to have the chance to do all those things, and that I'm having a heck of a good time.

HALLIE: What a fantastic attitude. For me, events and book groups are the silver lining of a writing career, and boy aren't we lucky!?

Today's question: Do you think tours are worthwhile or would authors be better off to just sit and Tweet?

ABOUT The Bullet by Mary Louise Kelly
   Two words: The bullet.
   That’s all it takes to shatter her life.
   Caroline Cashion is beautiful, intelligent, a professor of French literature. But in a split second, everything she’s known is proved to be a lie.
   A single bullet, gracefully tapered at one end, is found lodged at the base of her skull. Caroline is stunned. It makes no sense: she has never been shot. She has no entry wound. No scar. Then, over the course of one awful evening, she learns the truth: that she was adopted when she was three years old, after her real parents were murdered. Caroline was there the night they were attacked. She was wounded too, a gunshot to the neck. Surgeons had stitched up the traumatized little girl, with the bullet still there, nestled deep among vital nerves and blood vessels.
   That was thirty-four years ago.
   Now, Caroline has to find the truth of her past. Why were her parents killed? Why is she still alive? She returns to her hometown where she meets a cop who lets slip that the bullet in her neck is the same bullet that killed her mother. Full-metal jacket, .38 Special. It hit Caroline’s mother and kept going, hurtling through the mother’s chest and into the child hiding behind her.
   She is horrified—and in danger. When a gun is fired it leaves markings on the bullet. Tiny grooves, almost as unique as a fingerprint. The bullet in her neck could finger a murderer. A frantic race is set in motion: Can Caroline unravel the clues to her past, before the killer tracks her down?

They Don’t Buy Your Book because it’s Good; a guest post by PJ Nunn

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I think almost everyone in the crime fiction business has at least heard of PJ Nunn. She's been the owner and chief publicist of Breakthrough Promotions, one of the most effective (and affordable) PR firms around. How effective? Well, I did more radio, television and print interviews in the four years I was her client that I have before or since. 

I have to admit, I never stopped to wonder why PJ specialized in crime fiction. Or how it was she seemed so sympatico with her authors. It turns  out PJ wasn't just promoting crime fiction. She was writing it, too. Her new mystery, Angel Killer, has just been released by Oak Tree Press. Today, she tells us about her writer's journey and about how she - and we - can help get the books we write into readers' hands.

 

If you haven’t met me yet, I’m a publicist and I specialize in promoting authors and their books. I’m also an author, but I didn’t start out that way. My career path has been long and varied, but I like to think of it as a tapestry that creates a picture. You have to examine it closely to see the detail in individual threads but they all come together in the end.

I didn’t start out to be a novelist, and still don’t necessarily consider myself one. I actually started out in college with every intention of going to medical school. A certain young man caught my eye and I went home with the old M-R-S Degree instead. By the time I found my way back to college, I had three kids and med school was out so I changed my major to psychology. Soon I was doing a practicum and internship as an abuse counselor, serving on the local county child welfare board and consulting with the local police department on child related cases.

I loved my work, but it was intense and after several years, I couldn’t seem to escape the darkness that came with it. I gave up the counseling and child welfare work when we moved back to Dallas and opted for teaching instead. When I had to leave my job teaching at the Dallas County Community College District because my son was too ill to be left on his own all day, I put my background in psychology to work with my skill for putting words to paper and built a pretty good reputation as a freelance journalist specializing in mental health and abuse issues.

It didn’t take long for me to tire of reporting statistics that are all too sobering. It took me right back to the reason I’d left the field of counseling abuse issues in the first place. I don’t remember exact details, but when I started writing my first novel, I found freedom there. So once my day’s business was complete, I always tried to make sure there was a little time left for writing fiction. Characters developed ideas, voices, plans. It was almost as if I was merely the director. I could give them a script, but they didn’t always stick to it. Oddly enough, sometimes their ideas were better than mine. The psychologist in me still finds that fascinating.

I drew ideas from the caseload I’d worked for all those years, but in my writing, there was time to examine things more closely. I wasn’t bound by the urgency to get a child out of a situation or to get a case ready for court. I could take as long as I needed to study it and figure things out.

Over the next several years, I refined my craft and made the shift from freelance writing to book promotions for some of the friends I met along the way. First one then another had their books published, but balked at making calls to set up book tours and couldn’t afford a publicist. I saw a need and a business was born. Over the years BreakThrough Promotions became successful, so I tucked my manuscripts away (and there were several by now) and gave myself to promoting everyone else’s work.

I absolutely love what I do and after all these years, I’m pretty good at it. But I missed that time with my writing. I enjoyed being able to take something I came across in a real situation, whether counseling or casework, and apply the “what if” to it and see where the story might lead. When I gave in to the desire to dust those manuscripts off, and factored in the recent self-publishing revolution, an idea formed. What if I revised a manuscript and submitted it to one of the smaller presses? Would they be interested enough to publish it? Amazingly enough, they were! Shari Markham, forensic psychologist and criminologist was about to become a published character.

Suddenly a lot of things seemed to make sense. I’d studied for years to get my writing into professional form, and had on-the-job training learning how to best promote new authors and their books so that I had the knowledge to promote my own. It was almost like it was pre-arranged. 

With Angel Killer in the hands of the publisher, I decided to polish another manuscript that is the start of a different series and publish it myself as an ebook to see how that went. I was taking on more and more clients who wanted help promoting their ebooks. It seemed a logical way for me to learn the ins and outs of the process. 

Since the main reason someone hires me is to help increase their sales, I need to know why people buy books. As a psychologist, it’s natural that deductive reasoning comes into play and I’m always looking for cause and effect. Enter the process of elimination. I might not be able to tell you what does sell your book every time, but I can tell you what doesn’t. Just like I can tell you that talent is no guarantee of recognition as an author. If I had to choose whether to have talent or perseverance as a trait that would lead to my success, I’d choose perseverance. Of course talent would be nice too, but things are just not always as they seem. I could name a long list of very talented writers that you’ve never heard of because they didn’t have the perseverance to stick in there until they got published.

People look for a publicist to help increase their book sales. They judge the success or failure of a book by the number of sales, and often, logically, assume if a book has high sales figures, it must be good. But it’s kind of like that old riddle that says bananas are yellow so if it’s yellow, it’s a banana. Obviously that logic is faulty. 

If a book has high sales, it doesn’t mean it’s good.

If a book is good, it doesn’t mean it will have high sales.

Everyone wants to think his or her book is good, and I’m the first to admit it’s a HUGE plus if it is. But being good just isn’t enough to rack up the sales. People buy books for lots of reasons:

·     

          Because they like something else the author has written

·  

          Somebody told them it’s good

·         They like the cover

·         They like the description

·         They met the author and like to tell people they know her

·         One of their favorite authors wrote a blurb on the cover

·         They read a good review

·         They won a previous title in a drawing and liked it

·         Who knows?

Obviously, what people see and hear about a new title is at least as important as how good it is. If the description or cover or whatever doesn’t capture their interest, they may never see what’s inside.

That is where I come into play so often. Presentation. First impressions. It’s my hope that I can help my clients present themselves (yes themselves and not just their books) in a way that will appeal to the group that is most likely to want to read their book, and to set the stage by finding the right reviewers, the right publications, the right radio and television programs to make the author shine and make their book seem highly desirable.

And now that I’ve schooled myself in all those things, I need to figure out how to do them for myself. I was working with a web designer just today, helping him to get the right content on a new website for one of my clients. He came back later and said, “Just so you know, I put links to your books on my website. Hope that’s ok.” I was really surprised and asked him why. He said, “I think you spend all your time promoting other authors and somebody better promote you.”

Wow. Busted.

You can find out more about PJ Nunn and the Shari Markham mysteries at her website. You can friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter as @PJNunn. If you want to find out more about PJ as a publicist, check out Breakthrough Promotions or contact her directly at pj@breakthroughpromotions.net

The ABCs of Social Media - a guest post by Dana Kaye, Kaye Publicity

Book writing often seems to appeal to non-technical, introverted, one-foot-in-the-19th-century types. But book publishing (and marketing and selling) calls for high-tech, extroverted, 21st century thinkers. Bridging the gap? Publicists like Dana Kaye.

In addition to having published several short stories and articles herself, Dana is young, hip, and carries a heavyweight roster of clients like Marcus Sakey, Gregg Hurwitz, Michael Harvey, publisher Tyrus Books and on-line readers' community Book Country. Her list just got a little shinier: her client Steve Ulfelder is an Edgar Award nominee for Best First Novel and her client Tracy Kiely has been nominated for the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark Award (along with our own Hallie Ephron!)

Like all good publicists, Dana works with traditional media and speaking outlets, but she really stands out in the sometimes-puzzling, always-evolving world of digital social media. Today, she shares some of her expertise with us.

Social Media Basics

By Dana Kaye

The most common questions authors ask me pertain to social media. From the basics (What exactly is twitter? What’s the difference between a Facebook page and a Facebook profile?) to more advance questions (What’s the best way to translate your following into readers? How do you build a following through content?).

Today, I’d like to address the most commonly asked questions pertaining to Twitter and Facebook, from the basic to the complicated:

Should I make a Facebook Profile or Facebook Page? What’s the difference?

When Facebook first went public, authors were encouraged to have a Facebook profile. They became “friends” with their readers, posted book updates, and uploaded photos for their new friends to see. Most authors who got into the Facebook game early, have hit the 5000 friend mark (the maximum number of friends allotted).

Now I encourage authors to create pages. There is no maximum number of “likes”, you can create custom tabs for events, new books, or contests, and it serves as a more interactive website.

There are pros and cons to both a profile and a page, but right now, pages are more effective for authors. If you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet, start with a fan page. If you have a small following on your Facebook profile, create a page and let all your friends know that you will now be posting on the new page. If you have a large following (800+ friends) talk to your publisher or a social media expert about how you can migrate your friends over to your new page.

What should I post?

Whatever you post on Twitter and Facebook should be a part of your brand. This doesn’t mean that every post should pertain to your life as a novelist or the types of books you write. It means that each of your post should fall fit in with your online persona.

Before you decide “who to be” online (and don’t kid yourself, we all have or should have online personas), you should decide the type of audience you want to reach. If you write romance novels and your target audience is women ages 40-70, I don’t think posting about football or politics is a good personal characteristic to include even if you feel strongly about them. As yourself the following questions:

• What do you write about? I don’t just mean the tagline of your latest novel. What are the themes, conflicts, and subjects explored in your books? Do you usually set your books in small towns or big cities? Are they high-concept or ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances? Are your characters trying to fall in love, trying to kill each other, or trying to find themselves?

• What are you about? Look into your background, the things your passionate about, the characteristics that make you who you are, and pick the ones that tie in to your writing. Do you have a passion for travel and write international thrillers? Do you write historical novels and teach history at a local high school or university? Are you involved in a charity, sports team, or other organization whose members might also read your books?

I approach twitter and Facebook posts as I do dinner party conversation: avoid the topics of sex, religion, and politics (unless those are directly related to your books) and always present the best of yourself.

I believe there are four types of posts:

1. Professional post – links to articles, comment on trends, etc.

2. Promotional post – encouraging followers to buy your book or attend a signing

3. Personal post – a tidbit about your personal life that fits in with your online persona

4. Interaction – replying or engaging in conversation with another user

Most people post heavily in one category. They only post personal things, or they only promote their books, or they don’t post original content and simply re-tweet or respond to other people’s post. Do your best to rotate through the 4 types of posts each day. It’s not a strict rule, you can interact more on one day and post more professional items on another. Just be wary of posting too much in any one category, especially self-promotion.

Will social media really help increase sales?

Though I don’t believe social media directly translates into sales, I know that the fringe benefits of social media will boost sales and name recognition in the long term:

• Discoverability – potential readers are far more likely to stumble upon your Facebook page than your website. You have many more chances to “meet” people on Twitter than you do driving around the country doing book signings and networking events.

An active social media presence also increases your discoverability by the media. When Lynn Sheene began her “A Debut In Paris” promotion where she’d post photos of her book at famous Parisian landmarks, we began receiving emails from French publications, bloggers, even a hotel owner in Paris who wanted to throw a party for Lynn and the book. Her social media presence brought the opportunities to us, rather than us spending hours researching and sending inquiries to new media.

• Provides Re-enforcement - I believe that people need to see a name or a logo three times before it sticks in their brain. When someone purchases a book online or from their local bookstore, most of the time, they have already seen an ad, read a review, heard a radio interview, or received a recommendation from a friend. Now, Twitter and Facebook adds to the reinforcement. If I hear a radio interview with an author, I may think the book sounds good and I may want to read it. But I’ll quickly forget. Then if I see people talking about the book on Facebook and Twitter, it will remind me and I will be more likely to actually buy it.

• Making Connections – As was mentioned earlier, authors attend conferences, signings, and other events in order to build their network. But now, much of that networking can be done online. I treat Twitter like the bar of any conference: people are casually talking, debating, and meeting new people. It’s an online conversation.

Facebook does a similar thing. When I see people I haven’t seen in a long time, we can immediately skip all the small talk because we know what we’ve been up to based on our Facebook posts. We’ve maintained our relationship online so there is less need for reinforcement. If you have a book out every year, people will require less promotion before buying your latest release because you’ve maintained a relationship with them year round.

Dana Kaye is the founder of Kaye Publicity, a full service PR company specializing in publishing and entertainment. Visit Dana’s daily blog, 365 Days of Book Publicity, follow her on Twitter, and “like” her on Facebook.

Write What You Know? Or...Who knows.

Yesterday, renowned publicist Maryglenn McCombs gave us a master class in marketing. Today--she gives us perfect blend of content and publicity and insight.

MARYGLENN MCCOMBS:

Mystery writers: should you write what you know?How about writing what you can teach?

One of the most familiar pieces of advice for writers is “write what you know.” But as familiar as it is, “write what you know” is also hotly-debated. Scholars differ as to whether or not this is good writing advice.

In a November, 2002 Publishers Weekly interview, Mary Higgins Clark was asked her opinion on “write what you know.” Her answer? “For starters, at least. Until you get more experience.”

But in a February, 1998 interview with Publishers Weekly, Nora Roberts took a different stance: “I know they say, 'Write what you know’ but I write what I want to know."

Whether a writer chooses to stick to the familiar or research the unknown, maybe the best piece of advice is the JungleRedWriters motto: writing well is the best revenge. After all, who would want to argue with either the Queen of Suspense or the Queen of the Romance novel?

I love mystery/suspense/thriller fiction—not just as a book publicist, but also as a reader. If I were forced to pick a side, I think I would vote ‘yes’ on “write what you know.” Why?

I love a good crime fiction novel that has an element of the author’s experience included—whether it is a doctor who writes good medical suspense, a lawyer or judge who writes a good legal thriller, or an investigative reporter in Boston and recent Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity award-winner (who shall go nameless) who writes excellent mysteries about an investigative reporter.

(HANK: Awwww.)

MARYGLENN: There is something intimate about getting a behind-the-scenes look at what an author’s world is really like. And I love to play the guessing game of what’s real and what’s simply the product of an author’s imagination. It’s been said that the truth is stranger than fiction, after all.

What started me thinking about “write what you know” is an outstanding mystery I recently read, Did Not Survive by Ann Littlewood. Ann, who was a zookeeper at the Portland Zoo for over a decade, used a fictional zoo as the setting of Did Not Survive and her first mystery, Night Kill. Ann is clearly writing what she knows—and it’s apparent in the detail included in the book.

But after reading Did Not Survive, (in the interest of full disclosure, Did Not Survive is a book I am representing) I started thinking that Ann took “write what you know” in a whole new direction—and wrote what she could teach.

Apart from being an excellent novel, Did Not Survive is fascinating and filled with great details about zoos, animal rights activists, endangered species, animal behavior, and the bonds between humans and animals. After I had found out whodunit, and closed the book, I kept thinking about it. And I’m still thinking about it.

The protagonist in Did Not Survive is Iris Oakley, a zookeeper who is thrust into extraordinary circumstances when she tries to rescue her boss being mauled to death by a reliable old zoo elephant. Lest I spoil the plot, it is questionable whether the elephant attacked and Iris is soon relegated into the role of amateur sleuth to find answers. No spoiler here, but investigating turns out to be, well, dangerous.

In addition to a colorful cast of human characters, Did Not Survive also features an exotic ensemble of animal characters, including Clouded Leopards, Spectacled Owls, a tiger named Rajah, and Damrey and Nakri, two Asian elephants who are central to the mystery.

In an interview on her website, http://www.annlittlewood.com/, Ann was asked why she chose elephants as characters in Did Not Survive: “Despite thousands of years of close contact, elephants are terribly challenging animals for people to accommodate. In captivity, they are difficult and expensive to maintain because they are so strong and smart. They need the companionship of other elephants, physical exercise, and mental stimulation to thrive. Delivering these requires deep expertise and long-term funding. That’s in captivity. In the wild, they need large expanses of natural areas, and they need not to be shot for their tusks or their destructiveness. Elephants are magnetic, iconic, and delightful. They are also dangerous. Elephants kill over 200 people a year in India alone. African elephants get more publicity, but Asian elephants, featured in Did Not Survive, are far more endangered.”

I walked away from reading Did Not Survive with a whole new appreciation for elephants, and definitely more of an understanding about animals, and zoos, than I had before I picked up the book. And maybe the next time the topic of zoos or Clouded Leopards or Asian elephants comes up in conversation, I’ll have something interesting to add.

I am all for reading books for pure entertainment, or good old escapist fun, but I also like the feeling that I learned something in the process. That’s precisely what separates a great book from an outstanding book, in my mind. Did Not Survive earns an “outstanding” from me, as the book and the details therein, are going to stay with me.

Ann Littlewood says she created her series of “zoo-dunnits” with the hope of educating people about animals and their difficulties in today’s world. I say she succeeded.

Writers, what do you think about writing what you know, or writing what you can teach?

I am all for both, but will go on record as saying that this doesn’t bode well for my career as a mystery writer. Maybe when there’s a demand for a mystery about a Nashville-based book publicist who loves Old English Sheepdogs, I’ll reconsider putting words to paper (and hiring an excellent editor.)

Till then, I think I should stick to promoting books.

Maryglenn McCombs is an independent book publicist who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband Tim Warnock, and their Old English Sheepdog, Garcia. For more information, visit http://www.maryglenn.com/ or email maryglenn@maryglenn.com

Publicity Tips from Susan Schwartzman

HALLIE: Independent publicist Susan Schwartzman's has helped authors go after the kind of publicity that turns a book into a best seller.

As someone who has tried just about everything, I asked her: What works?

SUSAN: I was at a book party at Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Bookshop after ThrillerFest last year when an author asked New York Times bestselling author Lee Child what publicity works the best. He replied, “Everything works.”

And he’s right. Everything you do to promote your book gets the word out there, whether you are creating a buzz by blogging about your book, doing a media tour or radio interview, signing books at your local bookstore, getting profile coverage in your hometown newspaper or alumni newsletter, or getting your readers to blog about your book by sponsoring a contest as Kyra Davis did for her novel, LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS (Mira).

Very few authors get on Oprah or the national morning shows, but there is a lot you can do to generate a buzz and build momentum. Word-of-mouth spreads quickly in the book world and has created bestsellers whose authors never saw the light of a national TV studio camera.

HALLIE: So give us your tips. Please!

SUSAN:

• TIP #1: Be proactive:
  Design a website, create an online presence through Facebook and other social media, let your friends know about your book, and if you hire a publicist, give her every contact you have. It is especially important to target market your book as Craig Reed did. Craig is a former U.S. Navy diver and author of RED NOVEMBER: Inside the Secret U.S. Soviet-Submarine War (William Morrow). Craig set up booksigning events at Navy bases throughout the country, and I complemented his efforts with a media campaign in those cities.

• Tip #2: If you have an interesting back-story, use it:
  If you are a novelist with an interesting back-story, you are more likely to get great media coverage than if you simply plug your book. Kyra Davis was in the midst of a messy divorce and bankruptcy when she wrote SEX, MURDER AND A DOUBLE LATTE, the first book in her Sophie Katz mystery series which led to a three-book deal. Reporters and producers loved her inspirational success story.
  
  
• Tip # 3: Consider media tours, especially if you are a first time author
  Media tours are a great way to get on local TV, which means thousands of people will hear about your book. And you are more apt to get print coverage as well. Steven Raichlen, author of the bestselling THE BARBECUE! BIBLE (Workman) and many other grilling books, does 20-city media tours for all of his books, even after getting on Oprah, The View, The Today Show, Good Morning America and The Early Show and is currently on the road traveling cross country promoting his latest book, PLANET BARBECUE (Workman).
  

• Tip #4: Radio phoner campaigns are a cost-effective way to maximize media coverage.
If you have a limited budget, a radio phoner campaign will reach thousands, if not millions, of readers across the country and you don’t have to leave your home or office. Many people listen to their favorite radio programs or channel-surf on their way to and from work and throughout the day.

• Tip #5: Don’t wait until the last minute to hire a book publicist
  Unfortunately, many authors query me after their book comes out which reduces their chances of getting reviews on websites and magazines which have a three-month lead time. Media tours generally take six weeks to book. You want to maximize media coverage when your book is just published, not six months after pub date, when bookstores may have already returned your book to the publisher and it’s no longer current. Have your publicist in place not less than 3 months before pub date.
  

• Tip #6: Blog, blog, blog
  At the New England Crime Bake, a mystery book conference where I spoke, an author said, “I wasn’t born to blog.” But the reality is, even if you have a long-established fan base as this author does, you have to establish an online presence in today’s world. Many readers are getting their content exclusively on the web, and blogging is an easy way to build a fan base.
  

Remember, the more media outlets you hit, the more readers you will reach. The person on the way to work who is reading the newspaper on the train is not the same person who is listening to the radio while driving to work. There are stay-at-home moms and dads who are watching their favorite morning show, those who are listening to the radio during their lunch break, or a former classmate who is reading his or her alumni newsletter and notices that you have published a book, and e-mails your alumni.

So in the words of Lee Child, “Everything works.”

HALLIE: Everything? It makes me exhausted just thinking about it. I guess my own experience is a variant of that "You never know what's going to work...so do everything."

Thanks, Susan, for stopping by! Susan will be checking in to answer questions and comments all day today...