A Hodgepodge

So, we have some contest wins to announce today! Yeay! Thank you to everyone who participated and entered. It was great fun to see what type all your blogs were!

I also think it was extremely interesting to see how many of us introverted, intuitive types' blogs were actually either extroverted and/or informational. I think it's a great lesson in learning how to present oneself, and presenting oneself on a blog is such a low risk way to try out a public persona. It would also be smart to apply this lesson to any public appearances that might come your way: you have an established professional personality on your blog--consider starting from that seed and using it to develop your "presentation personality."

And now for the important stuff. The first winner, of the "Guess Who Robin's Writing Buddy Is" contest is Becky Levine, for correctly guessing Mary. Becky, if you contact us offlist, we'll get your prize in the mail to you.

The second winner is Kim Baker, who correctly identified the dedication in Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris. Congratulations, Kim! If you too will email us with your address, we'll get that out to you.

And lastly, the winner of our "Tell Us Your Blog Type" drawing is ::drumroll please::

Feywriter! Fey, you get to choose between a signed copy of Mary's newest book, a query letter makeover, or a critique of the first 10 pages of your manuscript. Email us and let us know which prize you'd like!

Well that was fun. And now, since this is a marketing blog, I do have one marketing item I'd like to discuss today. When I was at a conference a short while back, a published author was talking about promotion, and she mentioned something I'd never heard before and I was wondering if anyone else had heard about it. This author said that her publisher, a genre, mass market publisher, awarded promo items based on how many names were on her mailing list. (Please note, I'm pulling these numbers out of my ear because I can't find the notes I took--and yes, I will clean off my desk just as soon as I meet my deadline!)

So if she had acquired 5,000 names, they'd pay for bookmarks. If she'd acquired 10,000 names, they'd print postcards for her. If she had 20,000 names, they'd create a professional movie trailer for her newest release, and so on. Have you heard of that before? Do any of your publishers play that way?

And lastly, Mary and I will be taking this Thursday off to celebrate Thanksgiving with our families. We wish every single one of you a marvelous, gratitude-filled, stuffed-to-the-gills holiday with your loved ones. We want you to know that we are infinitely grateful to each of you who spend time here at SVP, and how deeply we cherish this community of introverts.

Love,

Mary and Robin