A Monday Marketing Extravaganza!

We read about Darcy Pattison’s terrific idea about designating this as Random Acts of Publicity Week and thought this was such a FABULOUS idea we wanted to jump on the bandwagon and invite SVP readers to play along!

Wanna guess what we like best about it? Yep, you can promote someone else’s books rather than your own.

Her suggested activities for the week:

* Tuesday: Word of Mouth
* Wednesday: Reviews
* Thursday: Links
* Friday: Social Media

And, because karma can be a wonderful thing, now that you’ve committed to promote all those books you love, one of our blog readers is offering you a promotional opportunity. (Don’t you just love how that works??)

SVP reader, Jim Whiting (a prolific childrens’ nonfiction author who has just complete his 100th book! Congratulations, Jim!) invites you to become part of Kids’ Book Author of the Week, his regular feature for Grand (as in grandparents) e-zine. Each week he’ll highlight an author’s recent book, and everything will be archived.

To participate, send a blurb about the book, your bio, a cover image, author photo and list of other books to Jim. For the book itself, include the name, publisher and pub date, genre, number of pages, recommended ages and price. You can also provide links to a sample chapter, reviews and/or your website. Perhaps the most important element is the hook: Why would grandparents want to buy your book for their grandkids? To whom would the book especially appeal?

Check out the feature at www.grandmagazine.com. For questions or to submit (in general, submissions will be posted in the order in which they are received and I am currently booked through early December), contact Jim.

Thank you, Jim, for being so generous with your offer! We hope you find tons of fabulous books that are perfect for grandparents to enjoy with their grandkids!

And lastly, in a pop quiz, Have you put up your Amazon Author Page yet? Now I know we are all about the Indies here, but Amazon is also a fact of life these days and really, we can’t afford to leave any promotional stone unturned—especially when they are such turn-key, no brainers for us in terms of effort. In fact, when I was putting up my page, I stumbled upon a discussion by readers who were concerned that my new series, Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist, meant I was no longer writing Theodosia books. SO not true! And I was able to discover their concerns and put them to rest, planting two potential book sales for when Theo 3 comes out.

So get on over there and set up your author page. You can even count it as one of your Random Acts of Publicity for the week!

(And yes, for those of you who thought to check my author page, I have submitted it but it hasn’t been confirmed with the publisher yet—which is why it doesn’t show up yet.)

!!LATE BREAKING NEWS FLASH!!

We have a winner for last week's drawing for a copy of The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z to be donated to their library. The winner is . . . JUSTINE MUSK!!

Justine, email Mary and she will get that out to you!