Book Review

In my never-ending quest to get good marketing value for my time, I have decided to do some guest book reviews for SageFire. It is a good deal for me–I get read an enjoyable book, and then write about it! Sagefire has very specific guidelines for reviewers, which actually makes the job a little easier, because you know exactly how much space to allocate to each section of the review.

I found the whole thing straightforward and a lot of fun, and I plan to contribute as often as I can.

To see my review visit:

http://sagefire.pencraft.biz/mar08/Review.School_Cowboy.html

You may recognize the book. It is the work of talented author Susan Shay, a fellow blogger on WordPress.

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Article

Pop over to Long and Short and have a look at my article on writing historical fiction. I found out about this site through the EPIC mailing list. In return for my words I will be featured on the Author Spotlight in April, shortly after the release of Ketha’s Daughter. It is great publicity, and writing the article was an enjoyable task. This sort of cross-marketing seems comfortable to me, and I am happy to do it.

 

Marketing

I was browsing WordPress and came upon this blog:

bookmarketingbuzz

It has several entries by guest-bloggers extolling the virtues of getting out there to sell your own books. You know, passing out bookmarks, reviewing other’s works, giving talks, book signings etc etc.

I bet these things all work quite well to help move books off the virtual shelves.

 

Read an Ebook Week

To honor Read an Ebook week, March 2nd through March 8th, I thought I would tell you about a couple of mailing list/groups I belong to. These will be of special interest to those of you out there who, like me, have had their writings issued as Ebooks. The first group is called ebook-community.

It is a Yahoo group, open to anyone. Anything devoted to ebooks is discussed, from publishing, to writing, to marketing, to general gripes about not getting enough respect. I have learned a lot from this group.

The second group is quite new, but also has the potential to be very useful. It is called EbookPromos-reviews, and is also hosted by Yahoo. The name is self-explanatory. You can post a promo of your own work, reviews of other author’s works, cover art and links to websites.

I also belong to a Gather.com group called “No Whine, Just Champagne,” which holds on-line discussions once a week.

The danger of course is that you might spend all your free time in correspondence. I try to strike a balance, and tend to blog and read postings when I am too tired to write complicated plot things. (Like now for instance.)

I am sure there are lots of other writing groups out there. Does anyone else have a favorite one they would like to share?

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