Morning, oh oracle of information! I come seeking guidance. My primary publisher is closing up shop and returning rights to my works to me and my writing partner. We're thinking about going the self-pub route, but our biggest stumbling block is promotion. It's changed a lot since we started publishing 10 years ago, and neither of us really has any clue what the best techniques are nowadays. Any tips and suggestions from your own experience you can offer? Thanks!
Honestly? Outside of having a website and blogging, I don’t really do much promotion. I kinda write to the audience I already have :D
I did do some for The City War, but that was mostly arranged by my publisher. It consisted primarily on my part of doing a “blog tour” where I guest-blogged on book blogs that were arranged by the publisher ahead of time; I also posted excerpts from the book on my own blog. There were promotional materials as well (magnets, mailers I think), but those were used more by the publisher than by me personally.
For one of my previous books I wrote to a bunch of book review blogs, offering to send them a free copy in return for a review (no other conditions, just A Review), and a few of them took me up on it, but I don’t think it really drove sales. I also tried Google Ads, but it’s so fucking confusing I have no way of knowing if the return on investment was worth it. I used VistaPrint to print up some quasi-free ad cards to leave out at local conventions and such, but again it’s hard to know whether that drove sales at all.
The most common promotional event is the Reading/Signing At Your Local Bookstore, but I’ve never set one of those up and I don’t really know how they work.
Lulu selfpub does sell promotional packages, and I suppose you could go look at those and see what they consist of; that might give you some ideas for promoting off your own bat. (I don’t suggest buying a package; that’s how Lulu makes most of its money but I don’t think the ROI is very good.)
Sorry I can’t be of more help! I’m promotionally lowkey. :D
I have to ask, are homemade treats accepted where you are? Because my mom used to do that back in the 70's when I was a kid, but then the razor/apples/poison scare hit and no one would take our goodies. I would love to do that instead of buying stuff, but I don't know if people are still too scared to eat them!
A very good point. I live on a military base – which is basically like the world’s best gated community ever – so we all know each other, and there are no kids here who don’t belong here. I’m also marking the bags of cookies with my name, address, and phone number – so if the parents have any questions, they can call me to ask.
I handed out cookies last year, too – it was a pretty success, with most of the kids happily digging in, as well as a few who had obviously been very well trained by their parents to refuse home-baked items. And most of the time, their parents called me the next day to lament that their children had actually paid attention for once! (I also had a number of parents call to say the cookies hadn’t made it to their children’s lunch boxes… not because of razor blade fears, but because the parents saw my name and went, “MINE!”
If you really know your neighbors - and they really know you, and you know the kids you're giving the stuff too - you can always try next year. I'm seriously lucky that I can do this - and I know I won't always be able to when we move away, but I'm going to grab the chance while I can, because it's fun!
I just finished re-reading Mise en Place (which I love on so many levels!) and I did have a question about one of your story choices: I kept expecting Sherlock to tell John *he* should be the head chef. Why did you decide not to go that route, despite setting John up as a good chef?
Ooo, good question. I think most everyone expected John to take over as head chef – and I admit, that was one of my early ideas. And I probably would have gone in that direction, if I’d stuck to the original casting, where Mike Stamford was the chef instead of Molly. (Somewhere on my hard drive, there’s a whole scene with Mike in the kitchen, before I realized that the story works better if Mike is off-screen.)
But I ended up having Molly in the kitchen, and her dynamic with Mary and Artie was so good that I didn’t want to mess it up. Plus, she turned out to be competent (once Sherlock gave her some confidence) and I didn’t want to demote her. It’s a small kitchen; putting John in would have definitely been a demotion, no matter how it was styled – and that’s happened to me before, so I didn’t really want to do the same to Molly.
(Cut, because I am wordy.)
But there’s this too: there are different ways to cook, and different ways to approach cooking. There are people who are fantastic restaurant chefs, who thrive on the fast-paced world of a restaurant kitchen, where everything happens NOW-NOW-NOW and things are moving fast and furious and the orders are coming in and you have to be quick on your feet and five steps ahead of the game the entire night from open to close because the customers demand their food all at the same time regardless of how long it actually takes to make the six different dishes they ordered, and woe be to you if the veggies are cold, and that waitress is totally getting stiffed on the tip.
And then there are those of us who are perfectly content to cook at home, where you might have a fast-paced twenty minutes right before dinner is supposed to be served, when you’re supposed to be stirring the sauce and seasoning the veggies and remembering to check the temperature of the chicken and OH SHIT YOU FORGOT TO SET THE TABLE. And if the veggies are a little cold, it’s not the end of the world, you just have cold veggies. No one’s getting stiffed on the tip.
(Three guesses which kind of cook I am.)
It’s not that I think John wouldn’t be a frickin’ awesome head chef – I think, given his background and characterization, he’d be great. Calm under pressure, quick to alter his plan based on circumstance, and still able to turn out all the dishes on time and at the correct temperature.
But I’m not entirely sure he’d enjoy it. Not for very long, anyway. Remember, he worked in the kitchen as a teen, and he left to go to university and medical school and the Army. At some point, he made that decision to go. At this point, in his 30s, he’s pretty old to step back into what’s essentially a young man’s game.
This too: for John, cooking is a way to connect with people on a very personal level. There’s a passage in the story where I talk about how John cooks with company – the company being the memory of his grandfather James, and his father Hamish. I’m dead serious about that, because I do the same thing – when I bake, my grandmother’s looking over my shoulder. When I use Leslie’s knife, she’s commenting on the size of my mince. Heck, I’ve even got Molly and Sherlock in the mix now, too.
Cooking for me (and by extension, John, because John’s experience in the kitchen is essentially my own) is something to be savored, to be enjoyed. I cook for other people – all the time, really, way more than I cook for myself. I’m a big fan of Penzey’s Spices – for a while, they were handing out bumper stickers that said, “Love People. Cook them tasty food.” I had that on my fridge for the longest time. (Still would, if I could figure out where I put the sticker when we moved.)
I think John has the same view: we see him cook, yes – but most of the time, he’s cooking for someone specific. He’s cooking for Sherlock, or for the Empire staff. He even cooks for himself at one point, as a way of shaking a bad experience, to sort of bolster his courage and self-confidence. And it works – every time he cooks for someone, the love that he puts into the dish is evident by what happens after: he feels better about himself, the Empire staff is energized about the task at hand. (And as I recall, there’s some pretty good sex with Sherlock. Well, eventually!)
If John had become the head chef of the Empire – I don’t think he’d have necessarily lost the love of cooking, but I do think he would have lost something. Cooking wouldn’t have been the same – he wouldn’t be doing it for the love of doing it anymore. He’d have been cooking for the wrong reasons entirely.
It’s not about doing what you love – it’s about loving what you do. John loves to cook, but on his terms, not anyone else’s. I don’t think John would love working in a restaurant kitchen. I think, in a lot of ways, it would have killed his desire to cook at all – or at least to put so much of himself into it. I love the theatre, but when I worked in theatre, I never wanted to go – especially when I’d spent all day working there.
(Clue to my writing, friends: John is usually a stand-in for me. Partially, at least.)
So that’s my reason for not having Sherlock ask John to become the head chef – and within the world of the story, it’d be easy for me to say that Sherlock realized it (and also that Molly was indeed up to the task), and thus never put that pressure on him.
So, that’s a very long answer to what is a pretty basic question. I hope it helps. (And I’m glad you enjoyed Mise!)
sadbhyl replied to your post “auntiesuze replied to your post “notmissmarple replied to your photo...”
I'm a bariatric patient and so HAVE to use meal replacements in order to get my minimum daily protein. And I hate them. Real food is much better for you, and doesn't leave you feeling deprived. And most protein drinks taste like ass.
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Anything that tastes good as a treat once in a while is going to taste horrible if it's the only thing you're allowed to have. (This is perhaps why I am totally over salads.)
I hope it's worth it for you, though? And that if you do try the chai flavor, that it satisfies more than the chocolate and vanilla!
sadbhyl replied to your post: Advent Drabble 18 - Puddle (requested ...
I shouldn’t be so chuffed, but Oliver has the same birthday as I do (and Pope Francis)! It explains the differences between Oliver and Sherlock (Sagittarius vs. Capricorn).
