Promotion

Promotion seems to be more of a bear the longer the book is out. It becomes increasingly difficult to find websites I haven't hit already. One that I did get a mention on a while back was Book Club Queen, with a date set for December 8th or 9th for an interview and a feature. Luckily, I put it on my calendar to check on it, because when the date rolled around, I hadn't heard from them again.

Doing a lot of promotion over the last six months, I couldn't recall if I had already sent in answers to an interview, if I had provided them with the book cover, etc.. (Lesson for December, write down actions I have already taken when I calendar something.) I kind of felt stupid emailing to see if I had already sent in something or if I was waiting for questions.

Fortunately, Desiree was extremely nice/apologetic about missing the date, and it turned out she had fallen behind in sending out the questions. I answered them quickly, sent her everything she asked for and today it showed up at www.book-club-queen.com/gumbo-justice.html

Desiree emailed me to let me know it was up, with links to the book review and the interview. I've put the links on my twitter, facebook, and my own websites. After this I'm going to have to start trolling the internet for new sources, however.

I also had the opportunity to sell my book at a holiday bazaar for my kids' school. It was a fund raiser, so I had to pay $25 for the table. We also found out we had to pay parish taxes, apparently someone from last year must have ratted out the group, so the sheriff's rep was there, handing out little forms to make sure we sent in our 4.5% by December 26. (We'll also have to match that and pay the state another 4.5%.)

The weather was iffy in the morning. It had been raining the night before and was really cold, but it cleared up to a beautiful, if nippy, day. (Probably high 30's, which is like below zero to us.)

I sold enough books to make it worthwhile, and got to talk to some interesting people. I met another parent who is also an attorney, who sells shutters he paints to look like fish and fleur de lis. I also met a lady whose son is writing a book, and several of the teachers bought copies for relatives. (You'd be surprised at the number of teachers who don't really like to read. Well, maybe in Louisiana you wouldn't be.)

In any event, it was fun, since I knew a great many of the people, and most of the stuff people were selling was so overpriced it made my book look like a Christmas bargain. I am now contemplating checking out some local venues that charge a nominal fee to vendors to sell books and other merchandise. I am not much for the whole selling myself face-to-face to the public thing, it feels too show-offy, but my husband could sell water to a drowning man, so we make a pretty good team. Hopefully, next time the temperature will be a comfortable 65.

New Address for Pot Thief

I apologize for using the blog like this, but I want to inform everyone that thanks to Mediacom's incompetence, I and millions of others have no access to our email accounts which of course includes our contacts list. Mediacom seems to have had its entire email operation hijacked, so I am switching to Thepotthief@gmail.com. You can also reach me at jmorenduff@valdosta.edu.

Laissez les bon temps roulette

Marilyn keeps saying she thinks she won't win the EPIC award because she's up against my book, and I keep saying I won't win because I'm up against hers. Not to mention that she is the real pro in this business and I'm a novice. But regardless of who wins, being in New Orleans with Marilyn and Billie will be great, and Holli lives there, so I imagine we'll all be getting together for some famous New Orleans food. Now that I think about it, if I didn't know Billie was from Illinois, I would have pegged her to be from New Orleans. She has that easy-going, you only live once, do-right-but-enjoy-it-along-the way philosophy that defines Nawlins. I can picture her riding one of those floats and tossing doubloons.

Epicon

Billie Johnson, OTP publisher will be a speaker at Epicon! Woo hoo!

For those of you who don't know, Epicon is Epic's convention. Epic is an international organization for electronically published authors and publishers. They have always been the leaders of e-publishing.

I've been an e-published author since books were first e-published. Now, with Kindle, electronic publishing has finally been accepted.

Besides being invited as a speaker, Billie has two other good reasons to attend, two of her books are finalists in the mystery category--that's two books out of the four finalists! One is Michael Orenduff's, The Pot Thief, and the other is my No Sanctuary.

I've been a finalist before but never a winner. Because I think The Pot Thief is a fantastic book, I don't expect I'll be a winner this time either, but it's always an honor to be a finalist.

And yes, I'll be in New Orleans at the Epicon. I'm a speaker too, going to do my interactive talk on "How to Write a Mystery" for the adults and on Saturday for the young writer's track.

Any of you who have books on Kindle can join Epic. It's http://www.epicauthors.com
for information.

Now that I know Billie will be there, I'm looking forward to Epicon and New Orleans even more.

PS!!!!

Forgot to say the most important thing... I've been with three publishers now--this is the second POD and the middle one was traditional. THIS, our OTP, is TERRIFIC. The book looks great and I couldn't be more pleased. The traditional press I was with had a huge distributor (National Book Network) that did a great job on orders, PERIOD. Never did another thing. Their printer went out of business in the middle of my last print run. WOW! Give me POD any day. Why there's still any controversy about the technique is beyond me. POD is perfect for mystery authors since we don't need huge, expensive print runs where the, and it happens, huge, expensive returns mean that the publisher has to foot the bills. I've been fighting for POD for ten years, to little avail, but it's right for me and for my books and I'll bet it's right for you all, too.

Thanks, Billie!!!!!!!!!!

www.kitsloane.net

ahhh, PR

With my new one, The Fat Lady Sings, just out, I've been re-working my PR. Any book that has a particular "hook" (mine revolves around a light opera repertory company's performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta) provides its own suggestions. My story got me Googling G&S productions worldwide and an easy search provided multiple addresses of G&S companies. I sent each one a flyer with postcard attached saying that "this story could prove profitable if offered during intermissions," or something like that (I hand wrote it 48 times and should remember!) So far the famous Lamplighters Musical Theater of San Francisco has already told me they're interested in my signing for them during intermissions in their January season. We shall see how this works out.

Then I utilize my online sources, the main one being DorothyL, the librarian-readers network of over 3000 people. DorothyL is not for the faint of heart. Half the time they seem to dislike writers, but the other half of them are usually are interested in new titles and I've been with them for ten long years so a lot of these people "know" me. I also do a small giveaway of, this time, three copies of the book in exchange for being reviewed on the list. 3000 readers with one posting. That's a good PR venue.

I live in a very rural part of Northern CA and the nearest bookstore is a gooooood hour away over a 4600 ft. mountain! So I concentrate on local venues that don't require daylong trips. I keep a pack of my latest postcard on me and put a pile of them at every coffee place (we may not have bookstores, but we have FOUR coffee spots!), and on every bulletin board. The cards are great, colorful and shiny and two-sided with all the pertinent info on the back and I've watched people take off with half a dozen. I believe Overnite Printers online did them. It took longer than overnight, but they are really a keeper.

Aside from the above, I'll see what else turns up. I do quite a bit of public speaking and enjoy that a lot. I read the local papers and see who invites speakers. 90% of the time they want you to bring and sell your books.

I do think for new authors the main attack should be getting your NAME out there. That's the only thing readers have to alert them that you have something they "should" read. NAMES! Non-fiction has SUBJECT. Fiction only has NAMES. I'm not a blogger (except for here), but there are diverse ways of doing this getting recognized bit. Not easy, but possible. So try EVERYTHING! That's what I do and then I discard those venues that are too time-consuming, costly, or don't do a thing for me, PR-wise.

It's all a matter of trial and error and evaluating it all, all the time, and then adjusting so it fits your lifestyle, pocketbook, and mental health!

Whew!!!!

www.kitsloane. net

On Wings of Murder- St. Thomas Photos

If anyone is interested, there is a photo of what is left of the St. Thomas Housing Development from Gumbo Justice on the On Wings of Murder website at http://murderx5.blogspot.com/
These are the projects where the first couple of murders occur. I took the photo, so please ignore the big pole in the forefront. My talents do not lie in photography.

The two buildings in the photo and a third building on the left which makes up a kind of horseshoe of buildings are the only buildings left in the development. The rest of the area is now a Super WalMart and a large neighborhood of pretty nice houses. The neighborhood was supposed to be "mixed income," but my feeling is the only "mixed" income part is what you see in the photo, because the new houses are pretty much market value houses.