Managing Your Own Book Tour–Part II

Yesterday, I gave you some tips about managing your own book tour. Here are some more tips:

7. Do your own follow up. Ten days before your event, call your contact and confirm time and place and if the books are on hand. If the location is in your area, drive there and see if your book is displayed and there are notices.

8. The day before the event, call your contact and ask what time you should be there. Overkill? Not at all. Some places want you there an hour before, some just 10 minutes early. Making the call will help you remember the name of your contact.

9. Out of town event? Check maps for directions, one-way streets, parking garages. Ask the store owner if the street number is on the store. Find landmarks. Bring change for parking meters, and cash for parking garages. Then plan on arriving half an hour early. You can’t be late to your own event.

10. Some spaces expect you to have a contact list in their area and will expect you to bring in your own clients. If you don’t have a list, you may want to mention that in an early discussion.

11. Even if three people show up, put on your best show. You owe it to your book, your self-esteem, and your work ethic to do everything as well as you can.

12. Bring your business card and use them. Make your card colorful, make it a card people will want to keep. Glossy stock is very popular right now, but you can’t write on it easily. Print cards so people can take notes.

13. Ask people for their cards. Have a sign-up list to keep people current on your activities. Then send them the links to your blog or website–wherever you post updates. Write them occasionally–a non-sales note. You can’t say thank-you too much.

14. Send a thank-you email to every contact in every place you go. Even if it was a disaster, thank them for their effort. You want to encourage people to do the right thing.

15. Never say anything bad about a book signing out loud. It’s cheap and that’s not you. But keep a list of which ones worked and which ones did not. That’s smart information for you to use next time.

--Quinn McDonald is on a book tour for Raw Art Journaling. She’s also reviving her creativity at JournalFest this week.

Managing Your Own Book Tour: Part I

Coaching Giveaway Report: Today is the day I’ll be contacting the winners of the free coaching. I will not be publishing names to keep all coaching confidential. It’s an ethical bond I want to continue. There were seven winners.

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Recently published a book? Going on book signings or a tour? Wear comfy shoes. Here are some notes  about what I’ve learned (some of it the hard way) from my book tour. No sense making mistakes if you can’t help others.

Make sure your book is at the top of the stack.

1. You care more than anyone else about your book. Book stores, art stores, libraries’ marketing managers are all understaffed and overworked. Your book is one in a long line of events, signings, and added work load on the store. Make it easy on the person you are working with by appreciating their job load and being flexible. Here’s how to do that:

• Check out the book store to make sure their audience is right for you. If your book is how-to, don’t go to a mystery book store.
• Check out the events in town the same day as your book signing. If there is a concert, art opening or big event that will drain your attendance,  re-think the date. You will have to check dates once the marketing person gives you a date, so ask your contact if you can  confirm within 24 hours and then do it right away.
• Not every event will damage your attendance. You only care about the ones that are interesting to your target audience.
• If your contact asks you to switch days, rooms, or stores, be flexible. Think long term–another opportunity, another book. It’s good to be remembered for helping out.

2. Check the calendar for holidays–and not just yours. An important religious holiday can not only drain your audience, but make you look insensitive.

3. Think event, not just signing. Book signings are getting harder to do. Celebrities draw crowds, but not every author is a celebrity. Think event–what is in your book that you can do with your audience that’s fun, relatively easy to do, and will make your audience want the book?

4. If you aren’t in a book store, make it clear who is bringing the books and how much they will be sold for. Not every store will automatically order your book. Find out before you show up.

5. If you sell your books yourself, you will need to charge sales tax. Get a sales tax license before you need it. They can take time. Know the local tax amount. Some locations have a county sales tax and a city sales tax. It’s your business to find this out. Check the city’s website, or call the comptroller’s office.

6. Not every cool location is well-organized. Check their website, subscribe to their blog or newsletter ahead of time. If they don’t update their blog regularly, if the website doesn’t show events, it will be hard to get people to show up.  And if people don’t show up, you aren’t selling your book and the cool location won’t either.

Tomorrow: The rest of the list in Part II

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling. She has learned a lot about book promotion in the last three months.

Book Marketing and Celebrity

Writing a book is just the beginning. Then you market the book. A lot of this can be fun–a blog tour, giveaways, meeting new people. A lot of it is not so much fun–lots of rejection (again) from bookstores, editors, and places you think are perfect for events. After the writing was done, I felt I had completed something, come to a good place. But it’s just the beginning. In fact, every rest stop in the journey has a great view of the future. But the road to that future is another steep path.

The bright promise of celebrity can feel a little dry and prickly.

I felt elated when I got a book contract, then terrified that I actually had to write the book. I felt elated when it was done, thinking I had stepped up a notch, but my rosy idea that book stores would welcome me, smile, and suggest a book signing was really way off. You have to struggle with book signings. It seems that book stores are busy doing not-signings, and you are a giant bother to them. As usual, it helps if you are already famous.

Which is where I ran into the snag. I subscribe to several marketing-idea blogs and newsletters, and last week was hit with several on the topic, “Marketing isn’t enough, you must turn yourself into a celebrity,” and “Unless you are a celebrity, your book isn’t moving.” Oh.

I am not sure what a celebrity is, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be a rock star, sweat-lodge emerging, champagne drinking,  talk-show-tour celebrity.  I’m a creativity coach, I run workshops. I’m happy doing that. Am I supposed to want a line of products, a TV show, people recognizing me on the street?

Actually, what I really want, if I had a magic wand, is my book reaching people who feel they are not enough, not good enough, not smart enough to be creative. Those who have journals with one or two pages filled up, and more pages torn out in disappointment. Those who want to journal but don’t feel complete enough to be themselves, even in a journal.

In my magic-wand world, I’d be celebrity enough if there were some people who pick up kits and do them so very well, and still feel empty read the book and realized that there is a life beyond kits. Beyond a project class that has you assemble a cute object and give it as a present. There is a satisfying life of sloppy experimentation and doing stuff that doesn’t work that makes you feel connected to creativity, to a bigger sense of yourself. In that life, making meaning is the point, and trying out ideas is exciting because you are learning about yourself and your ideas and how you connect to a huge web of ideas and, well, healing. Healing your own pain, growing into and beyond your own “not enough-ness,” connecting to another’s feeling of ‘not-enough’ and being OK with that, too.

I wrote the book for those people. People like me. People who yearn to have some sort of creative spark fanned into a flame. I want to share that joy, that incredible flood of gratitude that comes from creativity. The startling realization that an hour in a studio or workshop creates a life more satisfying than any “real housewife” has ever dreamed of. And you can have that life without wearing an underwire, pushup bra or stilettos or photographing yourself in your underwear and sending it to fans. I believe the pursuit of happiness is interesting and engaging and may be what happiness really is. That’s why I wrote the book. That’s why I teach. That’s my kind of celebrity.

–Quinn McDonald’s book, “Raw Art Jouraling: Making Meaning, Making Art,” is being shipped at this very moment, and will be available in July, 2011. It’s not too shabby that it has broken Amazon’s top 5 in Mixed Media, top 30 in Creativity and top 75 in Crafts and Hobbies. Maybe it’s a celebrity!