Organizing The Book Promotion: Low-Tech Rules

I wrote the book on the laptop, of course. And I scanned in all the photos and permission slips, and chapters, and changes. I have a smart phone I couldn’t live without. Now it’s time to start organizing the promotion for the book.

People are sending me email suggestions for book stores and craft stores, mixed in with contacts and suggestions, links to websites, email addresses and Yahoo groups.  There are different ideas mixed up in different emails. There is no way to label each and keep it all straight.

So now I can ask people with blogs on writing or coaching or mixed media, creativity, journaling or arts to let me know if you would be interested in being on my blog tour–a series of interviews I’m scheduling around the release date. I can guest post or you can present an interview–in print or as a podcast. Let me  know in the comments!

I’m doing fewer signings and more events–Raw Art Journaling is not a novel, it’s a book on making meaning with your art. So having people do some art when they come to a signing makes sense.

A few events are planned, some in the works. And that’s when I realized that I need the old-fashioned organization tool I used for years before the computer: a three-ring binder. At first I refused, and made an Excel spreadsheet instead. But that didn’t work for me. I need to see the calendar at the same time I see the to-do list. See the “maybe” list along with the “final” list. Of course I’ll still use the computer, but I also need one place in the third dimension for all these lists and ideas and maybe-I-cans.

So the binder got purchased and labeled and organized. It will require a lot of updates and changing, but as the book release date (July 20, 2011) creeps closer, I’ll be ready for it.

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art to be released by North Light Books.

Through a number of my careers–creative director in an ad agency, editor at a newspaper, training program designer, event manager–three-ring binders kept my projects organized as I traveled from Beijing to Ft. Wayne.

The binder is chartreuse, easily visible on my desk or in the studio, as paper drifts pile over it. There are dividers for events (including signings), developing classes, publicity, people, and related projects. Costs are on an Excel sheet that I can print out if I have to. Most are lists that are also in the computer, printed out, and written over with additional thoughts.