Book marketing tips, anyone?

The release of my next novel, Radio Hope, is coming up on February 1 and I've been busy building up a virtual book tour. A big "thank you" to all who have offered to help me out!

By a bit of good timing, there was a blogfest on Monday called the Online Marketing Symposium. Lots of different writers gave their two cents about what works and what doesn't. Although I knew some of these tips already (like Goodreads ads being worthless while being a part of Goodreads itself is valuable) these dedicated bloggers gave me much food for thought.

Roland Yeomans made the good point that you have to identify your audience and target them. Not only does this make for more efficient marketing, but it gives you insights into what your audience wants. I've been hanging around on various post-apocalyptic reading groups, both on Goodreads and other places, and I've noticed there's a hunger for PA books that don't involve zombies or aliens. That might stand me in good stead because in Radio Hope, the survivors are dealing with very human mistakes and consequences.

Master blogger Alex Cavanaugh has some good tips about virtual book tours. He's said it all before, but good advice bears repeating.

Sandra Almazan has an interesting post on price pulsing--temporarily lowering the price of your book and advertising the hell out of it. Her post is well worth reading in its entirety.
The Insecure Writers Support Group was one of the few blogs to mention conventions. In this Internet marketing age many writers forget how valuable face-to-face marketing can be. Luckily for me, Worldcon is in London this year so I'm attending! I'll be on some panels and will be sure to have plenty of my books on hand.

Another important piece of advice that most bloggers gave--write the next novel! If your readers like one of your books, make sure there's something else of yours for them to read.

So, my blogging friends, what do you think I should do to market Radio Hope? I'm participating in a bunch of post-apocalyptic boards, doing a virtual book tour, will do the usual Twitter/Facebook/rally-my-friends stuff, and am busy writing the next in the Toxic World series. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!

Guest Post: Leather armour

Today I'm trading blogs with A.J. Walker, a medievalist and novelist who's just starting a virtual book tour for his first fantasy novel, Roots Run Deep, epublished by Double Dragon. He has a series called Medieval Mondays over at his blog and today I'm blogging over there about Medieval handgonnes. So without further ado. . .


In the first chapter of my fantasy novel Roots Run Deep, a team of goblinkin are preparing for a raid on a human city.

Kip was as prepared as she could be. Like anyone who lived on the Reservation, she went armed at all times. Not that she had much. Her tattered leather jerkin gave scant protection, and for weapons she carried a flint knife and a tfaa, a traditional goblin fighting stick. A balanced, two foot-long rod carved from ironwood, the tfaa didn’t look like much, but in skilled hands it could disarm and cripple a swordsman. Prenta had gotten rid of her showy clothes and dressed in a more practical leather jerkin similar to Kip’s.

These impoverished goblinkin are wearing leather armour because they can't afford anything better and their human rulers forbid them from bearing metal weapons and armor. (This ban doesn't last, but that comes later in the story. . .) Leather armour is a staple of fantasy fiction and roleplaying games, yet many people don't realize just how common it was in medieval warfare. Even knights wore it.

Leather armour goes back to ancient times and continued in use through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. This picture shows the shoulder and upper arm portions of an elegant suit of leather dating to the Italian Renaissance, courtesy of the Schola Forum. As you can see, it looks much like regular metal armour, and many historians believe that it was worn as much as or even more than metal armour. A suit of plate was hot and heavy, so on the march or during a friendly tournament the knight may choose to weather cooler leather. The rank and file would also be fitted with leather and perhaps some portions of metal armour for vulnerable places such as the head and chest.

While leather was much cheaper, it provided pretty good protection. Regular soft leather wasn't much help, but combined with quilted padding provided some protection, especially against blunt weapons such as maces.

More effective was cuir bouilli--boiled leather. If you soak leather in water and then place it in boiling water, it becomes elastic and pliable. It soon begins to shrink, thicken, and harden. As it's hardening the leather is hammered onto shaped blocks to create breastplates, greaves, vambraces, and anything else. A full suit of armour could be made in this way. The 14th century French chronicler Jean Froissart claimed that it was "leather that no iron can pierce" and while that may be overstating the case, leather armour certainly gave good protection. Games such as D&D probably undervalue its effectiveness. Modern experiments show that the average sword blow wouldn't get through, although a good English longbow would make short work of a leather breastplate! This basic article (PDF) explains the technique. Also check out this thread from Schola Forum for some more insights and pictures.

The picture below from The Historians' History of the World shows some improvements on leather armour, with overlapping metal scales, discs, and rings. These were all cheaper yet pretty effective alternatives to full plate and variants of these were used from ancient times into the Renaissance.

Guest Article: My Virtual Book Tour

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll recognize Angela K. Nickerson, who passed through here a while back during her virtual book tour. The VBT has become a handy tool for promoting an author's work, and today she shares her experiences.

My first book, A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome (Roaring Forties Press: 2008), hit bookstores without fanfare, hurrah, or splash. In fact, though my local Borders said it had one copy in stock, I never had that pleasure of standing in front of it to admire it. They lost it in the stockroom. Needless to say, my publishing house, like so many out there, produces lovely travel books on a very low budget leaving little room for publicity.

So, like many Midlisters, I have been doing most of my own publicity work, and I have learned a great deal along the way. And because I am not a trust fund baby with millions to burn, I have had to do it all on the cheap. Thank heavens for the Virtual Book Tour!

In September, 2007 the New York Times ran an article profiling Amy Cohen and her blog book tour. I happened to be in the last editing throes on Michelangelo’s Rome at that point, and I read the article knowing that my publicity reality would be similar. Ms. Cohen’s publisher, Hyperion, set up her blog tour, but it was clear that I would have to do my own. So, once the manuscript was put to bed, I started researching. Those long months between sending the book off to the printer and seeing it in my hands for the first time were filled with internet searches and hours and hours of reading.

The idea of a virtual book tour (VBT) is relatively new, and there are several people claiming to have invented the idea, but it really all boils down to one thing: an author blogs for different sites in an effort to drive interest and sales. That sounds pretty simple, but in reality it is much more complicated.

First, I developed a list of blogs and sites to target. In fact, I broke that list down into three groups. I decided that I would have three weeklong mini-tours—one in April, one in May, and the final in June. I targeted different kinds of sites in each month hoping to build some momentum from week to week.

Once I had my list developed, I enlisted some help. One of the sites I hoped to target had some very specific advice for authors: have a publicist do the asking. This site indicated that it would not even consider requests from authors themselves. Fortunately I have a friend who was willing to do a little PR work for me for free, so I took her up on her offer. I supplied her with the list of sites to approach and the accompanying materials, she sent the emails and helped me create a schedule.

One of the critical elements of a VBT is exclusivity: each day should be devoted to only one site. And then you must send readers to that particular site. A VBT, when done right, is mutually beneficial. You reach new readers at each new stop, but ideally you direct readers from your own blog or other writing venues to their sites, too, thus boosting their readership. I kept a schedule at my own website and updated my blog each day with links and teasers sending my readers to the sites where I was appearing. I am also a Red Room author, so I kept my blog and calendar at Red Room updated as well.

Having something different and original to say at each stop is also important so that readers will follow you from one site to the next. The easy thing to do is to deliver the same answer every time the question arises, “How did you get into travel writing?” And while the answer is essentially the same, I tried to vary the response as much as possible.

In the end my VBT has been a lot of work, but it has been totally worth it! I’ve been a guest blogger on so many great sites (20-some in all), and I’ve been able to write posts about a wide range of topics. High Culture on a Low Budget asked me to create a playlist for A Journey into Michelangelo's Rome which you can now buy on iTunes. I did a Micro Travel-Writing Workshop for the readers at Nerd’s Eye View. Europe a la Carte in England invited me to do a live chat. And I did several interviews including with the Traveling Mamas (who also did a book giveaway), Blissful Travel, and Write to Travel (out of New Zealand).

I don’t have the budget to go leave the continent to promote the book. And my in-person appearances are all self-funded, so this is a cheap way to connect with readers all over the world. And while I love to meet my readers face-to-face, I’ve had some wonderful opportunities to interact in different and exciting ways while making my way around the blogosphere.

Many thanks to all of you—including Midlist Writer—who have hosted me on my VBT. Rest assured: I am excited to return the favor!

Virtual Book Tours: One Author's Experience

I've been getting interested in virtual book tours as a promotional tool. More and more authors are doing them nowadays and I'll be hosting my first this June both here and on Grizzled Old Traveler. Science fiction author and fellow Canadian Christopher Hoare has an interesting summary of his experiences with a virtual book tour on his blog.

In a nutshell, it helped him network with other writers, but it didn't generate a huge response. He seems upset about the lack of comments on the posts, something I've been having trouble with on my blog (say something, people!) but since he hasn't seen this quarter's royalty statements yet, he can't say how it's affected sales. As Chris points out, it's only one tool in the promotional tool box.

His Iskander series and two anthologies he has contributed to are available from Double Dragon.