So what’s the bottom line on the conferences?

Just a few observations after my panel appearances at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference on Tuesday, June 11 and at the Greater Los Angeles Writers Conference Friday and Saturday, June 14 and 15.

Venues: Santa Barbara was much more upscale. It was held at a lovely hotel that overlooks the beach. GLA was obviously done on a budget at LA Valley College. The meetings were held in classrooms instead of conference rooms.

Linda Joy Myers, Marla Miller, me, Eleanor Vincent

Panels: However, I think the panels went well for both. In Santa Barbara I was a panel member discussing building a platform with a master moderator, Marla Miller, presiding. At the GLA I moderated three panels: memoir, platform, and poetry. Excellent experts were on all panels so we had lively discussions and lots of questions from the audience. Since the poetry workshop was a roundtable everyone participated in a give and take discussion throughout. In the end I think we provided useful information with lots of good takeaways in everyone of the panels I participated in.

Writers Conferences Are Not Good Book Selling Opportunities: Even though conference attendees were asked to support the presenter by buying their books – since that is the only way they get paid – that really didn’t happen. I sold one book at each conference – of course two more in sales than I would have had, had I stayed home. Writers are not book buyers. At least not when they are at a conference.

Bottom Line: What I gained instead was more people knowing about my book and me. Being a conference presenter afforded me a great networking opportunity, and it added to my platform. That’s all good.  

If you Like me, what's the point?

My memoir book cover photo by Madison Poulter

There is a thread going on, on LinkedIn that goes like this: I’ll like your fan page and Amazon book page if you like mine. So I’ve been responding to a lot of those requests,  and now I'm up over twenty-five new likes in just the last week. 

But, I wonder what’s the point? Do these new likes translate into book sales? So far, I don’t think so. A few people that I've met through my social networks have said my book is on their list, but I haven’t seen a bump in my Amazon rankings as a result.

So with all this social media networking – over 900 Facebook friends, over 400 Facebook fans, almost 250 LinkedIn connections, and a constantly growing list of Twitter followers, I wonder where it is all getting me. And I find that keeping up all the connections is a lot of work.

Okay, I won’t be so down about it all. I’m only into this marketing game about six months. I’ve got to give it more time. Plus the fact that my book is a hard sell – like my son just said, hard to read but beautiful and powerful. I have to hang on to that beautiful and powerful comment and hopefully lots more people will agree.

Also, someone on LinkedIn just answered my what's the point? question that if he gets just one sale from all the exposure – that’s what it really is, exposure – he’ll feel it’s worth the effort. Okay I can go with that. I won’t be greedy. One sale is sure better than none.

By the way, if you care to Like my Facebook author page, click on the link.

Pre-release jitters

As the days get closer to the release of my memoir, I seem to be getting more and more anxious. Though I got my first endorsement yesterday from one of the reviewers and it was absolutely terrific, I keep thinking what facts did I get wrong, what people did I offend by writing too much or too little about them, and how will I be able to handle the books signings and interviews that will surely be on my calendar in the weeks after its release.

I wonder if these are common thoughts for authors – especially of memoir. I took a class a while back from Maureen Murdock who calls memoir “unreliable truth” – that it, it is my truth versus anyone elses. For instance my husband has been reading a review copy and he is sure that the snowstorm that I write about didn’t happen in New York City when I say it happened. Well, I definitely stand by my memory, but it makes me wonder how many other things will he think I’m just flat-out wrong about. Besides having these about-to-be-released jitters I have a lot of things left to do on my plate before publication date. Here’s my list so far – though I’m sure this list won’t mean much to you, it’s very important to me and my marketing effort.

• Develop list of celebrities, authors, educators who might offer an endorsement and find out how to contact them (my cousin is helping me with this)
• Arrange book signing at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services
• Get friends and family to arrange book signings (my sister is working on Powell’s)
• Develop list of blogs where I could post about the book as a guest (WOW is in the works, though not certain yet)
• Follow through with Martha re blurb on her blog Out on a Limb
• Contact UCLA Writer’s Program about getting publicized through them 
• Give blurb about book to Shalom for Ellen Bass’ monthly newsletter
• Ditto for Winning Writers
• Follow up about Easy Reader Interview
• Arrange for Beach Reporter interview
• Send out Evites re book signings at Pages, our local independent bookstore
• Keep posting about book signing at Pages on Facebook
• Keep on urging people to Like my author page and read my blogs

Writing this all down here helps. I’m sure I’ll think of more to do, but for the time being it is quite enough.

And of course the most important thing I need to do is Keep Calm. I really need to keep pinching myself as a reminder that this is all happening to me.