Review Copies, Ebooks, and Pirating: Book Marketing without B.S. #5

Beverly Bambury/ December 5, 2013/ Book Marketing, BookMarketingWithoutBS, Publicity, reviews, Self-Promotion/ 0 comments

Book Marketing without B.S. is a weekly publicity and marketing advice column for writers and other creators who prefer a realistic, clear, and no-nonsense approach. My goal is to help you cut through the bullshit with direct, understandable advice you won’t be embarrassed to follow. Send your questions to beverly@beverlybambury.com. Want reviews? Of course you do! This means that you have to send review copies, and this can get expensive with numerous physical books to send. Many of you are paying for these directly or are with a small publisher whose budgets are as tight as your own. A few of you lucky devils will be with large publishers who furnish all review copies, whether physical or through NetGalley. In fact, this post may

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#GenreLitChat: An Occasional Twitter Chat about Genre

Beverly Bambury/ December 3, 2013/ #GenreLitChat, Announcements, authors, Book Marketing, Publicity, Scheduling, Twitter/ 0 comments

Introducing #GenreLitChat, an occasional Twitter chat with writers on the state of genre, and how their work does–or doesn’t–fit. The kickoff chat is just in time for your holiday book buying needs! It’s this Thursday, December 5th at 8:30 p.m. EST/5:30 p.m. PST with John Mantooth, author of The Year of the Storm (Berkley/Penguin), Heidi Ruby Miller, author of Green Shift (Raw Dog Screaming Press), and Nathan Ballingrud, author of short story collection North American Lake Monsters (Small Beer Press). When you join the chat, you can use this page (http://twubs.com/GenreLitChat) which will focus only on the hashtag, and even automatically insert the hashtag for you if you ask questions or reply. Alternatively, you can follow the hashtag #GenreLitChat right on Twitter, but make

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SFContario 2013 Wrap-Up and Upcoming Webinar

Beverly Bambury/ December 3, 2013/ Conventions/ 0 comments

My Sunday presentation at SFContario, Self-Planning for Self-Promotion, went well. The audience gave great feedback and seemed to get a lot out of the material. They also had several good questions and comments around topics such as users of the Create Space platform being able to get into book stores to do readings, the uses of video, and timing for back list versus upcoming releases. I’ll be expanding the slide deck and adding more detail, and in the new year I plan to do a webinar for which I’ll charge a small fee. I may even do an in-person class locally, but that will depend on several factors. In any case, thanks again to everyone who came out, and thanks also to the people

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My SFContario 4 Schedule, Including Free, Open to the Public Workshop

Beverly Bambury/ November 28, 2013/ Book Marketing, Conventions, DIY, Marketing, Publicity, Self-Promotion, self-publishing/ 0 comments

Book Marketing without B.S. is taking a week off for U.S. Thanksgiving. Check back next week for #5. In the meantime, I will be at SFContario 4 this weekend (as will my husband. As you can see below, I am not the only Bambury out there!). Saturday is a busy day of panels for me, and Sunday I am running a free, open to the public workshop that will help you create a marketing and publicity plan for your creative work. Take a look, and if you see me, please say hello! I promise I don’t bite. Talk a lot, maybe, but no biting. Finally, don’t forget to check out my recent guest post by Effie Seiberg, all about doing conventions on the cheap.

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Calls for Submission #1

Beverly Bambury/ November 22, 2013/ Calls for Submission, Submissions, Useful Stuff, Writing Markets/ 0 comments

Figuring out where to submit your short stories and novels? This is the first of a reoccurring column by Selene MacLeod, who administers Facebook groups Call for Submissions: Poetry, Fiction, Art and  Open Call: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Pulp. Sign up to receive this blog’s posts by email; make sure you don’t miss useful stuff in the social media shuffle! Today’s post is an introduction as well as a listing. With that, I’ll leave the rest to Selene. Greetings to Beverly’s readers! Whenever I see Beverly’s name, I always think of that nursery rhyme “with bells on her fingers and bells on her toes.” Kind of hard to type that way, but it’s a pretty picture. As promised, I will be giving you a taste of

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How Far in Advance to Hire a Publicist and a Book Marketing Plan Timeline: Book Marketing without B.S. #4

Beverly Bambury/ November 22, 2013/ Author Readings, Blog Tour, Book Marketing, BookMarketingWithoutBS, Publicity, Publishing, Queries, reviews, Scheduling, Self-Promotion, self-publishing, Timing, Traditional Media, Useful Stuff/ 0 comments

Book Marketing without B.S. is a weekly publicity and marketing advice column for writers and other creators who prefer a realistic, clear, and no-nonsense approach. My goal is to help you cut through the bullshit with direct, understandable advice you won’t be embarrassed to follow. Send your questions to beverly@beverlybambury.com. Today brings another pair of related questions. The first is “How long before my book comes out should I hire a publicist?” It depends to a certain degree what you’re looking for and on how in-demand the publicist is. My business is relatively young, so six months is plenty of lead time for me, and I can absolutely work with much less if required. I’ve even done emergency publicity! Ideally, for prose novels, pre-work work

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The Cheapskate’s Guide to SF/F cons: A Guest Post

Beverly Bambury/ November 19, 2013/ Budget, Conventions, Guest Post/ 5 comments

Today’s guest post by Effie Seiberg goes through some handy tips on travelling to conventions on a tight budget. It would be easy to extrapolate some of these tips into general travel on a budget, too. Part of why I put out a call for this topic is that beginning in January I’ll be full-time freelance, and paradoxically, this means I’ll need to go to more conventions in a professional capacity. But. You know. With less income. So thanks again to Effie for all of her tips, and I’ll be seeing you around at as many conventions as I can manage in 2014. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, so in January I did the exact thing people tell you not to do:

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Coming Soon: Calls for Submission Column

Beverly Bambury/ November 16, 2013/ Announcements, Facebook, Guest Post, Publishing, Submissions, Useful Stuff/ 0 comments

In the next week or two I’ll have the first of a reoccurring column aggregating calls for submission. It will be by Selene MacLeod who also administers the successful Facebook group Calls for Submissions (Poetry, Fiction, Art). If this is what you like to see, sign up for email notifications of new posts so that you don’t miss a thing!

Changing/Correcting Guest Posts or Interviews, and More Replying to Reviews: Book Marketing without B.S. #3

Beverly Bambury/ November 15, 2013/ authors, Blog Tour, BookMarketingWithoutBS, Guest Post, Interviews, Publicity, Self-Promotion, Social Skills, writers/ 0 comments

Book Marketing without B.S. is a weekly publicity and marketing advice column for writers and other creators who prefer a realistic, clear, and no-nonsense approach. My goal is to help you cut through the bullshit with direct, understandable advice you won’t be embarrassed to follow. Send your questions to beverly@beverlybambury.com. Today there are two related questions. The first person asked “What if I want to change an interview or guest blog post reply after it’s already gone up?” Naturally, if there is an error of some kind–whether factual or typographical–you should politely ask the journalist or blogger to make the change and explain why if it isn’t obvious. I can’t think of any other reason you should ask to change something you’ve already vetted

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Social Media for the Misanthropic and the Anti-Social: Book Marketing without B.S. #2

Beverly Bambury/ November 7, 2013/ authors, BookMarketingWithoutBS, comic creators, DIY, Self-Promotion, Social Skills, Twitter, writers/ 3 comments

Book Marketing without B.S. is a weekly publicity and marketing advice column for writers and other creators who prefer a realistic, clear, and no-nonsense approach. My goal is to help you cut through the bullshit with direct, understandable advice you won’t be embarrassed to follow. Send your questions to beverly@beverlybambury.com. One of the best things about being a publicist, is that I get to do all the social, extrovert, asking-for-things work that my clients usually don’t want to do. I get to give them more time to create, and take away the stress of putting themselves directly out there. Also, given that my clients are overwhelmingly writers of dark fiction of some kind or another, they’re frequently put off by other social media tone

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