2312, 2013

Amazon Exclusivity and KDP Select: Book Marketing without B.S. #7

Beverly Bambury/ December 23, 2013/ author services, BookMarketingWithoutBS, Budget, comic creators, DIY, Publishing, self-publishing, Useful Stuff, 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. Once I began working independently of a publisher, I ran into an issue that I hadn’t dealt with before: exclusivity with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program. From a publicity perspective I found it frustrating, as I have contacts affiliated with other book-buying outlets and I am unable to call on them in exclusivity situations. Why would they help with a book they can’t sell, after all? Still, I know it is more complicated

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1412, 2013

Inspiration vs Newsjacking: Book Marketing without B.S. #6

Beverly Bambury/ December 14, 2013/ Book Marketing, BookMarketingWithoutBS, DIY, Marketing, Publicity, Self-Promotion, Twitter/ 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. My client, writer Chris Irvin, did a blog post about the assassinated Mexican physician and politician Maria Santos Gorrostieta, which inspired his novella, Federales. He was concerned that the post might be interpreted as using a tragedy for his own marketing benefit. I advised that the post was just fine, and that the real problem were things such as the infamous Cairo tweet from Kenneth Cole. Sure, Kenneth Cole got a lot of attention; but, the majority

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2811, 2013

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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0711, 2013

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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0111, 2013

Guest Blog: Small Press Tips & Lessons from the Booksburgh Book Store Hop

Beverly Bambury/ November 1, 2013/ Author Readings, Book Marketing, Book Signings, Book Tours, DIY, Guest Post, Marketing, Publicity/ 0 comments

Today’s guest blog is by Jennifer Barnes, of small publisher Raw Dog Screaming Press (RDSP). She organizes social media and events, and today she’s come by to share her experience organizing a madcap day in which RDSP took over Pittsburgh, doing a reading/signing each hour for five hours, at five different locations. Even if you aren’t a publisher, you may find some of these hints useful in organizing events with your writing group or other writer friends. Enjoy! Over the years RDSP has done all kinds of events from gigantic book fairs like BEA to readings in a decommissioned lunatic asylum. It takes a lot of planning to get the most out of events and you can learn from each one. We recently did

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2310, 2013

The Secret to Contacting Traditional Media for Book Publicity

Beverly Bambury/ October 23, 2013/ Book Marketing, DIY, Product Placement in Books, Queries, Self-Promotion, Social Skills, Traditional Media/ 0 comments

I haven’t contacted as many traditional media outlets as I have websites and bloggers for publicity–if for no other reason than traditional media is on a decline or integrating with online media–but, as it turns out, the secret is that there isn’t much of a secret. It still remains connections, politeness, reading directions, and being an all-around good human being. I go into some of this in my earlier article 5 Steps to a Quality Blog Tour, but here is more info with an eye toward bigger sites/traditional media publicity queries. ConnectionsThe main difference I’ve found with my work is that personal connections and networking count for even more with bigger publications, print, television, or otherwise. It’s not impossible to get into a major

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2509, 2013

A Hard Line Against Twitter DMs for Promotion and Marketing

Beverly Bambury/ September 25, 2013/ Advertising, DIY, Marketing, Publicity, Self-Promotion, Social Skills, survey, Twitter/ 5 comments

Stop using Twitter DMs for marketing or publicizing your stuff. Just. Stop. (You’re going to like this one. It’s short to read and I am telling you to do less.) Here’s why: A minimum of 90% of the DMs I receive parrot the exact same stuff/links that is already on the sender’s Twitter profile or in a bunch of their tweets. If someone’s already looked at your profile and decided to add you, you don’t need to repeat yourself in a DM. “But I’ve got free stuff to share with followers! I need to make sure they don’t miss it!” Tweet it instead. Twitter is for tweeting. You can add it to your profile, too. It won’t be that hard to find. Honest. And

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0906, 2013

Self-Promotion on Social Media – Survey Results

Beverly Bambury/ June 9, 2013/ DIY, Publicity, Self-Promotion, Twitter/ 0 comments

(Originally published at http://www.elsewords.com in July 2012.) Good evening! It’s been another overly-full week, but last weekend at Polaris and the monthly Chiaroscuro Reading Series event were well worth cramming in everything else. More on those events later. Right now I’d like to share some of the results of Beverly’s Unscientific Survey of Social Media Preference. I have the survey questions and results discussion after the break. Also, be sure to see the comments section, which has some great comments. I got 80 replies to the following questions:1. How often do you use Twitter? Daily 2-3 times per week Once per week 2-3 times per month Once per month Less frequently than once per month 2. In the last month have you re-shared someone else’s tweet on Twitter, Facebook

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1405, 2013

5 Steps to a Quality Blog Tour

Beverly Bambury/ May 14, 2013/ Blog Tour, DIY, Publicity, Social Skills/ 1 comments

I recently had a correspondence with an author that asked about my publicity services. When we determined that the fit wasn’t quite right, she asked me for a few tips on running a blog tour for her book’s publicity. I agreed to share some tips and after giving it some thought, I distilled my best practices into these five tips for running a better blog tour for your book, comic, or web series. Or CD. Or many other creative enterprises, for that matter. Step One: Quality Means Research The most important thing to take away from this article is that–if you’re doing it right–preparation for a blog tour is time-consuming work. So if you only have limited time, it’s far better for you to

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