2101, 2014

The Value of Vulnerability: Book Marketing without B.S. #8

Beverly Bambury/ January 21, 2014/ BookMarketingWithoutBS, reviews, Self-Promotion, Social Skills/ 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 I retweeted a blog post by writer and Guardian columnist Damien G. Walter. It was called The DOs and DO NOTs of Getting Your Book Reviewed and in it was the kind of solid, realistic advice I appreciate (and have written many times before). The first thing he says is that you probably need to work on your craft and write something good. Write something better. It seems obvious, but so many authors

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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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0512, 2013

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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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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2211, 2013

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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1511, 2013

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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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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3110, 2013

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Followers: Book Marketing without B.S. #1

Beverly Bambury/ October 31, 2013/ BookMarketingWithoutBS, Facebook, Marketing, Publicity, Self-Promotion, Social Skills, 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. The marketing and publicity worlds are important for understanding audience and customers, and getting the right word out to the right people; but, let’s be honest. There’s also a lot of bullshit. My goal is to help you cut through the B.S. with direct, understandable advice you won’t be embarrassed to follow. Welcome to my inaugural Book Marketing withouth BS column. Today’s question was asked anonymously, and it’s about purchasing followers on Twitter (and by extension, purchasing likes/on other blogs and social media such as Facebook, Pinterest, etc.). The short answer to this is “Don’t do it”. Below is

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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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