#8 I Wanna Talk About ME!

My all time favorite thing to do it go to my Ning groups.

• http://bookblogs.ning.com/
• http://romancereadersandwriters.ning.com/

It was here that I was able to find like-minded people. You know, those wonderful people that eat, sleep, and breathe romance books. I go into the groups and find a book blog, see if they have a contact link. If they do I might say, "Hi, My name is AJ Best and I was wondering if you do author interviews or guest blogs on your site? Because like Toby Keith says I Wanna Talk About Me!" The worst they can say to me is no. (Hopefully it's not because they don't like that song.) If they do, then I go to another blog and start the process over.

What will hopefully happen is a buzz will start. "Oh, some chick named AJ Best or something like that will be blogging with us sometime next week."

Then it will build to, "OMG, AJ's coming on Friday, I can't wait, and let’s go tell Val!" Now let's all hope that this is a good thing. We are trying to not scare away the readers here.

• http://groups.yahoo.com/ There are thousands of yahoo groups out there and they are varied in subject as well as in context. You can find local area writing groups, romance writing groups, sci-fi writing groups, ... OK, so you get the point. And with most of these groups they have rules as to when you are permitted to promote your work. Make sure to read the rules and if they are not crystal clear and are only clear as mud, sit back and watch. See what the local yokels are up to and go with the flow. This will make sure that you aren't stepping on any toes. There are many readers attached to these groups, so get in there and start promoting yourself and your work! If your publisher has faith in you, you should too.

• Going back to step #10 (Get Your Name Out) get your own blog, and blog consistently. You don't have to always talk about writing and your books; you can talk about your real life. Believe it or not readers sometimes put writers up on a pedestal. They see you as "writers" and not real people. (Yeah, yeah, I hear ya!) So get on your blogs and show them your real side. (Hold on guys, maybe you don't want to get that real!)

• Nine chances out of ten your publisher (if you're published already) will have a blog of their own **This one**. Take advantage of the free publicity man, it doesn't come around every day. Your publisher and their teamwork hard to get your name out there! Make sure to help them along in any way that you can. But remember, they are working with more than one author, so give them everything you possibly can. A wise man once told me (and seems he was told from Huey Lewis or Springsteen), "It's better to have and not need, than to need and not have." So give them a blog with cover art even though they created it, it saves them the trip. Give them your website, I know they have it on file, but that makes it one less thing for them to look up!

• Review sites are another GREAT source of free publicity. Most review sites that I am aware of will give a courtesy email to the author to say, "Hey, our site reviewed your book! Come check it out!" What they really want you to do is make a comment! Say thanks. Common courtesy goes a long way in the real world folks. And while you are thinking about the review site, hit the reply button and say, "Hi! Thanks so much for the review. I appreciate the time your reviewer took to review my book. I was wondering if your site did author interviews or guest blog posts. I am available any day that you may have available except for Sundays. Thanks in advance. AJ." What's the worst that they can say? NO? Guess what, you are only out a little bit of time if they say no and it's well worth the effort to make that contact.

So get your tail out there and talk about yourself. Get out and let the world know who you are and what is going on in your life. Let them know the real you and the writer side of life as well. Get them hooked on you and your writing so when the next book comes out, they won't be able to live without it. Stop back by next week where we will be talking about Gathering All Your Friends Around.