Top 10 Countdown #5 Remember, Tomorrow Never Comes

#5 Remember Tomorrow Never Comes

OK, here's the deal, tomorrow will never come. That sounds like a very philosophical statement coming from me and I'm not normally a philosophical writer, but hear me out. To prove my point check out my waistline. I know, what does that have to do with writing!? EVERYTHING! I keep telling myself that I will diet, and I will exercise, but I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow because I'm too tired, or that roast beast (beef) looks too good to only have one helping. I can't diet today because that Almond Joy cake Momma made for dessert can't possibly be left for her to eat! She's a diabetic for crying out loud. I'm saving her from herself. I must save her and I must do it twice TODAY! So TOMORROW I will diet. But for some strange reason it is always today. Today is the only day that we have to think about, so let's make the most of it.

You need to make yourself write sometimes. At first it will come easily. You are going to be so stoked by a great story. You are going to do nothing but write, write, write. They ideas are going to flow from your fingers. The sparks will fly, and your significant other will be standing nearby with a fire extinguisher to make sure that no fires are started. Then your darling child comes up to you and says, "I'm hungry!" or my personal favorite, "I'm bored!" So you get up quickly and run to the kitchen to make a quick PB&J and then you are headed back to write. You then see the mail on the table that has to be put away. Dang is that the credit card bill that was due last week? Why didn't that get paid? Now you are making a mad dash for the check book to pay it before too many late fees get added. Hold up, the check book's not balanced? It's always balanced, do you have enough to pay the bill? By this time, you have forgotten that you were writing in the first place.

It's especially hard on a nice sunny day. But you need to set a goal, even if it's small.

* My goal for today is 400 words, in other words, you can set a word count goal!


So if you decide that you are going to write that 400 words act like the Nike commercial and Just Do It! Sit down and write 400 words. It needs to be something. It doesn't have to be the most wonderful thing you have ever written and if you are stuck on the story that you are writing, start on something else. Don't force the words to come that will only frustrate you and drive a very painful and potentially LONG writers block into your near future. (I hate writers block! In the infamous words of my children, "It sooooo sucks!")

* My goal is 5 pages, I'm sure you get where this is going, a page goal right!?


It's time to be selfish. Have your spouse watch the kids. Go somewhere quiet, or semi-quiet if you live in my house and close the door. Put several full laundry baskets in front of the door and sit down to write. You have to take the time to do this.If you don't take the time to be selfish with your writing, no one else is going to do this for you. If you don't take care of this child, (Yes, your writing is your baby too! Don't believe me? Wait till your first not so good review when you want to beat the heck out of some reviewer for having an opinion. And do remember folks, it's just an opinion. OK?) no one is going to do it for you. So you need to get off your duff and take time for it. You can not blame anyone but yourself if you don't get it done.


* My goal is to write for 30 minutes and last but not least...a timed goal!


I know you've heard it before but use a timer. The advice is sound, tried and true guys. If you don't have an egg timer, a timer on your microwave, your stove, your phone, or an alarm clock, I do have solutions. I absolutely love this site: http://www.nakedalarmclock.com/ because you can set it and have it go off whenever your goal time is complete. Besides, the name is fun. (I bet over half of you have already clicked on the link thinking you would find something naked on there, HA fooled you.) Make sure if you set a timer for yourself, that you are not punishing yourself. Try not to make this a time out like you would give your child. So, don't do it for 3 straight hours in a row. When I tutored college Accounting, I always told students never to study for more than an hour at a time, take a 10-15 minute break and then go back to studying. That way your brain doesn't go into overload. If you force your brain to work non-stop for 3-4 hours then you may end up resenting the time that you are sitting there, and won't enjoy what you are doing. Another fun thing that I can tell you about is http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html. You can go to that site and put in your word goal, a time limit, and if you would prefer the program it to go easy on you, be strict or just be plain evil. It's a little difficult to explain, so you may want to go there and play with it just for fun! If nothing else, it kicks you in the butt and gets your mind working and breaks the monotony of a brain fart or writers block.

Make sure to come back next week when we talk about organizational skills! It's a great thing baby!

#6 Be Prepared to Catch The Bug

Most of the authors reading this blog have their book published in ebook format prior to getting into print and don't even consider getting out there into the real world to promo. It is very important to get some face time with your readers and/or potential readers. So you need to get up, get out and talk, talk, talk.

You must get out there face to face and hand to hand to meet people. It is the real life person that is going to buy your book. Just like you aren't the boogie man behind the computer that wrote that book, they are not the nameless face behind the credit card that brings you your royalty checks. I'm not sure about you, but I would be more likely to buy a book from someone I have met than from someone I have not.

Imagine this....You are a writer from Georgia, your book isn't due out for several months, but there is a book fair or conference coming up in about 83 days. All you have to do is email a chairperson on some committee and you can have fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen whole minutes to read a piece from your book. Guess what? Hundreds of people, who are now fans, have just heard your book and want more. Do you have business cards? Maybe some post cards with information about your old books on them? You web address? Anything? Come on, now's the time!

Stop by your local library, let them know that you are a local writer and you would be interested in donating a copy of your book to their local authors collection. And while you're there, would they mind if you did a book signing in the near future? You can do the same thing with local book stores. They enjoy having local authors in and showing that even people from your home town can make it. Now let's say that your book has a scene in it that is set in a hair salon, would your local salon be interested in holding a book signing for you? Use the resources that are at hand. You never know what possible networking contacts you may come up with while you are at one of these face to face events. Until you are out there and are ready to catch the bug (possibly in the literal fashion, sniff sniff, can you pass me a tissue?) you may never know the extent to what you have passed by.

Local radio and TV stations love to do pieces on local artists. You could contact stations and see if they have a community section that would be interested in spotlighting a local writer. BUT BE PREPARED, most of these spots are taped EARLY in the morning. Trust me I have tried. And be prepared with every answer you could possibly think of to answer, because they will ask one that you are not prepared for. If possible, ask them for a list of questions ahead of time to prepare yourself mentally for the interview. The interview I did was over the phone and I was a wreck. I stuttered and stammered and couldn't get the answer right to save my life, but it was a very early segment and I am sure only several thousand people heard me anyway. Nothing like listening to a blubbering idiot on your commute to work.

Remember the most important piece of information that I can possibly give you. The worse thing that someone can say to you is, "No." You will not be out anything if they do, but you will have gained more confidence by getting out there and exposed yourself to one more line of questioning. You will have one more no behind your back and are one more no closer to a yes. When you receive your nos they may actually be accompanied by a "but"....and a compromise. So don't give up, and keep plugging. Your writing deserves to be put out there and given just as much work that you put into the writing! Now Remember, Tomorrow Never Comes! So come back next week and see what you can do about it.

PS.....have to leave you with a few that my friend Kissa told me about as she was reading this for me before posting. When she is traveling, she leaves business cards with her tips. She leaves them in book stores on the shelves. (I think I personally would put them at the register, but that's just me!) When she sends promo items to her readers she sends extras and asks them to pass them along to their friends. Thanks so much Kissa for sending those ideas along to share with my great readers!

Top 10 Countdown #7 Gathering All Your Friends Around

#7 Gathering All Your Friends Around

OK, you've finally got some people following you around. (Relax it's just me and about 1000 of your closest fans!) It may be that manly body spray or the pheromones that you put on this morning, but whatever; it's working for you. We're here and we want to know where you are going to be. You need to make sure that you are SPECIFIC when you tell us where you are hanging out.

* Instead of, "Hey, I'm going to be over at AJ's blog tomorrow, why don't you stop on by!" Consider the following. "Hey guys, I'm going to be over at AJ's blog tomorrow (www.ajbestwrites.com) The blog post is going up sometime around 8am and I will be answering questions on and off throughout the day. So stop by and see me! I need all the support I can get!"


When you give all the pertinent information make sure to include everyone in there. There may be people who honestly don't know who I am. (I know, I know, I can't imagine it either, but seriously they don't!) And there are people where you do your promo work who have never been by AJ Best's website (shock of all shocks since I haven't gotten it up yet!) and don't know when the blog normally posts. So tell them these things. Maybe AJ is a night owl and likes to have her posts run at night, so your friends and followers may end up confused and lost in a time warp. (You may stop dancing now, we are not at a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show! Attention here people, attention!)

* Signatures lines baby, signature (sig) lines! Now don't get over zealous here. I have seen some sig lines that are actually longer than the email message that the author sent me. That is a little bit much. If your audience gets bored after two lines then you have just over two lines too many! So keep it to the point. Where do you REALLY want to have them come see you? Where do you spend the vast majority of your time working the crowds? Start with the most important thing first your website. They have to know where to find your important information. Then list things in order of importance from there -- blogs, and then social networks. Now let's say you have a MySpace page, and a Facebook, but spend 85% of your time at MySpace, well for goodness sake, put that one in your sig tag and leave out Facebook. No need to clutter it with everything else. And if you have 12 lines of text about all of your books that you have out, do you really think that a flashing neon sign flashing the book covers, your name AND your website will get them to pay more attention to you? All things in moderation.


* OK, so you have the readers hooked on you, and they are on your website. They are searching frantically for your contact information so they can tell you just how wonderful you really are. Hold on, they can't find it? It's not there? WHAT!? Make sure that if you want readers to contact you, that you are available. Even something as simple as a contact form enables them to get in contact with you without giving out your email address if you are afraid of getting too many emails or getting spammed. Remember, you can't gather your friends around if they don't know where to find you!


* Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a great way to get in touch with people quickly to let them know what is going on in your life. You have 140 characters to get in there, and leave a message letting them know where you are. You can shrink the URL down by using a number of different methods (http://bit.ly/) which is a website you can go to that will enable you to shorten the URL, but I happen to have a favorite way to shorten mine. It's called Glue (www.getglue.com). Not only does it shrink URLs so you can get them on Twitter (and with bit.ly also) easily, it connects you to friends and the things that they are looking at. I can go on and on about that, but this is an article about gathering all of your friends around you. (Hold on, isn't that what Glue does?)


* Calendars! They are the easiest way in the world to keep in touch with your readers. I have created calendars for friends and they have added them to their page so their readers can keep up with where they are blogging, chatting, and guesting. It's very easy to do with Google (www.google.com/calendar) and you are able to give access to all of your friends, family and relatives. It's a great way to keep everyone up to date on what's going on in your life.


So you need to make sure that people can see where you are, when you are, and who you are hanging out with. Make sure to keep the lines of communications open, because we all want to be around you, -- Don't You Know That You Are A Shooting Star? Don't believe me? Just ask Bad Company. Catch you next week when I have to tell you to Be Prepared to Catch the Bug!

#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.

Top 10 Countdown, #9 Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

#9 Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

There are many sites that have great articles regarding various methods of promotion. Hopefully some of them will spark your imagination and give you some ideas that you may not have previously thought about. You may use one of their ideas and spring board it into another or your could possibly spin it in a totally different direction. Remember if you don't like it, then do what David Bowie said and make Changes! The whole point is to get out there and research. If you've found this article then you are taking a step in the right direction. Now, bear in mind that I don't promote or work for any of these promotion websites, but I do read their articles from time to time. I find some of their facts, ideas and marketing ploys interesting but some of the information has absolutely no bearing on what I'm working on at the moment.

• http://www.1stturningpoint.com, What I love most about this site is that email reminders when they have posted new articles. I swear some days I would forget my name if I didn't have my driver's license to refer to. Now where did I put that wallet? So, that alone makes this site worth it for me, but wait...there's more! These articles are written by authors such as Rowena Cherry and Amber Scott and include great topics such as Email Promotion and Marketing. This is a wealth of knowledge handed to you on a silver platter, what more could you ask for? Oh, I know I could ask for chocolate, a million dollars, a three book contract and a cabana boy!
  

• http://www.epicauthors.com/, This is a great networking site. Though it is important thatyou know that you will need to join EPIC to reap most of the benefits that they offer, but you can access their blog and various articles from the main page. It's definitely worth your time and effort for to take a look around. Make sure if you decide that you are going to try joining EPIC that you check out their membership criteria. There are two levels of membership and you may qualify for one or both of them.

• http://pumpupyouronlinebookpromotion.blogspot.com/, From what I've seen there are some decent tidbits here. And the fact that I am a bookaholic and they have contests also has absolutely no bearing at all in my choice to put them in this article. Honestly it was totally random.
  

• http://www.bauuinstitute.com/Marketing/IndieMarketingBooksWriting.html, I've already found one of my pet peeves brought out into the forefront here and they said I was RIGHT! Isn't nice when you can find someone else who can validate you when you think know you are right? They have great, to the point, information that is very quick and easy to access. For finding out more about my pet peeve you need to see me in a couple of weeks when I say Gather All Your Friends Around.

• http://writersdigest.com/article/101-websites-2009-general, Now you need to remember something here, just because I or some other guy on the net says that this site or the next is the best, guess what? It might not be the best for you. Only you can determine if a site has any relevance to you at all. We all think that we are giving out the best and most relevant information to our friends and colleagues, but just because it works for me doesn't mean it will work for you. So make sure that when you are reading up on things that you take the "latest and greatest" (even when coming from me) with a grain of salt or twelve.

• http://www.amazines.com/Publishing/article_category.cfm?catid=37, Another site that has countless topics that helps me feed my reading ADD. I can read about nearly endless topics and get new ideas almost daily. Unfortunately, as with most of of the places I love to visit, I don't have time to go there every day and most of the time not even every other day. But it's great to know that when I need or want them, I can look at their left side bar and pull up my topics and off to my knowledge bank they go!
  

Search the web for sites that you are going to like. Just because these references do something for me, doesn't mean that they are going to do something for you. So, search out different promotional resources. Follow their advice, or don't. Use their ideas or change them. Jump into the water with both feet, the water's just fine!

And if you haven't realized it yet I like to talk and, I Wanna to Talk About Me! And if you don't believe me, come back next week to see what I have to say on the topic!

If you missed last week stop by here #10. Get your name out!

Top 10 Countdown, #10

Top 10 List of Ways to Promote Your Writing.....Countdown

10. Get your name out!

Now this can be done in so many ways it's nearly ridiculous. There are so many possibilities that it actually overwhelms the normal (hmmm....normal...I used to know what that was, but have since lost the meaning) person.

"Why do I need to do the Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, etc. thing?"

The honest answer? You don't. You are the master of your own destiny (Unlike the Queen song states!) and you choose what you have time for and what you don't. This is a GREAT thing. You have options, many of them, and they are all under your control.

You can create a:

• Facebook page (www.facebook.com), though I haven't found that very helpful. I find that I am more apt to have family that know me there and want to share pictures and talk about real life and not my writing world. Though I have heard great things from other authors that use the same reasons why I don't find it helpful as reasons why they find it helpful. Though be on guard if you write under your real name. There may be people in your life that don't know that you write in a certain genre, and it may be a bit awkward for them to find out in this manner.
  

• MySpace page (www.myspace.com), several authors say that their page has gotten them pretty good traffic while some older (or should I say "more sophisticated") authors have found MySpace to be a little "young" for their taste. I guess being hit on by young rap gods, and being proposed marriage by a Nigerian prince isn't a popular promotional tool.
  

• Blogger or WordPress blog (www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com), these can become rather time consuming and some authors do decide to pool their resources and create one blog. This creates the need to only blog once or twice per week. You can kill your blog and the interest in you if you are inconsistent in your blogging. If you start blogging every week and get your readers hooked on you and STOP! Your readers will become confused. They will not know when to come by to visit and will make little or no effort to search you out. This would be especially true if you were giving them samples of your work and were providing them tidbits of a free story to get them hooked on you and your writing. Starving readers will read elsewhere. So if you go this route, be prepared to be consistent, OR be prepared to work ahead and pre-post your posts.

• Twitter page (www.twitter.com), OK, obviously you can tell that I can't get anything said in 140 characters or less, but with Twitter, if you are able to do it, then the world is at your fingertips. There are Twitter novelists that have a great following, and authors who mention all of their contests, and some authors who honestly mention some rather "unique" things on their Twitter pages. It's definitely a way to get your readers to know who you are and what is happening in your world. They have even gone as far as creating Twitter groups (http://twittgroups.com/index.php) which have every single type of group you could possibly want from Barfly to Book Marketing Online.
  

• Create your very own website! Of course your readers want to get to learn who you are as a person and a writer, so show them! Showcase your talents and let them know exactly who you are. But keep in mind the things that niggle at your nerves when you visit other websites, and keep things to a minimum. No reader likes to have to dig through a jungle to find your latest release or your contact information. Keep everything within reach and ENJOY!

I am sure that there are thousands of other sites that you can join and network on, but I wanted to touch on some of the more popular ones and give you a few ideas as to what you could be aiming for. Shoot for the skies, this is your journey. Take it with your eyes wide open, open your wings and FLY!

Make sure you come back next week when I will be shouting like an old newspaper hawker, Extra! Extra! Read All About It!