sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Five Minute Promo: Day 21

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Welcome to Day 21 of Five Minute Promo. It’s truly lovely to have you come back. Today’s task is another nice easy one, and I’m going to get right to it – after I’ve reminded you that I would love it if you left me a comment to let me know how you are finding these daily tasks. Are you doing them? Are you noticing more engagement with your followers?

Anyway, over to today’s task.

5 Min Promo #21

Head over to PinterestLooking at You 3 and  pin five new images (and their links) to your board/s. If you haven’t already, I really recommend you add the Pinterest tool to your browser bar, so you can pin things you find more quickly and easily. Don’t know what to pin?  Check those Google results for your book and pin those. Or, if you have a board on another topic, pin something to that. You can even repin other people’s pins – this is a wonderful element of Pinterest. The image to the right is an image I have pinned before, and might pin again to a different board today.

See you back here tomorrow for another easy peasy five minute tip.

Five Minute Promo: Day 20

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Phew. This is my twentieth post for the month about quick promotional tasks you can complete to get word of your book out to the wider world. If you’ve just joined me, feel free to scroll back through the other nineteen posts (and extra posts in between).

Murphpup

Not THAT kind of layout.

What possessed me to undertake a month of daily posts about promotion? My new book, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, which came out on July 1, leading me to wonder what things I could do to promote the book that weren’t so time-consuming that I didn’t have time to work on the fourth book in the series (which has now winged its way off to the publisher), work on my Doctoral project, travel to two conferences, and myriad other things.

So, over to today’s task.

Five Minute Promo #20

Write a blog post about design and layout. What you focus on will depend on your particular book and your unique knowledge. I’ve chosen, for example, to focus on the cover design and, more broadly, on the role other people played in my finished book. You might talk about how illustrations and text are placed, or which font was used, or why the index is in a different font than the rest of your book, or anything else you can think of.

Remember, it’s a quick post – though of course you can take as long as you like. Clock’s ticking, so off you go, and I’ll see back here tomorrow. In the meantime, leave me a comment, if you have time, and let me know how you’re getting on with all this promo.

All About the Cover

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Have a look at this cover:

Cover Sage Cookson 1

Believe it or not, this beautiful front cover wasn’t the original planned cover for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. In fact, you can even find the original cover online, through a Google search. However, to save you heading off to look for it, here is the original cover:

Sage Not Used Cover

Which do you prefer? Hopefully, like me, you prefer the final cover. I love the colours, the brightness, and the appearance of Sage, the hero of the series. Every time I look at this cover I smile.

But, I must confess, that when I saw the other cover, which was the first I saw, I was also happy. And if the new cover hadn’t been decided on at the publishing house, I would have not only been content, but also not known that something else had been considered.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post. An author is rarely (if ever) the best qualified person to make decisions on every aspect of the final book. Few people have the complete skill set to write, illustrate, design, typeset, edit, copyedit, proofread, market, distribute and hand sell a book.

In my case, because Sweet Escape (and, of course, the whole Sage Cookson series) is traditionally published, my chief role is to write the book. Of course I also work with editors and have some input into illustrations and covers, but really once I’ve written the book I have to relinquish a great deal of control to the publisher – not only because they are funding the book’s production, but also because they have, either on their staff, or through the use of freelancers – staff with those varied skill sets. Together we bring the final book to life. If I was self-published I would become the publisher, but I would still need to consider either obtaining those many and varied skills or using other people to help me get the book out there into the world.

Back to the cover. The chief reason for the change was a marketing one, and with Sweet Escape selling well, I think it was a good decision. So I’m glad that my publisher, New Frontier, went with the cover they did.

What do you think?

Five Minute Promo: Day 19

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It’s Day 19 and time to get your book further afield. Today’s task aims to spread the word in a new space. Ready?

5 Minute Promo # 19

Spreading the word far and wide.

Spreading the word far and wide.

Email another blogger (ie a blogger another than yourself) and ask them to interview you or otherwise host you on their blog.  This can be confronting, but is a great way not just to spread the word about your book but also to make a friend, especially if you reciprocate by inviting them to visit your blog, either now or later.

Can’t find a blog to visit? I’m going to make it super easy-peasy for you. If you are Australian, visit my other website Aussiereviews.com and then email me through the site and ask if I can host you for the Meet My Book feature. Unless I am swamped by hundreds of requests, I will be happy to send you the questions and schedule your post very soon. How easy is that?

A word of warning: whether it’s my blog or someone else’s, always visit the site before you email, and show that you know your book is a good match for what they do. And be polite. Most bloggers are unpaid and do what they do in their spare time, so showing respect makes their task much more enjoyable.

The clock is ticking: five minutes is all it will take. Go!

 

sallymurphy.com.au