Can I just say that among my top ten least favorite words, the word “blog” is waaaay up near the top of the list? I don’t know if there is a more unattractive word in the English language. It’s just … yuck.
But there’s no way that another term will supplant what is already a cemented part of the English language, so I will attempt to make my peace with the unappealing nomenclature, and move on to discussing What Blogs And That Wild Wooly Internet Can Do by Way Of Helping You Promote Yourself. Don’t crap yourself at this one, but Jane, Candy and I submitted a proposal to RWA National about that topic, and alas we are not on the docket. I promise we had a much nicer title than that one, but either way, our discussion about how to use the internet and blogs as self-promotional tools of the wunderkind variety will not be part of the national program. Feel free to accost me in the hall and ask my opinion, though. I’m more than happy to talk. But you knew that.
And, hey, let’s talk now. There’s all kinds of innovative promotion going on right now, from the viral marketing prize giveaway to the altruistic publicity launch for an author who can’t take care of that aspect of her career right now.
First: Ann Aguirre’s Grimspace Juggernaut wherein you answer a quiz, get yourself a badge for your own blog, and win a chance to get a slew of prizes, from a big honking gift card to Barnes & Noble to a free copy of her new novel, Grimspace. Now, that’s pretty clever – there’s a huge audience for quizzes and memes and whatnot – and a huge audience of people who love them some free stuff, and free books. Pretty basic tools, as well – something immediate (the quiz) fuels follow up (the giveaway) and participants get something and the potential for something more, while the source, the author, gets a bit more buzz about her book. Smart smart smart and also, given the quiz questions, really freaking fun.
Then, there’s the hugely altruistic and fantastically awesome aspect of blog publicity: blogs are easy and active, and most often linked together into small knots of common interests. That makes for a perfect opportunity for generosity, such as doing someone else’s publicity to help them out when they can’t manage that part themselves.
Thanks to Jackie Kessler for the heads up – today is ”The Liar’s Diary Blog Day.” Patry Francis, the author of The Liar’s Diary, has been diagnosed with a horribly aggressive form of cancer, and she’s doing the utterly exhausting appointment-followed-by-appointment thing, and can’t promote the softcover release of her novel as much as she’d like.
So a bunch of bloggers, publicists, agents, and publishing masterminds are banding together to mention the book today – among them Jackie Kessler, Jennifer Weiner, and Neil Gaiman.
All participants are asked to merely mention the book and link to the purchase page on Amazon.com.
That’s pretty freaking fabulous, and I hope it works.
Sarah, was there more to your post that got caught off?
Yeah, oops. Programming boo boo. All fixed now.
Ah, now that’s interesting! I saw a piece today on The Liar’s Diary, but didn’t know the full story.
What a neat idea. Thanks for sharing with us this tale of writers doing good deeds.
The Liar’s Diary has an awesome book trailer.
Made me want it now!
What a lovely thing to do for Ms. Francis.
Sarah, thank you so much for posting about THE LIAR’S DIARY.
If you buy Liar’s Diary from Penguin, you can get 15% off by using the coupon code Patry until Feb. 15, per Alyssa Day’s blog.
It should be noted that this blogosphere community project was coordinated by Susan Henderson’s blog “Litpark.”
There you can find links to the over 300 bloggers (myself included) who committed to help spread the word of Patry’s paperback book launch.
Here’s the link:
http://tinyurl.com/2yghep
On that site you can also find cool audio and video trailers for the book.
Plus if anyone wishes to join in the blogopalooza event, you should put your blog address down on the Lit Park comment trail.
Thanks for adding your voice to the mix.
Linda
The writing community is so generous with their time and resources.
Kudos to the Liars Diary project! The net is always a two-edged sword, but that’s where it shines.
This topic comes with perfect timing for me, since lately I’ve been glumly contemplating the need to upgrade the software on my creaking old reader forum. Procrastination received a b* slap (sorry I’m more old-fashioned than the SB’s!) yesterday when I was informed by a photographer that the license on my author photo is running out and he is pawing at my pocket for more money. I never liked that photo and it’s so deeply embedded into the site header that it would require complete replacement of the header. The whole site, created professionally, explodes if I mess with it too much, so we’re looking at hundreds of bucks to replace the header. Anyway, enough of the sad story; I was just looking at your CMS here, which I’ve always admired, and considering going to a blog.
I will admit that I actually hate the idea of personal blogging. Maybe as a author, the thought of having to sit down and write MORE and write about myself or my work, just makes me tired.
But I actually love design, and I’d have fun trying to create something fresh for my site. Maybe I could appoint surrogates to actually blog for me, lol.
Anyway, thanks for giving me a push, I’ll buckle down and get into it now, and you may be tired of my tagging along in the hall asking questions!
One thing I love, though it’s still in beta, is the
Asirra CAPTCHA
which uses pet photos from Petfinder.com; users have to sort the dogs from the cats, apparently something easy for people but very hard for computers to do, meanwhile the pets get a link.
LK
And as you can see I can’t even type a link. Ah well. What happened to preview? Did I miss it?
Laura—The Pet Captcha sounds cool! You should definitely go for it.
And don’t be scared of blogging. Just tell yourself you don’t have to do it every day, it’s not like real writing that pays the bills. But it is a nice way to link with people, and for most of us, easier than messing with the website all the time.
Ms Kinsale, use these [ ] instead of these
< >
here at the SBs
(and I too miss the preview—not that I caught everything, but I could console myself that I’d tried)