Marketing

I am going to get my first taste of marketing first hand and very quickly. At our last Sisters in Crime meeting, we got several volunteers for a new marekting committee to handle the marketing and publicity of our upcoming anthology, BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD. And I was suckered into being the committee chair.

Now I have read tons and tons of stuff on book marketing, of course. Now I will have to try some of it out. I am taking this quite seriously. While in the last 21 months we have sold nearly two-thirds of the print run of our first anthology, RACING CAN BE MURDER, there wasn't a coordinated, aggressive effort to market the book.

I want to change that this time around.

First I want to develop a strategic plan to market the last anthology and in doing so raise some awareness of the next book, which will be published in May. I particularly want to have some initial plans in place and active by Oct. 1, which will be two weeks before thousands of mystery writers, readers and book industry people will be in town for Bouchercon 2009.

I plan to really promote our books and the chapter during the convention.

But that is just the start. We need to think outside the box and reach into areas we didn't think of before, or for some reason just didn't go into before. We might try some craft shows this fall and we are definitely using the Internet and the local women's media better this time around.

The point is to raise money for the chapter and raise some awareness of the authors in the book, me included. But the book won't sell itself. We have to do it. And once I have a better understanding of what works and what doesn't, I will know better how to promote my own book when I get published.

I'm nervous and, quite frankly, a little scared. But I am determined to do what I can to sell out all of our books -- both anthologies. I will try to remember to update you as things progress.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.