Sally Murphy's Blog, page 41

Wandering Words #5

The Favourite Books of My Childhood

Over on the Aussiereviews blog, I have just posted a list of five of my favourite childhood books. You can see it here.

I’d love to hear about your own favourite books.

Five Minute Promo: Day 29

July is whizzing past, and with it my month of 5 minute book promotion posts. This is the third last day, and I’m going to get straight to today’s task.

5 Minute Promo #29

Take a styled photo of your book with some props or related items, and post it to Instagram. Easy peasy.  Here are two examples. The first includes my book, the doll I bought to act as Sage (the main character) and some chocolate, since that features heavily in the book.

The second is simpler, featuring the book with a pair of earrings which, again, I bought to wear to school visits .

Your own photo should in some way reflect the content of your book.

Five minutes starts now. See you tomorrow!

Poetry Friday: Pelicans and More

It’s Poetry Friday, at the end of another busy week for me.

I started the week with a writing retreat at Rottnest Island, a beautiful island off the coast of Western Australia. As well as getting some writing done, and having fun with my fellow retreaters (all members of SCBWI), I did a lot of walking, exploring the island and admiring the views and the amazing wildlife. Although the quokka – a small marsupial – is perhaps the cutest and best known animal resident – I was particularly taken with the pelicans, and walked up the beach following this pair as they paddled and fished in the shallows.

Which reminded me that I haven’t yet shared the poem which I have in the newly released Our Home Is Dirt By Sea, a collection of Australian poems for Australian kids, edited by Dianne Bates and published by Walker Books.

The poem which I contributed is called Paraphernalia.

 

Paraphernalia

 

At dawn or dusk

I trudge

cross sandy shore

with rod and reel

bait and bucket

tackle box

knife

and board,

hoping to catch

a fish or two

for dinner.

Pelican

has none

of this paraphernalia,

just one huge beak,

yet he seems to have more luck than me.

 

(Copyright Sally Murphy)

 

If you’d like to see more of Rottnest Island (or Rotto as West Australians call it), I made a photo-story of my walk around the island with my friend Sage Cookson.

 

Happy Friday. You can see the Poetry Friday roundup at Reflections on the Teche.

 

 

Five Minute Promo: Day 28

Welcome to Day 28 of the five minute promo challenge. I’m still enjoying sharing these quick tips with you, so I hope you are also enjoying them. Over to today’s task.

5 Min Promo #28

Pinterest. Anyway, today’s task is to revisit your Facebook Page and add some new content. A photo of yourself, a link to one of your blog posts, something from your Feedly feed, or even a link to where the book can be purchased.

While you are there, see if there any of your fiends not currently following the age who you think might be genuinely interested and send them an invite.

If you send me an invite I will definitely visit and see what you are up to – and I’d love it if you followed my page, too.

See you tomorrow!

Wandering Words #4

Five Minute Promo: Day 27

Welcome to Day 27. Five days to go, and if you’ve been following along, I bet you’ve noticed some changes both in your daily habits as well as in the engagement of followers on your various platforms.

Today’s task aims to give your folowers on one platform a broader experience, as well as to perhaps attract new followers. You ready?

5 Min Promo # 27

Start a new Pinterest Board on a topic related to, but not directly about, your book. So, for example, for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, I could add to the board about Sage Cookson, a board about chocolate (the food featured in the book), or series books, or adventure books, or even (since Sage loves her mobile phone) a board about mobile phones. Of course, in any one of those boards I could also pin something about Sweet Escape, since it is relevant, but the focus should be on broadening the scope of my board, to draw more readers in.

If you comment below with a link to your new board I will visit it – and I might even follow it. I hope you might do the same for some of my boards.

Something worth Pinning.

See you tomorrow.

Five Minute Promo: Day 26

There are just six days left of the 5 Minute Promo challenge, including this one. If you haven’t been following along, that’s fine. You can still join in now, either by going back to the beginning or just by doing the last six tasks. The choice is yours. The idea is to complete a five-minute task each day to promote your latest book. Which leads us to today’s task.

5 Min Promo# 26

Sage Cookson, the title character, is a girl who has lots of adventures.

Blog about promotion. You might, as I’ve done below, decide to blog about all the things you are doing to promote your book. Or you might blog bout why promotion is important to the success of your book. Or you might have a really good idea for book promotion that you want to share. Remember, readers do love quick posts.

As always, I recommend you try to include an image in your post and, once posted, I suggest you share it on one or more of your social media channels.

Enough said for today. See you tomorrow.

How (And Why) I’m Promoting My New Book

This is going to be a quick post, so I’m going to skip straight to the why. I have a new book out, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, and I’ve been busy promoting it online and in person. I am doing this because although my publisher is doing their best to promote it too – particularly through setting up a website dedicated to the series – they have lots of books to promote each month, while I have only one new book at a time, and so can give this one my special attention, at the same time promoting my back list.

So, on to some of the things I am doing to promote Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape:

Blogging (with posts like this one) about the book, about writing and about the writing life.
Tweeting – directly about the book, and on subjects connected to the book, as well as about seemingly unconnected things, which hopefully keeps my followers engaged.
Instagramming – photos with the book in, photos of things related to the book and, again, photos of seemingly unconnected things.
Pinning – to my Sage Cookson Pinterest board and other boards, related and unrelated.
Facebooking – adding content to my Facebook author page, again either related or unrelated to the book.
The 5 Minute Promo Challenge – a challenge I set myself and invited other authors to play along with, whereby I set a five minute promotional task each day for myself to do, then blog, tweet, Instagram and facebook about it, as appropriate.
Engaging with my followers on the above mentioned platforms, replying to tweets and comments, and checking out what they are doing, too.
Providing content for the Sage Cookson website, which New Frontier have set up.
Visiting schools, festivals and bookstores and talking about the book, or signing copies, or even (shhh don’t tell the booksellers) making sure the book is face out wherever possible.
Word of mouth. Telling people about the book – friends and strangers. But only where appropriate and not overdoing it.
Playing with my doll. A doll purchased from Kmart has been used to pose as Sage in social media photos, particularly on Instagram. Other props I’ve bought include a chef’s hat which I can wear for promotional appearances.
Ending every email with a signature line which includes the book’s cover and a link to my website.

If you have a new book to promote, there are lots of things in this list you can try, too – though tailor them to the topic or theme of your own book. Good luck.

Sage Cookson’s Rottnest Ramble

I’m lucky enough to be spending a couple of days on Rottnest Island, on a writing retreat with fellow authors and illustrators. This morning I went for a long walk exploring the island – and Sage Cookson came with me.