Sally Murphy's Blog, page 43

Five Minute Promo: Day 19

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.

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!

 

A Magnet Poem

Five Minute Promo : Day 18

Welcome to day 18. On Day 11 I had you share a related item on Facebook, and on day 12 I had you share an unrelated item on Twitter. Today’s task has you sharing something which may be either on another social media platform – and this is one I’m looking forward to.

5 Min Promo #18

Take a photo of something yummy and share it on Instagram. If your book focuses on or features any particular foods, you might create an instagram post featuring that food. But, if not, feel free to take a photo of anything yummy- a sweet treat, a steaming bowl of soup, even some fresh fruit. People love pictures of food and, when they engage with that picture, they may head over to read your profile which, in turn, promotes your book.

Here are a couple of simple examples I have used before. This is a photo of the first, perfect, cherry tomato I picked last year. Later, I also used it as the subject for a Poetry Friday post.

And here’s a more recent one, featuring chocolate, Sweet Escape and my Sage doll.

So, clock’s ticking, off you go and snap a photo. If it takes less than five minutes, use the rest of your time to check your other social media accounts. See you tomorrow.

Five Minute Promo: Day 17

Welcome to day 17. If you’ve been doing each day’s task, by now you’ll have several social media accounts, which you are hopefully using regularly. You’ll also have set up a Google alert and email signature line, and be blogging about your book regularly. And by now you’re hopefully starting to get some feedback on your book (and also on your social media efforts, in the form of new followers, or shares or retweets). Today’s task gets you to look for – and share – some of that feedback.

5 Minute Promo #17

Find a review of your book and share it on Twitter and your Facebook page, as well as Pinning it on your Pinterest page. Of course, because you’ve set up a Google Alert (haven’t you?) then you might already be aware of a review. If not, use a search engine, or  visit your favourite book review websites and blogs. Then, once you’ve read the review and ascertained that it is at least mostly positive, share it.

BUT, I hear you say, what if I can’t find any reviews. Good question – and, I must admit that as I wrote this post I went and checked for reviews of Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape and didn’t find any. SO, here’s what you can do. head over to Goodreads, a site where you will find lots of reviews and rankings of books. Search for your book there. You may find that your book is already there. Great. If not, as I found with my book, you can add a record for it. It took me less than two minutes to create an entry for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. You can see it here.  Once you’ve got your list on Goodreads, you can either wait for people to review or rank it, or you can use your social media to gently ask people (remember, pushing for reviews will put some people off) who have read it to give it a short review.

Go to it, and use the comment section below to tell me how you go.

Five Minute Promo: Day 16

Welcome to day 16. I’m having a lot of fun writing this series of posts and also carrying out each five minute task myself as I promote my new book Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. I know people are reading them because I’m getting new followers on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. But it would also be lovely to get more comments and questions here on the blog, just so I know who’s listening and what you are finding does or doesn’t work for you.

Anyway, over to today’s task.

5 Minute promo #16

Head over to Twitter and tweet about someone else’s book. That’s it. Write a tweet about a book that you love – could be a new release could be an old favourite. Add a link, or a photo or whatever you like.

Here’s a book I’ve recommended on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It’s a good one.

Why? Because your Twitter followers love to hear about things other than YOUR book. And because, as an author yourself, you know how great it feels to hear that someone else likes your book.  It’s called spreading the love – or paying it forward.

This task is so quick that it may not take five minutes. So, use the rest of your five minutes to update your other social media. Or take a four minute breather

See you tomorrow.

 

Five Minute Promo: Day 15

Welcome back. By the time you’ve completed today’s task you’ll be halfway through the 5 Minute Promo challenge (actually, if you want to be technical, since there’s 31 days, you’ll be slightly off, but hey – I’m a wordsmith, not a mathematician). If you’ve been playing along, hopefully by now you are seeing that this promo lark is not that hard – and can, in fact, be both fun and rewarding. To mark the halfway point, I’ve set you a nice easy task. Let’s begin.

5 Minute Promo #15

An image I’ve posted on Instagram recently.

Head over to the Instagram account you created way back on Day 3 (and which you’ve hopefully been updating ever since) and follow 20 new people (or ten, or a dozen,  or as many as you can find in your five minutes). As with the task I set you a few days ago to follow new Twitter accounts, the point of this exercise is both to create mutual engagement as well as to see and find new material. The people you follow should not all be fellow authors – remember you shouldn’t be promoting just to other creators.

So, how do you find new people to follow? Easy. Press the ‘Discover’ button on your account and you will get a list of  suggested accounts – usually people who you already follow on other social media platforms, or people followed by other people you follow. You can also search using the search book. Pick a search term you are interested in, then scroll through the results and look for people to follow.  If you’re not yet following me, feel free to do so why you’re there and I’ll try to follow you back.

Enjoy, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Poetry Friday: Lunacy

I’ve been on the road for over a week now. First I flew to Adelaide for a conference of English and literacy teachers, and now I’m in Wagga Wagga for a conference of children’s literature academics. Tomorrow, I fly home, and, while I love travel, I’m ready to head back to my family.

Anyway, last Sunday I attended a session presented by Alan Wright, a teacher and poet who seems to love poetry as much as I do. The session was packed with poetry and poetry ideas, but one form that he mentioned looked like a lot of fun, and the next day I found myself  writing them in a cafe.

I’m talking about lunes, a poetic form which consists of just three lines – the first one including just three words, the second one five, and the third three. The last line should also try to be a surprise or a twist. You can see Alan’s explanation of the form here.

So, I had just been for a walk along the river in Adelaide, admiring the river, the bird life and the sights, so I had plenty of material to write about. What I didn’t instantly realise is that I had enough for a suite of three linked lune, ad with a bit of a nod back to last week’s Poetry Friday post.

So, here goes, complete with pictures (and a video).

A morning walk

Admiring the beauty all around

Chased by goose.

Chased by goose

Wanting his own special souvenir

From this day

From this day

I will love only you

My beautiful selfie.

Today’s Poetry Friday roundup will be hosted  by A Year of Reading. Head over there to see  what other poetry goodness is happening across the blogosphere.

 

Five Minute Promo: Day 14

Welcome to day 14 of 5 Minute Promotion. One of the keys to promotion is to change it around every day so that you find what you’re doing interesting and your followers are seeing new content regularly. Today’s task sees you creating new content for your blog.

5 Minute promo # 14

Editing is a lot of hard work – but you shouldn’t need a hard hat!

Set your timer for 5 minutes then sit down and put together a quick blog post about the editing process. It can be very specifically about editorial changes you made to the book you are promoting or, as I’ve done, a bit more general. Either way, make it a quick posy, then proofread it, add a relevant picture if you can and post it. Now you have content which you can also tweet, pin or link to it via your Facebook page. 

As always, after you’ve posted, let me know and I’ll try to visit and leave a comment.

 

What Does an Editor Do?

Whether you self published or whether you are published by a trade publisher, getting a book ready for publication is a long, detailed process. One of the key parts in any book’s development is editing. The editor works with the author to take a manuscript and make it into a finished story ready for market. And, importantly, though every author needs to proofread and edit their own work, they also need an editor other than themselves to make the manuscript polished and full of zing.

Without an editor, I might still be throwing my hands in the air!

A good editor:

1. Sees the promise in your manuscript, like an unpolished gem, then figures out how to polish it so that it really sparkles.

2. Knows the genre you are writing for – and, especially if you are writing for young people – understands what suits a particular age group or readership.

3. Is way more than a proofreader (though these are important, too) and the difference between a structural edit and a copy edit.

4. Spots bits of your story that don’t work, and gives you suggestions so that you can make changes you are comfortable with.

5. Is an ally, wanting your book to work almost as much as you go.

Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape went through several rounds of edits. Changes suggested and acted on ranged from needing to make the work longer, to making the ‘baddies’ badder, to spotting errors in syntax and grammar. Editors rock!

 

 

Five Minute Promo: Day 13

Okay, it’s now Day 13 of the 5 Minute Promo Challenge and, if you’ve been here since day 1,  it should be getting easier. If you are new here, it’s still easy, though you are welcome to go back to day 1 and start from the beginning. All you need is 5 minutes a day and a book to promote.

Today’s task takes you back to Instagram, where you have already set up an account (if not, now’s the time).

5 Minute Promo # 13

Here’s a selfie I took sans book.

Snap a book selfie and post in to your Instagram account. A book selfie is a selfie (ie photo of yourself) with your book. It can be as simple as a photo of you holding your book, or you can get adventurous and come up with something unique. If your book is about an acrobat, take your selfie reading the book while standing on your head. Or, if like me,  your book features chocolate, take a selfie of yourself, your book and some chocolate.

Feeling camera shy? Don’t worry – a selfie doesn’t have to feature you smiling into the lens. Here’s a selfie I took of my feet a month ago, and this one  features my shadow. Experiment until you find something you’re happy to share.

As always, feel free to leave a link here or tag me, @sallymurphyauthor on Instagram and I will comment.