Sally Murphy's Blog, page 45

5 Minute Promo: Day 5

Gosh. It’s Day 5 already. July is whizzing by. and, hopefully, if you’ve been following along, you’ve been busy spending a whopping 5 minutes of each day promoting your book(s).  If you haven’t, just twenty minutes (give or take a few) will bring you up to speed, ready to tackle day 5’s task which is (drumroll please)…

5 Minute Promo #5

Set up a Pinterest account. Yes, you’ve got it, I want you to join another social media platform. This is the last one, I promise (for now!). So, after you’ve read my few words, head over to Pinterest, sign up and you are ready to Pin. There’s simple instructions on how to get started here and instructions on how to set up a board and start pinning here. You might extend your five minutes and set up a board about your book. Here’s one I’ve set up for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape here.

Already on Pinterest? Your five minute task is to make sure your profile and account is up to date and, once that’s done, use the rest of your time to pin two new pictures to one of your exitsing boards. Easy peasy. Feel free to follow me, Sally Murphy Author, while you are there.

Pinning is easy and fun. Here is a sample of things I’ve pinned from this site:

A quote with photo – and, of course, my web address so people know to visit me.

And:

A poem I wrote, added to a photo I took and again with my URL and twitter handle.

 

 

5 Minute Promo: Day 4

Welcome to Day 4! If you are following along at home, by now you have written a blog post, opened or updated your Twitter account and opened or updated your Instagram account. You’ll have noticed that so far all of the tasks I’m sharing are to online – because using social media and the internet is such a quick, free way of promotion. And today, I continue that trend.

5 Minute Promo #4

Create a Facebook Author Page.Assuming you are already a member of Facebook, it will take only a couple of minutes to start a page for you, the author. There’s a quick guide to starting a Page here.

I posted this pic on my Facebook page the day my author copies arrived.

An author page is different than your personal profile where you can post about your kids, your walks on the beach, or your dog. Instead, your Facebook page is about your brand as an author. Having said that,  not every post will be about selling your book. As a starting point, use your author photo (if you haven’t got one, it’s time to take one), a header picture which might be something from your website and add a cover photo of your book. Once you’ve posted something, invite your friends to like it.

Already have a Facebook page? Of course you do! Then your five minute task is to make sure your photo is up to date, and post something new. Then, because your five minutes won’t be up yet, invite the friends who haven’t yet liked your page to like it now.

Want to see what a Facebook author page looks like? Feel free to look at mine and follow it. I’ll do my best to entertain you with regular fresh content.

5 Minute Promo: Day 3

Welcome to Day 3. If you’ve been playing along, by now you’ve posted a blog post about your new book, and set up or updated your Twitter account. Each of these things should have taken you only about 5 minutes. That’s why this series is called 5 Minute Promo. If you are new to the series, feel free to take minutes to catch up. I’ll wait here .

Okay, so time for today’s five minute promo task. You ready? Good

5 Minute Promo #3

Head over to Instagram  and set up an account. You can do this on your desktop or laptop, but will find it just as easy to use a phone or tablet – and to download the app. That’s because Instagram is designed for phones and so works best there.  Not sure what to do? There’s a quick help guide here, which will guide you step by step through the process. Once you’re set up, feel free to follow me @sallymurphyauthor  and drop me a line so I can follow you back. All of this should take you less than five minutes.

 

If you  already have an Instagram  account, use the five minutes to check that your profile picture, bio and account details are up to date, and of course to post a picture or like the pictures of others.

Not sure what to post? Here’s a recent photo that I posted:

You can see I took an opportunity to show off my new book (have I mentioned before how much I love the cover? ) as well as the new earrings I’d bought to celebrate its release.

See you tomorrow for Day 4. In the meantime, if you’re enjoying these tips, or have any questions or comments, feel free to comment here and I’ll get back to you.

5 Minute Promo: Day 2

Bubbling soda water.

If you’ve just tuned in, every day for the month of July I am sharing a five minute promotional task you can do to promote your book(s) – and, because I have a new book out (isn’t it pretty?), I’m doing each of those things myself. Without further ado, here’s day 2’s task.

5 Minute Promo #2

Set up a Twitter account. If you don’t yet use Twitter, trust me that it’s so easy it’s something a grandmother (that’s me)  can and does do every day. If you are unsure, there is a good guide here. And, once your set up, I’ve previously blogged about ways to make use of Twitter.

If, like me, you already have a Twitter account (mine’s here), your five minute task is to head over to your account and make sure it’s up to date: is your profile picture current, is your bio the best it can be, and how many people are you following?

Right, timer’s on: go! Once you’re set up, feel free to Tweet me @sallymurphy and I’ll check you out.

 

 

5 Minute Promo: Day 1

If you a regular follower of this blog, you might know that today is release day for my new book: Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. If you are not a regular follower, firstly, welcome and secondly, you know that it’s the release date etc. And, by the way, isn’t the front cover amazing?

Anyway, back to the purpose of this post: 5 Minute Promo.

As an author, I’ve long been aware just how important it is to promote my own books. Sure, my wonderful publishers do their bit, but they have lots of books by lots of authors to promote. Wheras me, I only have my own books to focus on, and generally one at a  time. But I’m busy – sometimes frantically so – writing new books, working my way through a PhD project, visiting schools, festivals and conferences, not to mention running a household. So, my promotion can’t take hours and hours every day.

Ont op of that, the most important time for me to be promoting my new book is in the first month of its release. Bookshops get new stock in every month. That means my book is only new for a month. If I want it to sell well, it’s important that I promote heavily during that month, in the hopes that it will sell well the booksellers will continue to stock it, and stock my subsequent books.

So, putting those two things together: the need for quick promotion ideas, and the need to do them especially in that first month, I sat down and brainstormed 31 things (one for each day of the month) that could be done in five minutes or less.

And, because I like sharing, I’m going to share those 31 things, one each day. So, if you have a book to promote, or have one coming out soon, you can play along at home. Every day I will post a new five minute tip, and give examples. If you join in, let me know how you are going, either by commenting here, or on twitter  (feel free to follow me).

 

So, enough about what I’m going to do. Let’s get on with it. Here is the first idea.

5 Minute Promo #1

Write a blog post announcing your new book . Make sure you include the cover image, and a link to where the book can bought. Give some details about the book.  (If you don’t yet have a blog, then use the five minutes to head over to a free blog platform such as wordpress or blogger and set up a simple blog).

Here’s my post (or you can just scroll down) which I combined with a post about Poetry Friday, because that’s my usual Friday post, and because it will spread the word to my poetry network.

Playing along? Set your timer for five minutes and head off and write and post that blogpost, then leave a comment below with a link and I will check it out.

 

 

Poetry Friday: A Story Tree and a New Book

It’s Friday which means it’s Poetry Friday, which is always exciting, but this particular Friday is extra exciting for me because it’s also the release day (book birthday!) of my latest book, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. More on that in a bit.

First, though, a poem.  When I walk around the lake close to my house there is a lovely grove of paperbark trees in a swampy bit at the back of the lake. I often stop and admire the trees, and feel like they are watching me back. Paperbark trees are amazing, in that their bark really is like paper – and it sheds like rough cut pages. When I was a kid, I used to collect pieces and write on them.  Here’s a photo of one of the trees, which I took during a quick lunchtime walk this week – in between showers of rain, which made everything damp and shiny and heavenly-smelling.

I came home and had to write about that tree. Here’s what I came up with:

 

The Story Tree

Hello tree

I wish I could read

the stories

etched deep

in your sepia paper.

Are they tales

of what you’ve seen

what you’ve heard

what you’ve felt

since you first drafted yourself

here in the swamp?

Or are they fables

of what you’ve imagined

might lie in other tree-libraries

in far flung places?

 

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy, 2016)

It’s kind of apt that this week’s poem is about stories because, as I said, today I’m celebrating the release of my latest book, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape.

I just can’t enough of looking at the beautiful cover! This is the first in a series of  adventures, where Sage travels around Australia – and even overseas – with her parents, who are television chefs. Wherever they go, something always goes wrong, and Sage is at the center of fixing it. In Sweet Escape, the family visits a chocolatier who, it turns out, isn’t very pleased to see them.  So far the book has only been released in Australia, but it is available online here.

 

Have a great Friday. I know I’m going to.

Book Bling

Over the years I have had a lot of fun sourcing jewellery that matches my various books.

There were frog earrings for The Floatingest Frog.

 

There was a necklace and earrings featuring the globe for Pearl Verses the World.

 

Toppling had a necklace (which I made myself) plus earrings and a bracelet.

Head Hog had a necklace with a blue glass hog.

Hide and Sleep has two pairs of owl earrings.

While Snowy’s Christmas had kangaroo ones.

I even have earrings for books I either haven’t written yet, or that I’ve written but haven’t been published yet (watch this space!):

But, today, the postie brought me a little package with my latest earring purchase – and just in time, because these ones are to match Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, which is released tomorrow. Guess when I’ll be wearing them?

Four Days to Go

It’s only four days until the release of my newest book: Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape.

Sweet Escape is teh first in a brand new series, and my first foray into series-writing, so I am very excited.

Equally exciting is the fact that there is a website dedicated to the series, which is now live at:  www.sagecookson.com.au You can find details of the first book, and the next two, as well as recipes and activities.  More will be added over the coming weeks and months, but I’d love to hear what you think!

Have a great Monday.

 

Poetry Friday: All About the Books

Recently I did my annual bookshelf tidy. Roughly once a year I tidy up by shelves, put everything back into alphabetic order, and give away books which don’t fit and which I’m finished with. It isn’t long, of course, before themy system starts to break down – in fact, if you look carefully, you can see that not all of my picture books fitted back in and so some are sitting on top. Oops.

One of my favourite poems about books is by Julia Donaldson and, coincidentally, someone shared it on Facebook yesterday, reminding me it would be a good fit for Poetry Friday. It begins:

I opened a book and in I strode.

Now nobody can find me.

I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,

My town and my world behind me.

You can read the rest online here.

 

I also like the image Emily Dickinson provided, of a book being like a ship:

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away

Nor any Coursers like a Page

Of prancing Poetry.

You can read the rest online here.

And, of course, even Dr Seuss has written about books:

Do you have a favourite poem about books or about reading? I’d love to hear it.

Have a great Poetry Friday. The roundup today is hosted by  Random Noodling.

Poetry Friday: Dolphins

I’ve spent a lot of time walking lately, and have several favourite places where I can walk and watch dolphins at the same time. One of them is a place called The Cut, where the Australiand estuary meets the Indian Ocean. When I was there a few days ago there were at least a dozen dolphins, busily fishing, and also catching the waves that were breaking just off the end of the cut. I drafted a poem in my head as I walked, at the same time I tried (not very succesfully) to capture what I was seeing with my phone camera. Unfortunately, the phone just can’t zoom enough to really do justice to the magic happening on the water – and the dolphins, when they jump, don’t let you know in advance so you can get your timing right Still, I thought I might match the poem with some of my shots.

At The Cut

So many dolphins

You can see them right? About three in this shot.

catching fish

They splash and froth while they’re fishing. Cool to watch.

catching waves

Look closely – there are two dolphins INSIDE the wave, having a ride.

catching air.

(If you watch right to the end you’ll see the dolphin jump out of the wave)

And me,

on the beach,

catching my breath

as I try to catch it all

on camera.

I tried and tried to get a selfie with dolphins in the background. But every time I clicked they dived.

 

And here’s the poem without all the interruptions:

At The Cut

So many dolphins

catching fish

catching waves

catching air.

And me,

on the beach,

catching my breath

as I try to catch it all

on camera.

(Sally Murphy, 2016)

 

Happy Poetry Friday. The roundup this week is hosted by Carol at Carol’s Corner.