Barbara Gregorich's Blog, page 4

Using To-Do Lists

As regular readers of this blog know, I decided to self-publish my recent novel, Exit Velocity, through BookBaby. I signed a contract on or about September 1, 2023, and from that day until June 4, 2024 (publication day), I worked on the book six or seven days a week.

First came cover design and formatting. Then proofreading. Then proofreading again for the digital version. Overlapping that came sending out Advance Reader Copies to book-trade publications such as Booklist and Publishers Weekly...

Book Review Services: 2

As it turns out, even though I was disappointed in my NetGalley results and probably would not use NetGalley again, I had better luck with another book-review service: Readers’ Favorite. And I also tried a site called BookSirens.

Readers’ Favorite is considered one of the best of book-review services for indie publishers, and I can see why. Both NetGalley and Readers’ Favorite charge the author, but in different ways. NetGalley charges you to list your book and promises nothing in return: the...

Book Review Services: 1

In my last several blogs I’ve been writing about some of the things I did right in self-publishing Exit Velocity. In this blog and the next, I want to write about things I did wrong. Perhaps a more accurate way to put that is to say steps that weren’t worth my doing: most likely steps I would not repeat for future books.

At the top of my unsuccessful attempts was the very important quest for reader reviews. As I’ve mentioned before, book buyers look for reader reviews. The more reviews the be...

Exit Velocity: Press Release

One of my very important but also very difficult to-do’s in marketing Exit Velocity was a twofold affair: (1) writing a press release; (2) deciding how to send it out.

For all practical purposes, I had never written a press release before. When my first and second (and maybe even third) Research Notes for Women at Play volumes came out, I wrote an announcement and posted it on my web page as Press Release for Research Notes, or something like that. But I don’t recall searching for newspaper d...

Author Interview: Exit Velocity

Recently I answered a series of interview questions to submit to Authors Answer. Unfortunately, after writing the answers I discovered that Authors Answer has a policy of interviewing an author only once — and I had been interviewed when The F Words was published. Click here to read that interview.

So, instead of having my thoughts sit by their lonely selves somewhere on my computer, I thought I’d share them on my blog. Here, then, are the five interview questions and my answers.

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A Parrot Flew into My Novel

Those of you who have been reading my blog for the last seven or eight months are aware that my new novel, Exit Velocity, is a fusion of science-fiction and political fiction and features a parrot from another planet. Because you are readers, I suspect that you’re interested in the usual fiction-analysis questions, such as:

What does the parrot want? What is its motivation for coming to Earth?

What conflicts does the parrot face? How are these resolved . . . if they’re resolved.

There a...

Presale or No Presale

For years I have felt conflicted about whether or not to offer my self-published books on presale. Almost always, I’ve opted against it. But with Exit Velocity (June 4, 2024) I opted for pre-sale. And here’s why.

The main argument for presale offerings is that if you build up orders on sites that allow presale, such as Amazon, then brick-and-mortar bookstores will  notice and they in turn will stock your book. Plus, having a lot of presale orders will alert your publisher to print enough book...

Author Press Kit

Back in 2005 when I first started my website, I had a page dedicated to my press kit. I felt it would be accessed by anybody who wanted to write an article about my books or me. 

Unlike today, I couldn’t tell back then if anybody actually accessed my press kit. Today web pages offer stats on visitors, so I can quickly see which individual pages of my website are accessed, and when. I had a feeling, though, that nobody ever used my press kit. It contained high quality images of the covers of m...

Granny Squares and Fiction

Table runner crocheted by Mary Gregorich, 1950s

My mother was a life-long crocheter, expressing herself through the beautiful pieces she created. Among my childhood memories one always stands out: lying on the floor with my brother, watching a TV Western (Maverick, maybe, or Wagon Train), hearing in the background the subtle snap of mercerized cotton thread as my mother’s crochet needle pulled it through her fingers and into the piece she was crocheting.

In those days I was never intereste...

Exit Velocity: Professional Journal Reviews

I suspect that every person who participates in indie-publishing has different opinions on how to market a title before its publication day. I myself have tried different approaches with different books: in other words, I haven’t followed a consistent pattern. That’s because, frankly, I’m not sure what works best.

Take the question of reviews. Reviews help sell books, as we all know. But there are different kinds of reviews: professional reviews, and reader reviews. It used to be, before the ...