Allie Potts's Blog, page 38

Giving more than Tuesday

Recently I heard a comment on TV about how Giving Tuesday, a day designedto bring awarenessto non-profits and charitable giving,could have been possibly scheduled for a dayother than within theweek of rabid consumerism that is the week after Thanksgiving, if for no other reason than people would have more disposable cash to donate. While I believe this is a fair concern, I was very pleased to read that more than a few people found a way to balance the Black Friday shopping for themselveswith...

Self Published – Now what?

When I wrote my first novel, I took advantage of some time off from my day job to work on it at a break neck speed. Unfortunately as previously mentioned, I currently lack that extra free time. In fact I have even less time now as I still am trying to promote the first book.

I choose to self publish the first time for a number of reasons. Yes I wanted to maintain creative control of the process, but it also helped me meet my own speed to market goal.While I’ve written as a hobby off and on for...

Finding the time to write – the story continues

I’ve been blogging a lot recently about my efforts to better understand the world of book sales after publishing; research which might have been beneficialto do several months ago rather than the trial by fire that is selling anything between Thanksgiving and New Year. However as much as I share what I am learning, the post that continues to gain the most amount of views remains on the topic split between how I managed to get anything written in the first place between day job with two kids a...

Thanksgiving may be over, but that doesn’t stop my gratitude

The dishes have been put away, and it may take me weeks to get over the overstuffed feeling in my stomach, but that doesn’t mean that the only opportunity I have to be grateful is over for another year.

I would have posted this yesterday, but I wanted to spend yesterday with my family and not the computer, as I would never have written word one without their support.

Today, however I wanted to express my gratitude for those of you who have visited my blog and have been willing to share some of...

Virtual Trade Shows

Shortly after my book was published, I received a call asking about whether or not I wanted to participate in an upcoming book show where I would be one of several new authors. All I would have to do is register for the event for a mere $1000 USD and arrange my own transportation, hotel room, etc.

I’ve participated in a number of tradeshowsover the years through my day job and am very familiar with trying to balance between being the best eye candy I could be in order to draw visitors to my bo...

Marketing and Outreach – Now what

Patience has never been my virtue.

Perhaps this is one of the reason I have never followed my husband in his marathon training – I havea difficult time pacing myself. Ok – so my lack of patienceis probably the least of my reasons for not running marathons with him, I just can’t get my head around voluntarily running that far when your life didn’t depend upon it.

Since publishing, I’ve launched www.anuncertainfaith.com,been active on goodreads, created a Facebookpage, a google+ page, have begun...

Promoting myself as an author for the first time

I was recently invited to participate in my city’s Chamber of Commerce networking group for Working Mom’s. This is a normally a great group because when all else fails you can ask about a person’s children whenever you are in need of an icebreaker conversational starter and I’ve very much enjoyed that my hometown offers this program. I’ve been a participant for years; however this was the first time I was going not in support of my day job, but as an author.

I had had the brilliant idea that I...

To sequel or not to sequel?

My debut novel is approximately 30 days old this week, and like any new baby, is still keeping me up at night. My gut tells me that by this point my friends and family who were thinking about purchasing it probably already have, and so any sales from this point on would be from strangers. This is a prospect that both excites and alarms me.

I unfortunately have a taste for writing now, but do I truly have the skills necessary to convert it from hobby to business? Only time will tell for sure, b...

Supporting other indie authors!

Goodreads has a number of groups which are free to join, and I happened upon a group called Pure Indie Promotion. The rules are simple: A group member’s work is selected for promotion, then all group members do what they can to help improve the visibility of this work in the hopes that their work might be selected next. I am more than happy to do my part as it is very difficult to get noticed when there are so many other books out there with larger marketing budgets than available tomost indi...

How do you find the time to write

One of the most common questions I receive when I tell people that I just completed writing is not, “how did you come up with the story?” or “what is the story about?” No – the most common question I hear is “how did you find the time to write?”

I was fortunate enough to be given a number of weeks paid sabbatical from my day job,which I hope I was able to put to good use. As this was only a very limited period of time, I had to ensure that I maximized my daily word output every single day. I u...