Friday Ratings Summary and How Much Newspaper Display Ads Cost
Wrapping up another week on the PR and business side of being a writer. I have completed visits to five major college campuses in the area and hung posters advertising the Flesh Wound website. I made follow up visits to three of those schools, and rehung posters where they had been taken down. Today, I'm going to pause to take a deep breath and summarize how Flesh Wound has been received by readers so far, and talk about the next phase of the PR plan: newspaper display advertising.
There are five different websites where readers have posted reviews of Flesh Wound: Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, BooksaMillion.com, Goodreads.com, and LibraryThing.com. In total, 35 ratings and/or reviews of Flesh Wound have been posted, all on a scale of 5 stars being best, 1 star being worst. Here's how the 35 ratings break down:
5 stars = 26 ratings (74%)
4 stars = 5 ratings (14%)
3 stars = 3 ratings (9%)
2 stars = 0 ratings (0%)
1 star = 1 rating (3%)
I am quite pleased with that result. 74% of readers, or 3 out of 4, rated Flesh Wound 5 stars. 88% of readers rated it 4 stars or better, and 97% of readers rated it 3 stars or better. Of the 35 ratings, less than 10 came from people I know. These results encourage me to redouble my PR efforts to get Flesh Wound in front of as many readers as possible!
Speaking of that, I checked the number of website hits to the Flesh Wound site (www.FleshWoundTheBook.com/wordpress). This week so far, the site has 35 hits. Last week, it had 41. There are still 1 1/2 days left this week, so I'm hoping we pass last week's total. A few people have registered on the site to get updates, so the ball is starting to roll!
The next step in the PR plan is to run display ads in the student newspapers of the schools where I've put up posters. The going rate for an add that spans 2 column inches and is about 5" high (roughly 1/8 of a newspaper page) runs anywhere from $87.50 to $175.00. I don't think this is too bad, and at any rate following up the posters with another channel of exposure to the students is critical to reinforcing the brand and increasing their curiosity. I've taken steps to contact the advertising departments of the newspapers and will run the ads in the editions that greet students upon their return from Thanksgiving break.
As for the ad itself, you can see it to the left. What do you think? Would you go to the URL if you saw this ad in the newspaper?
Have a terrific weekend! Enjoy the anticipation of Thanksgiving, and as a good friend of mine suggested, read something today that makes you money! (He's a successful entrepreneur – can you tell? 
) Thanks for reading! -Jon
