The Home Stretch

Once Upon A Project makes its official debut five weeks from today. I’m in the home stretch, when early reviews start coming in from readers and organizations. APOOO gave it two thumbs up, as mentioned in Yasmin Coleman’s column on Blogging in Black this past weekend. I eagerly looked at the recently updated May RT ratings online, only to find that it wasn’t reviewed for that issue and I'll have to wait another month at least to see what they say.

It’s also time to put promotion in full gear. I confess, I started thinking about ways to promote this book early on. I’ve never done of this – it’s the writing process I adore, and any illusions of being a superstar in a very crowded field were short-lived. I did know that for this book I wanted to do something. Last fall, before I even had a clear picture of what I was going to do, I started putting $15 a week (as a contract employee, I get a paycheck every week) away toward my budget.

There’s dozens of services out there vying for those author promotion dollars. I had to decide which ones to pass on and which ones to grab. Making a choice is a very personal decision, since what works for one writer won't necessarily work for the next one.

Book trailers are fun to make, but I've been slow getting the finishing touches on mine. My husband's been slowly recovering from the flu and is attending an off-site conference all this week. Maybe I can get him to finish it this weekend and get it posted on YouTube and my web site. All he's got to do is add the music and credits. I originally had this targeted for mid-February. It'll now be closer to early April. But at least it's not costing me anything.

I’m generally not a conference person for the most part. It never seemed like a good economical decision to attend RT, and I let my membership in RWA lapse two years ago when I relocated. I always suspected – and from what I’ve heard other authors publicly state, I wasn’t too far off the mark – that I wouldn’t be able to give books away at these events where black authors writing books with black characters aren’t exactly in demand. Therefore, it seemed pointless and money better spent elsewhere (and not necessarily to promote my writing).

I always wanted to go to the Harlem Book Fair, but that mid-July date has proved problematic for me. Three years ago my stepson got married that weekend. Two years ago I moved my annual Hamptons vacation to August so it would coincide with my aunt’s 90th birthday party in my hometown of Yonkers (and one trip to New York per year is, quite frankly, sufficient). Last year my husband and I went away in late June/early July to coincide with my 50th birthday, and another trip two weeks later was out of the financial question. This year mid-July will find us vacationing in San Diego and hopefully Baja California (provided my husband gets his passport) at an informal high school reunion his classmates from Thailand put together. Maybe I’ll get to Harlem in mid-July eventually, but it won’t be this year.

I did decide to attend the Romance Slam Jam (or at least part of it; since I’ve got a Thursday evening signing scheduled on the South Side and a Friday lunchtime signing scheduled in downtown Chicago), which is being held just 30 miles from my home and just a few days after my new book’s release date. The possible downside to this is the very real possibility that the book vendor might not receive my brand new book in time for the signing. That means getting on the phone and seeing if the publisher can send me my author copies quickly so I’ll have a backup . . . and since that's no guarantee either, I still might end up sitting at the signing book-less and pissed.

I’m always getting offers from people to do e-mail blasts, most of which I’ve resisted. These services can be rather costly, and with uncertain results. Many of them claim to have thousands and thousands of people listed on their databases, but I know that doesn’t mean that all those folks are reading their e-mail. How many times have I erased newsletters advertising new books from these same people without even opening them? The service I utilize to send my monthly e-mails to my subscribers offers statistics that show that a full one-third of the people who signed up have yet to open it.

In the end I decided to go with two such services because I believed they were a good bargain: SORMAG (Shades of Romance) and Romance Designs. Truth be told, I’m naturally skeptical of anything with the word “Romance” in it, since my book is women’s fiction and contains a minimum of romance, but regardless of this I felt, then and now, that I did the right thing.

I’m also trying to capitalize on a release date two weeks before Mother’s Day by making a yet-to-be-announced special offer to those who would like signed bookplates to personalize Mother’s Day gifts (or for themselves), although I’ll have to put a number limit on this because first class postage is expensive.

My final idea made me glad I’d set aside a budget because it would take the bulk of it. I decided to do a direct mail campaign targeted to a specific demographic: Fifty-year-old African-American female book buyers, since Once Upon A Project speaks most directly to them (although you can still appreciate it if you’re younger, older, or non-black). In addition to postage costs, it takes a lot of time to put together geographically-organized mailing lists, especially if it was done the way I did it (a little bit sneakily, and that’s all I’ll say about that). Because I got many more addresses than I was entitled to through somewhat fraudulent means, I ended up with 5-digit zip codes rather than the zip + 4s that are practically a requirement for direct mail, and I had to work out a way to get this information without driving myself nuts zip code crazy. I’m happy to say that it’s all coming together. I usually gather the data while watching TV, with three screens open on my computer. I have no idea how successful this endeavor will be, but two things work in my favor here – a postcard can be mailed for just 26 cents, and the price increase won’t go into effect until May. And I’ll have these contacts forever.

Of course, when I'm awaiting the release of my 15th book next April, I probably won't bother with any of this stuff.