After my initial call with Smith Publicity and deciding on what program to use (I opted for their three-week media blitz), I was emailed an in-depth questionnaire about myself and my novel. The information I provided would aide them in crafting an official press release for the novel to send out to potential reviewers and interviewers.
It was a lot of questions, and after a week I submitted the completed questionnaire and the work began. And that work began with a quick call on the first day of week one with my publicity team to go over any question I may have before we got into it.
And the adventure began.
By the end of the afternoon my book was posted on NetGalley. NetGalley is a site where book reviewers, educators, librarians, and booksellers can request eBook versions of you novel and review it. They then post their reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, NetGalley, etc. By the end of the week, over 30 people had requested and been sent an eBook to review. This was a good start!
As the first week progressed, my team and I went back and forth revising and fine-tuning the press release that would be sent out to people over the next two weeks. By Thursday it was done and ready to go, and my team sent out an initial flurry of email queries for the book.
On my end, I printed out 30+ copies of the press release to include with the review copies I had on hand in preparation for sending them out ASAP. The wheels were now set in motion and it would be only a matter of days before I would be making multiple trips to FedEx and the Post Office.
More on Week Two tomorrow!
