Tag: Smith Publicity

My Publicity Experience – Part Five

Posted on by Ian Dawson

One of the things I liked best about working with Smith Publicity is that they don’t just drop you like a hot rock once the three weeks is done.  If they receive requests for the book after your time with them has come to an end, they forward the requests on to you.  They also gave me a list of 25 media outlets that they sent inquiries to but had not heard back from for me to follow-up with on my own.  I really appreciate this type of service and am glad I chose them for my marketing blitz.

I had my final wrap-up call with my publicity team and received more requests that day and throughout the week. I had also received a request for a review copy of the book from Finland.  Yes, Finland.  I know, I know.  Did I send a copy of the book to Finland?  Yes, I did.

So, at FedEx, to send a copy of my book from the United States to Finland would have cost $156.  I am proud to say that I did NOT pay that amount to send it to Finland.  However, I did walk over to the post office in the same strip mall, and to end it via USPS was only $24.  The Field is now on its way to Finland!

I also got a couple reviews on NetGalley.  One was five-stars; the other three-stars.  What was interesting about the three-star review is that she thought the book was good but it wasn’t her favorite.  I’m okay with that.  My main takeaway was that the reviewer liked the book, and maybe she has a harder star-grading-criteria than other reviewers. 

I’m still waiting to hear back from KRCR-TV in Redding.  I’m sure the producer wanted to read the book prior to doing a story and having me trek up to Redding, so I hope to hear from them soon.  If not, it’s okay.  I have plenty of other opportunities in the works.

And that’s the bottom line with all of this.  A book isn’t a movie that has to make millions its first weekend or the industry sees it as a flop.  With a book, especially one that’s self-published, it takes time to gain traction and get the word out.  The book is now in the hands of over 60 people.  Over the next few months, I hope that even a half or even a third take the time to read it and post about it.  As I said in a previous post, this is a marathon not a sprint. 

I’m just excited to finally be on the journey and am grateful to Smith Publicity for helping me get the word out about my novel.

If you have any questions about my experience with Smith Publicity or want more details about anything I talked about, please feel free to leave a comment. 

My Publicity Experience – Part Four

Posted on by Ian Dawson

Each week during the media blitz, Smith Publicity would send me a report detailing whom they had heard back from with requests for a copy of my novel.  This was great because there were some I had missed given the number of emails coming in and I was able to add and then send those people copies ASAP.

The final week of the blitz was underway, and my team send press release inquiries to media in Redding, California where the book takes place.  As I mentioned before, the book is inspired by true events that took place when I was abducted in Redding when I was 13.  Early in the week I heard from The Redding Record Searchlight and KRCR-TV in Redding!  I had once worked for the paper and knew KRCR-TV well, so this was exciting to hear that they were interested in my story.

I sent out copies to them that day.  The reporter from the Record Searchlight and I emailed back and forth and she asked me a series of pre-interview questions including if I had a police report about my abduction.  I didn’t, my parents didn’t, but I knew who probably would: The Redding Police Department.

After an initial phone call, they found the police report dated May 1, 1993.  I got some other basic info and found out that the file was on microfilm and had not been digitized.  I requested a copy of the report. 

I sent the info I had on to the reporter who was unable to pick up a copy of the report just a copy of the call log from that day.  Luckily, this had enough information to legitimize my story as being true, and the interview went on as scheduled.

So, on Thursday morning of my last week of the media blitz, I had a phone interview with Michele Chandler from The Redding Record Searchlight. The interview lasted about an hour, and I talked about what I remembered from the day of my abduction, what happened after, and about my book and its theme of friendship.  It went very well.

That evening, the article was up on the Record Searchlight’s website (you can read it here!). The next morning, it was on the front page of the paper!  I was very excited about this as were my family, friends, co-workers, and my team at Smith Publicity.

It had been a busy and productive three weeks for me and my book, The Field.  Tomorrow, I’ll write about the week after the media blitz was over and some final thoughts.

My Publicity Experience – Part Three

Posted on by Ian Dawson

By Monday morning of Week Two, I was getting review copy requests in my Inbox.  This was pretty exciting to say the least!  And one of the first was from The New York Post!  Holy cow! I rushed over to FedEx with a copy of the book – press release folded and placed behind the cover – and decided, in my excitement, to send it overnight.  Now, for those curious about how much it costs to FedEx a copy of a one-pound novel from Los Angeles to New York overnight…it’s $93!  Now, keep in mind that the adrenaline was pumping and I was excited to have a name as big as The New York Post interested in my novel. So, I did the rational thing and sent it overnight for $93. 

Flash-forward:they ended up passing on reviewing the book, so lesson learned.  And FYI, if I had sent it via FedEx to New York and had it take 4 days it would have cost $15.  Face-palm!

Needless to say, the rest of my FedEx mailings took a bit longer but were much cheaper in the long run. 

So, the first week I was sent many, many, many review copy requests, which was great!  I advise anyone who does this to create a spreadsheet to track who you’ve sent to and when, when it was delivered, the date you followed-up, and what the outcome was (interview, review, dead silence, etc).  I also recommend sending an email to the recipient the day it was sent letting them know to expect the package soon.

I made two trips to FedEx the first week, which was a really good sign.  A lot of bloggers, some podcasters, and magazines were interested in my book.  To me, it’s all good since people throughout the country are now reading the book and copies are all over the place.

What I didn’t anticipate was how many mailers I would blow through sending out copies.  True, I should have planned ahead and ordered a bunch on Amazon or from Office Max, but I didn’t.  This led to a couple days where both Targets in my area and both FedEx Office locations were out of the size mailers I needed.  Luckily, one of the Targets re-stocked and I bought all they had.

At the end of Week Two, I had sent out 15 copies of my book and the NetGalley list had grown by a dozen more people.  Tomorrow, I will write about my busy final week with Smith Publicity.

My Publicity Experience – Part Two

Posted on by Ian Dawson

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!

My Publicity Experience – Part One

Posted on by Ian Dawson

Publicity and marketing. All of us know something about those topics.  We are inundated by marketing and publicity campaigns for upcoming movies and TV series on billboards, bus stops, and buildings.  Not to mention YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and traditional media like TV and radio.  This multi-million-dollar campaigns are a huge gamble for studios and production companies hoping that you and I will see these ads and be enticed to go and see or tune into watch the product being advertised.  And, for the most part, it works.

But what if you just wrote your first novel and don’t have millions to spend on publicity?

Well, that’s the position I found myself in with my novel, The Field.  I had a published novel in both eBook and paperback form but no way to market it to the young adult audience it was intended for.  This was a big problem. 

I had made the investment into getting the book out for purchase, but I had no real way to make people aware on a large scale that book existed.  Yes, I was on Twitter and had created a website for the book, but I was only reaching friends, family, and co-workers. 

I knew what I had to do.

Now, there are videos and blogs about how to market your novel for free, and I commend those who do that.  I think if you can successfully sell your book and get the word out inexpensively that’s a great plus for you in the long run.  The problem I faced was unlike marketing to adults, my target audiences was teens thirteen and up.  I don’t know anyone in that age group, so I had to outsource my marketing to people who could reach them.

Enter Smith Publicity.

I mentioned them in a previous post where they made me realize that I had initially pretty much done all the wrong things when I thought about publishing my book (not on social media, no hard copy of the book, and no Author Photo).  All of those things were fixable on my end, but I inquired about using their services to get the word out about my book.

After careful consideration, I decided on one of their plans, and in the next post I will talk about what happened the initial week of my team-up with Smith Publicity. 

The Field – From Word Doc to Paperback, Part Seven

Posted on by Ian Dawson

Here are a few takeaways and final thoughts I have about self-publishing The Field:

It’s important for your own creative sanity that once you make the leap from your novel being your baby to publishing it either as an eBook, a paperback, or both, it is now a viable, marketable product.  This means that you have to put distance between you the author and you’re the person trying to market and sell what is a now a viable commodity.

This distancing will also help you in the event your get a negative review or criticism you don’t like.  The person may not have liked your product, but they still bought the product and you reap the benefits either way.  By taking this more objective and business-like approach to each work, you can then free up your mind to write the next book, and the next, and the next.

Distancing yourself emotionally from your completed project will also help you think more clearly when it comes to the marketing and sales aspects of your work.  It’s not at all helpful if you get wrapped up in a minute detail that occurs during the publishing process and your obsess over something that in the end has an easy fix. Case in point: I talked in a previous post about the paperback being priced at $14.63 due to production costs. I agonized over this for half a week, sure that my book was now doomed for failure because it was too expensive. Then, a Book Baby rep suggested I create a promo code to decrease the price.  Boom.  Problem solved.

I had I been thinking like a salesperson and been more pragmatic than emotional, I could have solved the problem without the needless drama. Leave the drama for the page not the publishing.

Know that if you are self-publishing that you are going to have to do almost everything yourself.  Yes, there are sites like Book Baby that will guide you, but when it comes to getting the word out to a wide swath of people, just know that you are the best marketing tool there is.  So use social media, your own website, co-workers, family, and friends to get the initial word out.  If you want to, you can enlist the aid of a marketing company – like I did with Smith Publicity – to spread the word farther.  But again, while they will be assisting with press releases and other aspects, the project is still driven by me and my knowledge and passion for the project.

There are also dozens of videos on YouTube as well as blogs that can give you insights into how to market your book either inexpensively or for free.

Also, make sure that you have the means to afford all the aspects of doing this yourself.  There are inexpensive and even free alternatives if you want to publish your eBook on Amazon or even on your own blog chapter by chapter.  Don’t go into debt or sacrifice eating or bills to do this. And if you do, make sure you budget and keep track of all your expenses.

So, what would I do differently.  Well, for the next book I will definitely publish the eBook and paperback as part of the same project.  The reason: it’s cheaper.  I could have paid 50% less if I had gone with one of the packages offered through Book Baby that allows you to do both.  But I thought just an eBook was easy money.  As of this post I have sold more paperbacks than eBooks, so that shows what I know!

I also learned that the best strategy is to budget your time in an efficient manner, especially if self-publishing is a side business and not your full-time occupation.  I work six days a week at my main job, so everything involving the book is like having a second job. It’s important to give yourself some downtime and not burn yourself out with everything that now needs to be done on top of all your other responsibilities.  Your novel won’t get published any faster if your agonizing over pricing at 4am.  Trust me. It’s not worth losing sleep over.

And that’s my self-publishing journey.  It was definitely worth all the time, effort, and expense, and I will definitely be doing it again soon.  If you have any questions, comments, or further advice you’d like to share, please feel free to leave a comment.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks for reading!

The Field – From Word Doc to Paperback, Part Six

Posted on by Ian Dawson

Here’s where things get a bit more complex when it comes to self-publishing.  You’re no longer in the digital realm when it comes to a paperback, you are in the real world and that means there are many more variables at play.  Let’s talk about them! 

            For the eBook I did everything online with no assistance from anyone. If I ever had a question – and this has been true since day one of this experience – Book Baby responds to emails very, very fast.  With the paperback, I set up a call with one of the Book Baby people to go through all the details that go into making a paperback a reality.  We hashed through book size, page count, page color, would I need a cover or provide my own, and host of other questions.

After the call, I emailed Steven Novak and he got to work on the paperback’s cover.  I think it turned out great!

IMG_1450

I went through the familiar steps on Book Baby’s website, but the nice thing was since it was just a new version of the same book I didn’t have to deal with as much technical stuff.  Then I had to decide on what price was best for the paperback.  Since this is Print-on-Demand, the price was set at $14.63, which I initially was concerned was too high a price.  I’m a new author, who’s gonna invest almost $15 for my first book?  (I would soon learn that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay that price, which was quite a nice feeling)

A consultant at Book Baby advised me that I could create a promo code on their site to reduce the price, and I did just that.  You can order your copy here and use the promo code FIELD20 at checkout to save 20%!

When I got the proofs for the paperback I jumped up and down even higher this time.  They looked AMAZING!  I had been a bit unsure of the whole process before I got the proofs, but the final product was definitely exciting!

All the pieces were in place.  I had ordered 125 copies for myself (well, not only for me, that would be a tad odd and narcissistic), and was awaiting their arrival.  I got the email from Book Baby that the four 22-pound boxes of books had been shipped.  I was glad for the sake of not getting a hernia that they were in four separate boxes.

Then on Friday, September 7, 2018 at 9:30PM, I got an alert on my phone that UPS had delivered the books.  And they were on my doorstep.  And we have a package theft problem at my complex.  And I live 40 minutes from where I work!

I clocked out and rushed home (as fast as one can in L.A. traffic on a Friday night).  I arrived just in time to see the sprinklers turn off in front of my door.  Where the boxes were.  Now all wet.  Yay.

I hefted the wet boxes into the apartment and dried them off.  I opened the first box, planning to unload them all to ensure there was no water damage, and I froze.  There, from inside the box, staring back at me was my novel: The Field by Ian Dawson.  It was a profound moment.  I took the top copy out and flipped through it.  The new book smell hit my nose the smell after a new fallen rain (or it could have been the smell of wet cardboard box, who know?).  I then pulled them all out of the boxes and luck was on my side: no water damage!

Now I had 125 books ready to go.  Where were they going?  Well, remember in my last post I talked about Smith Publicity?  Well, I’ve teamed up with them for a three-week media blitz in late September, and I needed copies to send to potential reviewers and interviewers (more on that experience soon!).  Plus, I knew that family, friends, co-workers, and those who helped me get the novel done and published wanted copies, too.

So, after all of this, from the push from the woman who cuts my hair to publish the damn book, to getting the paperbacks in wet boxes on my doorstep, what have I learned and what will I do differently with the second book (Coming Spring 2019!)?

Come back tomorrow for the final post in this series to find out!

The Field – From Word Doc to Paperback, Part Five

Posted on by Ian Dawson

With Book Baby, you can sign up for a marketing consultation with Smith Publicity, which is exactly what I did.  Having a Young Adult novel to sell is great, but you need to get people – especially young people – interested and buying the book. I had two one-hour consultation and I learned a whole heck-of-a-lot!  A few of the key takeaways were:

  • You need to have a social media presence;
  • You need to have an Author Photo;
  • You should have hard copies of your book to send out for potential reviews and interviews.

Well, guess what?  I didn’t have any of these!  Like I said in the first post of this series, I had run away from social media in 2016, so I had no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, none of it (I didn’t have a dating profile up!).  I knew that it was time to extricate myself from the wilderness and rejoin the masses on social media.  Well, at least one platform: Twitter (@thefieldya).

I also had no really good, current pics of myself to use for my website or profiles.  Luckily, I knew a co-worker who was a photographer and I asked him if he could take some photos of me for my Author Photo.  After I offered him money, he said yes (I’m kidding, he would have done it for free…but I’m sure the cash didn’t hurt).  We took a whole bunch of photos and by a vote of my co-workers, we landed on this one as my official Author Photo:

Ian Dawson_Author Photo
Photo Credit: (c) Andrew Ramirez

The biggest hurdle was the lack of paperback books to send out.  I knew it was a good idea for a number of reasons: a lot of kids don’t have access to tablets and phones 24/7; many of my co-workers wanted paperbacks instead of the eBook; a lot of my relatives didn’t have tablets or phones to read the book on and would prefer a hard copy.  Hm. There seemed to be a demand for paperbacks, something I had not realized.

It was time to go back to Book Baby for another project. How did it go?  Come by tomorrow to find out!