If you are the author of a non historical, or non-Regency romance novel, I will be happy to consider featuring a complimentary author interview with you here at MyLadyWeb.Com (Regency Romance Author Interviews Are Featured At LadySilk.Net) Please contact me with details about the book you wish to feature including the genre and either an excerpt or summary, links to any blogs, websites or other promotional pages you maintain, and any other details you consider relevant, including a giveaway item that you want to provide to help promote traffic to your interview. If your request is selected I should forward a list of customized questions to you within 48 hours.
Teresa ~AT~ MyLadyWeb ~DOT~ Com
Why Am I Offering To Help You Promote Your Book For Free?
Thirty-Five years ago I wrote my Regency Romance novel, A Very Merry Chase. Late last year I decided to take advantage of the dramatic strides taken in Kindle and Nook ebook sales and self-publish my novel. I've been working online for over fifteen years now so I already had the programming, design and online promotional skills, and I've been editing my own and other people's work for longer than that. I also have a few writing credentials to my credit, plus I've been published in a variety of formats over the years, so I decided, "What the heck, why not go for it? It can't be that hard. It won't cost me anything to try, and at least the book that I slaved over all those years ago with big hopes and even bigger dreams will finally see the light of day." So I did it, and here's what I've learned that will help other aspiring authors.
In the educational world the saying goes "Publish or Perish," referring to a professor's need to be published in professional journals in order to gain the third-party credibility they need to validate their position in the world of education. In the online world, publishing is actually the easy part, so the relevant saying is--or should be--"Promote or Perish." Unfortunately, that sets the author up for a huge conundrum. If you spend time promoting in order to be noticed, it takes away time from writing, which in turn adversely effects your ability to publish. And that fact is not just true for self and independently published authors. The fact of the matter is, even the big name best selling authors that have gravy contracts with the major publishing houses have to promote their books--they just have more help in doing so.
Fortunately, for today's authors--best selling or just aspiring--there is one reasonably painless way to promote your book online. Do author interviews. This serves a two-fold purpose.
#1. It allows you to promote your book by highlighting the things that you personally believe are important about your book or that would otherwise make your book appealing to your target audience.
#2. It allows you to build name recognition for both yourself as an author, and your book, while also building traffic that will increase your ranking on both the general search engines and the dedicated search engines belonging to the online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Borders...thus increasing visibility and sales!*
The problem is finding a blog or website that is run by someone willing to do a non-fee-paid interview with a new author--and this is particularly the case with self-published authors. Why? The answer to that goes back to it being so easy to publish these days. Unfairly or not, there is a certain amount of prejudice against self or independently published authors. Unfortunately, that just adds to the writer's conundrum. A new author cannot overcome prejudice against them for being a new or "worse yet" a new, independently, self or electronically published author unless they:
* take time from their writing,
* to do the promotion they need to do,
* to draw the natural traffic they need to draw,
* to climb in the search engine rankings,
* to attract the attention they need to attract,
* to get the third-party reviews and the accolades they need,
* to make the sales they must make,
* to gain the credibility they need,
* to overcome the initial prejudice against them.
Whew!!!
So, as a fellow self/independently/electronically published author, who thoroughly and completely knows how it feels to be trapped inside that particular conundrum, I'm here to say....
If you the author of a non-overtly-erotic** Regency romance*** novel, I will be happy to feature a complimentary author interview with you at LadySilk.Net. Please contact me with details about the book you wish to feature including the genre and either an excerpt or summary, links to any blogs, websites or other promotional pages you maintain, and any other details you consider relevant, including a giveaway item that you want to provide to help promote traffic to your interview.
I plan to post approximately one interview per month (or more often, if necessary to meet the demand) and if your request is selected I should forward a list of customized questions to you within 48 hours.
Teresa ~AT~ MyLadyWeb ~DOT~ Com
Smiles and Good Fortune,
Teresa
* For other tips on promoting your books online, see my 6 part series of articles at Evan CarmichaelThe ABCs and 123s of Self-Publishing and Promoting Your Book Online
