Have You Heard of a Twitter Pitchfest?

My friend L. Diane Wolf is offering a great way to pitch publishers and agents--fast!  It's called a Twitter Pitch Party and if it works out, it may become a regular.  Still, if you or an author friend has a book ready to pitch, don't miss this.  It may be a one of a kind. And see the amazing gatekeepers  you can reach (with links!), below!  Learn more at  http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-twitter-pitch.html

Here's the invitation:

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group

Twitter Pitch Party! 

#IWSGPit

July 27, 2017

8:00 am to 8:00 pm Eastern Time

All writers and authors are invited to participate in our very first Twitter Pitch.

Create a Twitter-length pitch for your completed and polished manuscript and leave room for genre, age, and the hashtag. On July 27, Tweet your pitch. If your pitch receives a favorite/heart from a publisher/agent check their submission guidelines and send your requested query. 

Many writers have seen their books published from a Twitter pitch - it’s a quick and easy way to put your manuscript in front of publishers and agents.

Rules: 

Writers may send out 1 Twitter pitch every 1 hour per manuscript.

Publishers/Agents will favorite/heart pitches they are interested in. Publishers can either Tweet basic submission guidelines or direct writers to their submission guidelines. (Writers, please do not favorite/heart pitches.)

Pitches must include GENRE/AGE and the hashtag #IWSGPit.

Ages: 
#C - children’s
#MG - middle grade
#YA - young adult
#NA - new adult
#A - adult
Genres: 
#AD - adventure
#CF - Christian fiction
#CO - contemporary
#F - fantasy
#H - horror
#HI - historical
#LF - literary fiction
#MCT - mystery/crime/thriller
#ME - memoir
#NF - non-fiction
#PB - picture book
#PN - paranormal
#R - romance
#SF - sci-fi
#WF - women's fiction

Participating Publishers and Agents: 

Acorn Publishing

Bond Literary Agency

Tiny Fox Press

Dancing Lemur Press

Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC

Entangled Publishing

Curiosity Quills Press

Rainbow Nerds Literary

Blaze Publishing

Inklings Literary Agency LLC

Owl City Press

Donald Maass Literary Agency

Carina Press

Anaiah Press

Speilburg Agency

Blue Ridge Literary Agency, LLC

Emerald City Literary Agency

Red Fox Literary

Fraser Bub Literary

Golden Wheat Literary

AB Literary Agency

Holloway Literary Agency

Dingbat Publishing

Aevitas Creative Management

The Knight Agency

Prospect Agency

Keen Editorial and Literary Services

The Friedrich Agency
Gandolfo Helin & Fountain Literary Management
Writers House LLC
The Seymour Agency
With more soon to come!

*Authors, please check out the publishers and agents before #IWSGPit day and before submitting.*

Please join us and spread the word! 


MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER


Howard-Johnson is the author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also a marketing consultant, editor, and author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers including the award-winning second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter (where she talks more about choosing and the advantages of winning contests and how to use those honors)  and The Frugal Editor. Her latest is in the series is  How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. Learn more on her Amazon profile page, http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile. Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers is one of her booklets--perfect for inexpensive gift giving--and, another booklet, The Great First Impression Book Proposal helps writers who want to be traditionally published. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including one she encourages authors to read because it will help them convince retailers to host their workshops, presentations, and signings. It is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. In addition to this blog, she helps writers extend the exposure of their favorite reviews at TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. She also blogs at all things editing--grammar, formatting and more--at The Frugal, Smart, and Tuned-In Editor (http://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com )

Quick Tip: Checking Online Bookstores

Have you done a search on the Walmart site for your 

book? 

Authors are telling me that their Createspace-

printed books have been appearing there with no 

extra effort on their part. In the past—even before 

Createspace—I found my books magically appearing 

on sites as varied as Harvard’s bookstore and 

Costco.com. 

If you find your book on one of these sites, check to 

see if your book's buy page needs any special 

attention from you—like the addition of reader 

reviews and utilizing other benefits

offered to writers and the publishing industry as 

suggested in the newest book in my 

#HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, 

How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and 

Ethically. 

MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER

 Howard-Johnson is the author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also a marketing consultant, editor, and author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers including the award-winning second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor. Her latest is in the series is How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. Learn more on her Amazon profile page, http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile. Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers is one of her booklets--perfect for inexpensive gift giving--and, another booklet, The Great First Impression Book Proposal helps writers who want to be traditionally published. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including one she encourages authors to read because it will help them convince retailers to host their workshops, presentations, and signings. It is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. In addition to this blog, she helps writers extend the exposure of their favorite reviews at TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. She also blogs at all things editing--grammar, formatting and more--at The Frugal, Smart, and Tuned-In Editor (http://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com )

Gillian Felix Shares Top 10 Things Learned from Do-It-Yourself Book Tour

I’ve been doing my own modified online book tour for the release of the second edition of The Frugal Editor and was intrigued by Twitter Pal’s mentions on what she’s learned about the process.  Hope you enjoy it!

 

Top 10 things I’ve learned from arranging my own blog tour

 By Gillian Felix

I guess I should start by introducing myself. Hello everybody my name is Gillian Felix and I am a citizen of the world, daughter, big sister, entrepreneur, and author of 2 novels; Changes and The Banovic Siblings, both make up the Family Portrait series of novels.

 

I published Changes back in October of 2013 and The Banovic Siblings on December 3, 2013. As you can see I am new to this business, and I’m sure if you ask me ten years from now, I’ll still say I’m new to the business because I am learning new things everyday.

 

What I’m about to share with you are things that I have learned from putting together 2 book blitzes and my current full blog tour.

1. Research your prospects. Before sending out a query to a blogger, be sure to check their review policies. Some may not be accepting reviews or tours at the moment. Bloggers have lives outside of the internet and sometimes they need to catch up. Also make sure their blog is suitable for your book. If they mostly post erotica, it makes no sense if you send them a query for a self help non-fiction book, unless they state that they are open to that in their policy.

 

2. Addressing your query letter. In your query letter I suggest addressing the blogger by name. I usually tailor my letter to the individual blogger. By learning who your prospect is you can find common ground, that blogger may even turn into a reader or friend. I’ve developed friendships with a lot of bloggers based on common interest. I’ve had many instances where a blogger didn’t have time during my tour to read my book, contact me to read it after the tour.

3. Be flexible. If you are putting together your own tour you have the option of tailoring the dates of your tour. That is a HUGE advantage over doing it through a tour company. Sometimes a blogger may be booked and cannot do it on your dates, in that case, give them to option of scheduling it at a later date. I’d rather have a blog post months after my tour have ended, than not at all (think about the benefits of that for a moment) ;-)

4. Give smaller blogs a chance. The thing that I have found with large blogs is that they host multiple tours a day. They have a bigger audience BUT your post will get lost in the shuffle. With smaller blogs you have a better chance of being the top post for a longer time. To me smaller blogs are niche marketing opportunities.

5. Time and work. Understand that hosting your own tour takes a lot of time and is a lot of work. If you don’t have the time to plan your blog tour, I suggest hiring a tour company. If you have the time, begin planning your tour at least a month in advance (I’ve already started planning my tour for my third book).

6. Be organized. I use Excel to create a spreadsheet of all the bloggers who participate in my tour. The first time you do a tour it is the hardest and takes the most time because of all the research. It gets much easier as you do more tours; I’ve used some of the same bloggers from my blitzes for the tour. Some bloggers have asked to be included in my next tour. To me that’s equivalent to a 5 star review!

7. Make it easy for bloggers. Make it as easy as possible for bloggers to sign up for your tour. I’ve started using Google forms and embedding it into my email to potential bloggers. Google wonderfully compiles the signups in a handy dandy spreadsheet which can be incorporated into Excel. This saves so much time!

8. Be prepared. Prepare all your materials before hand, (hence point 5). Some of the materials that you will need are guest posts, jpgs, a banner, biography and anything else you want to include. If you are doing a review tour, have your manuscript converted into 3 formats: .pdf, .mobi, .epub.

9. Links. Do not forget to include all your links; purchase, newsletters, blog etc. I also hosts tours on my site, and you will not believe how many authors send me their post info without the all important PURCHASE link. It takes time to track down their book on Amazon (I’d rather be doing something else). It’s the same for bloggers.

10. Drop box. Utilize drop box. It is free, easy to use and saves you the time of having to upload the same information over and over to different bloggers.

So there you have it. Top 10 things I’ve learned from putting together my own book tour. Like I said I am still learning and figuring out quicker and more efficient ways of doing things. My hope is that this information helps another person just like the many teachers on the web who have helped me. “When the student is ready to learn, a teacher will appear.” This rings true to me because I am always ready to learn and teachers have always appeared.

 

More about Gillian Felix:

Contact links:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/gillianfx

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Plaintalkbm/posts

Plain Talk Book Marketing blog: http://Plaintalkbm.com

-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .

Disagreeing with Publisher's Weekly on Bezos' Most Recent Click on the "Buy" Button

It's only a few hours after the face and we all probably know that Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) bought The Washington Post for 250 million.  Publishers Weekly weighed in on how Bezos might use the post to benefit and Amazon--and, by extension--book sales. I was personally most interested in their take on how their book review policies might change--or not.  

Here's the PW take on it: "… Amazon has become more aggressive about buying content and the creation of a relationship between Post columnists and reporters with Amazon Publishing is one possible move as is using the archives of the Post to create new print and digital offerings. (The Post already has a deal with Diversion Books for e-book originals). Bundling content exclusively for sale through Amazon is considered another possibility. Like most all newspapers, the Post drastically reduced its book review coverage several years ago, but upping the number of reviews is not seen as a priority."

The last part is discouraging, but I wouldn't bet on it. Further, I think that review policy may be made more egalitarian—that is they may be more inclusive of releases from indie publishers and individual authors.

 

What do you think?   

-----

  Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .