Author Book Marketing

Sometimes you've got to throw caution to the wind and plug your own work. No matter how much marketing you have done for your latest book, your own words may be the difference between a successful campaign and a dud. Throwing caution and modesty to the wind, I give you my latest work: Vegas and the Mob . The truth about Las Vegas, unlike the watered-down versions you might have heard elsewhere. Sin City was the Mob’s greatest venture and most spectacular success, and through forty years of frenzy, the FBI watched, listened on phone tapes, and did virtually nothing. Thank goodness for that, because Vegas wouldn’t be what it is today without the Mob! Two of the nation’s most powerful crime family heads went to prison in the 1930’s, Al Capone, and Lucky Luciano. Frank Nitti took over the Chicago Outfit while, Frank Costello ran things for the Luciano Family. Both men were influenced by their bosses from prison, and both sent enough gangsters onto the streets to influen

A virtual book tour can help get the good word out about your latest novel and it can be cheap, quick, and effective. But it’s rare to have all those qualities. Most virtual book tours are centered on book blogs that have little to no readership, little interaction with the blogger, and will require plenty of extra work from you. Don’t expect to pay the fee and be done working! Sure, you wrote the book, but the tour bloggers probably won’t. Ideally, every blogger would read your book, do a quality review of it for their readers, and some of those readers would click the links, check out your site, and buy a copy. That doesn’t always happen. Make sure you ask the who, what, where, when, and why questions. Who’s Doing My Tour? So, who’s going to do your tour, and where are the tour stops? You really need to know which sites are going to be hosting your book. Do they have any readership? Are they going to actually review your book? Are they going to post a question and answer sess

Recently I really got stuck on a writing project. I thought, I paced, I waved my arms at the blank canvas of my computer screen, I bit my nails. Nothing. Just me and the darkness. I was stuck, stranded in limbo. After a day in the dark I was afraid to go forward. There might be a cliff, a wombat, or even worse an editor out there for all I knew. I mean come on, it was really dark and I was scared and hungry sitting there cradling my meager story ideas in my lap. Eventually I gathered enough courage to slink away to the kitchen for a tuna sandwich, leaving the story to fend for itself, because I'm a heartless bastard. And that's the way the story would have ended, except for John Grisham. Strange as it seems, the man of 100 million book sales clicked on friends on my Goodreads account. I know because the website sent me an email, I looked to confirm this happenstance, and there was a great quote from him: "Don't compromise yourself - you're all you have.&q

Marketing your website or blog without having first provided good content is like capturing water with a net. Even if you do succeed in getting to the source, you won't be able to hold onto it! Readers want quality content - whether you are writing a blog, a web article, or a book. Offer junk and you won't hold your readers, even if you provide excellent SEO practices . Today's search engines don't just analyze your traffic patterns, they actually have amazingly strong algorithms that measure your actual content. Search engines like high quality, continually updated content that is unique on the web. Provide it and the web will beat a path to your site - using front and back links! Know Your Audience Just as a book author has to know their genre, a blogger needs to know their main subject and their readers. If your blog is about manhole covers , you need to know a lot about them, you need a new slant on them, and you need to figure out what your readers want to h

Dusting off the cobwebs and reigniting the neural pathways is necessary to keep the brain functioning. So, as I do occasionally, I slip from being "In the Moment" to remembering events from long ago. Because my family moved regularly, I'm able to pinpoint dates fairly accurately since I know the grades I was attending in school in different locations, like Cincinnati, Ohio - Walnut Creek, California - - Seal Beach, California - Long Beach, California - Pleasant Hill, California - Dayton, Ohio - Sasebo, Japan - Arlington, Virginia - West Springfield, Virginia - Walnut Creek, California - and I'm through high school. Whew! There are four additional in-town homes on this list, too. Then Concord, CA, back to Walnut Creek, then Antioch, CA - Turlock, CA - South Lake Tahoe, CA where crazy things happen ), Las Vegas, NV - Concord again, Sparks, NV, Reno, NV, Sparks, NV, and that's about halfway. What the hell was I doing? Lots of Memories and Reasons for the Moves My fat

The Roots of Reno (Kindle Edition) newly tagged casino

Blogging started out as a great way to connect daily with your friends; an open journal. Today we've got Facebook, so the blogging idea has morphed into a more organized way of marketing. That's good and bad. When I was growing up, a few friends and I used to do a lot of running, just for the fun of it. One of them, Fred Schumann, went to the extreme when he ran the length of Japan on a 2,000-mile journey that took him fifty-nine days to complete. He later blogged about it - now that's something you'd want to read about each day. And that's what brings readers back to blogs on a regular basis - great stories. If you're using a blog to sell your books, you're going to have to offer something extra each post to get new readers. My Nevada Casino History blog is written because I love old casino photos and stories. If I sell a few extra books in a somewhat organic way, that's just a nice bonus for me. Every blog that offers something nice has a hug