Maggie Pill Mysteries

A version of this post originally ran on the  Hometown Authors  site on October 9, 2018 You wrote a book. Hooray! Now comes selling the book. Let's talk about that. If you go traditional, your publisher will do some of the work needed to sell your book. My (now former) publisher arranged reviews, announced the book’s release to libraries, and featured it on their website. I learned I was expected to help get the word out, which back then was a surprise. I thought books sort of sold themselves. It takes effort to get a book noticed, and whether you publish independently, traditionally, or somewhere in the middle, you're the one who cares most about your work. You can pay people to promote for you, but that’s expensive and often doesn’t result in the sales authors hope for. You can promote for yourself, choosing how much time and effort you want to put into it. Here are a few ways that can happen. Book tours : Authors do tours so they can talk about their books to...

September 26th is approaching--faster than I thought it would--and I'm both anxious and excited about the first-ever Alpena Book Festival. Anxious questions: Will there be a good turnout? Will they have a good time? Will we have enough of everything? Does everyone know what to do? These are questions I have every time I'm part of organizing things, and I've learned there's no use trying to turn it off. Of course I know things can go wrong. It might rain buckets (or snow, after all, this is Michigan). We might run out of tote bags or tickets or whatever. And since it's a new thing, people will no doubt be following the organizers around saying, "What should I do?" "Where should I go?" I can take the chaos once the day arrives, but beforehand, there are no answers, which is what makes me a little crazy. As to the excited part: I know that people who attend the Festival will be happy they did . We have great giveaways, so just showing up ...