So You’ve Written a Romance by Valerie Mann

I am thrilled to have Author and Friend Valerie Mann here to kick off our first blog today.

So You’ve Written a Romance

 

by Valerie Mann

 

 

Congratulations! You’ve written a romance book! Undoubtedly, there’s a great plot, beautiful heroine, hawt hero and just the right amount of LUV. You think the cover is great and if you’re lucky, you’re still friends with your editor.
Got some news for you…

The writing’s the easy part. Now the fun really begins—PROMOTION.

Want to sell your beloved book? Do you want readers to fall in love right along with Miss Pretty and Mister Hottie? Then readers need to know they exist. And unfortunately, unless you’re a New York Times Bestselling author, your publisher is not going to do much in the way of promoting your book for you other than linking to it on their website.

I touched briefly on the topic of promotion (among other things) over at fellow author Rachel Leigh’s blog. This is an important topic…it never gets old.

So, without further ado, here’s a short list of what an author of any genre needs to do to get her books into the hands of readers:

1. Get a FACEBOOK page. It’s the number ONE social media site on the planet. Post
at least once per day to keep your author name exposed. Post about every single
thing that happens with your book like reviews, sales, etc. Working on a new book?
Let your followers know. Just signed a new contract? Ditto. Don’t worry about
boring anyone. The purpose of your Facebook is to promote your author self.

2. Get a BLOG. I like Blogger, it’s user-friendly and free. Wordpress and Webs are other
good choices. Both are free. Free is good. Then don’t forget to blog. Don’t know what
to blog about? Ask your author friends to guest blog. They love the free promo.
Follow other author’s blogs. There are a lot of very interesting things to learn from
other authors. And leave comments on their blogs. It gets your name recognized.

3. Join the online author group for your publisher. Join other groups for your genre. Join
lots of groups. You’ll figure out which ones are most helpful in short order. You can
even start your own group. Invite fellow authors and readers to join.

4. Get a Twitter account in your author name. Though I personally don’t care for Twitter
because I have too much to say in 140 characters, there are an awful lot of authors
who have great success with it. And a lot of people who buy books love Twitter.

5. Websites…pros and cons to websites. Pro—it’s one more place to have exposure.
Con—it’s one more place to have exposure. One more place you have to constantly
maintain. And if you don’t have good computer skills, it can be a time-consuming and
painful experience. Which means you’ll have to hire someone to create and maintain
it for you. Go back to #2…you can start with a Blogger or Wordpress blog and work
your way up from there. They’re becoming more acceptable for writers just starting
out to use as a website as well. But once you get established, you need a real website.

6. Find out if your publisher submits their releases to review sites. If they don’t, you
need to do it yourself. I own a review site, it gets lots of hits every day. Readers
find review sites valuable tools for determining which books they’re going to spend
their hard-earned money on. The more reviews you get, the more books you’ll sell.
And don’t forget to link back to those reviews on your Facebook, blog, website and
Twitter.

One last thing…not really necessary but I think every author should do it. Even if you don’t have a real website yet, go ahead and lease or purchase your domain name before someone else does. I use GoDaddy.com and I’ve leased every ValerieMann domain I can afford. GoDaddy will bundle them for you as a package, too. Another thing I did was register my author name with every free email provider. I only use one of them, but I have Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, Rocketmail, Live, etc. in my author name now. So nobody else can take them from me! I guess mom was right—I don’t like to share!

I hope this list of promotion and marketing ideas helps you. I’ve got tons more and I help companies and authors every day with ideas and strategies so they can sell, sell, sell. Feel free to email me with any issues you may have ~ valeriemann09@yahoo.com
http://valeriemann.blogspot.com

Check out Val's Newest release

Who agrees to an arranged marriage in the 21^st century? Beth Malone can’t believe a date request with the 1Night Stand service morphed into an arranged marriage offer. But after a heartbreaking divorce and no knight in shining armor coming to sweep her off her feet, her desire to find that knight and have a family is looking more like a dream than a reality. 
After filling out a 1Night Stand questionnaire worthy of the CIA, Christian Ramos is stunned when Madame Eve offers to arrange more than a date for one night: she suggests a wife! What the hell? After his best friend Jackson Castillo stops laughing, he advises him to consider the offer. Between the fortieth birthday looming on the horizon and his Latino upbringing, Chris is forced to take a hard look at his life. Reality check—time is running out for what he wants—a family and a woman to share his life
First comes love, then comes marriage isn’t part of their matrimonial situation, but neither Beth nor Christian anticipated the immediate attraction and contentment that comes with saying, “I do.” 

Decadent Publishing | Amazon | All Romance | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords


Originally posted at Aspiring Romance writers http://aspiringromancewriters.webs.com/apps/blog/show/4971582-so-you-ve-written-a-romance-by-valerie-mann