I got a nice surprise today. I enjoyed a coffee at the publisher's premises and got to chat to most of the people there, and then spent some time with Nyanda, the marketing and promotions manager. That's when I discovered my novel is coming out two months ahead of schedule, so the release date will now be September 2005. Wow, less than six months to go.
I've promised to do my bit for publicity by supplying a list of SF reviewers which the publisher can send books to. SF is a brand new field for them, so their contacts are mainstream. They'll still send out review copies as usual, but my years in the SF field are hopefully going to unearth a killer list of luminaries. I'm having a fine time at the moment scouring the web for SF reviews in Australia, hunting down names & contact details and pasting everything into a notepad file.
"That's their job," you say. Yes, the publisher might regard your input as unwanted interference from a busybody author, so a brief chat before you start suggesting hundreds of bright ideas would be wise. Just ask them what, if anything, you can do to help. If they don't want you interfering, no problem. Don't hassle them.
Ok, they're happy for you to help. "But I don't want to do that stuff," you say. Believe me, you DO. Remember, the publicity people have a dozen or more books to promote, so the effort you put in will be appreciated. If you don't do it and they don't have time, where does that leave your book?
I forgot to ask whether to confine myself to Australian reviewers. My book will be on Amazon so a 'foreign' review would still be beneficial. On the other hand, it costs around ten bucks for the publisher to post a single copy overseas, and only two bucks within Australia.
Finally for today: The official site for the Hitchhiker's guide movie The trailer is amusing. Marvin is great, and I swear that's Alan Rickman's voice. (If they ever make a Spacejock movie he's a shoe-in for the baddie in book one. Actually, he's pretty much a shoe-in for the baddie in any movie.)
Now, back to the Hal Spacejock II synopsis.
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)
3 comments:
I agree with you, a writer should do everything possible to help the promotion of his or her book. I was sent an "author questionnaire" last fall from my editor, that had ten pages of questions about my work background (they wanted a resume), how I came up with the idea for the book, any interesting anecdotes I could think of, as well as local and national reviewers I thought they should send the book to.
I think you should think of at least one or two US reviewers. How about the folks at Locus?
This damn blog software is making me nuts. I posted a comment here days ago, and I see it now when I'm trying to post AGAIN, but it's not showing up in your blog area no matter how many times I refresh. Grrrr....
Anyway, I hope this second comment causes the first one to post. If not, I'll just do the ol' copy 'n' paste...
Same happened to me on another blogspot site. I left a comment which didn't show however many times I refreshed, then I left another one (retyped the whole thing!) and both appeared.
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