Alison Kent

One of the things I miss about working in corporate America come Christmas time (besides the total absence of traffic on I10, and the office that’s half empty for most of December) is the schwag.

The term schwag refers to all manner of logoed stuff given away by companies to get people to remember them, feel good about them, have their phone number and website at hand and generally make them think about them before any of their competitors. And studies show … it works!! (…)

The original spelling is “swag” (for Stuff We All Get). A little web research has revealed that there is definitely a widespread use of the term, but no real consensus on the “correct” spelling. One site explained “schwag is what the coolest of the cool people say” and another site indicated it’s “called schwag if the item is particularly good.”

Except there was less of the logoed promo stuff in the industry where I worked, and more, well, food. Godiva Chocolates from the bank. Tins of flavored popcorn from the refinery. Cookies from computer vendors. Pralines and pecans and, well, it’s Texas.

I do remember one guy last year getting a metal reproduction of a tanker truck that was pretty cool. Others got golf equipment. One of the secretaries always got extra good goodies from the airlines and hotels, etc. I was the front desk person for 11 months, so only sat there for one Christmas. There was a lot more fun stuff and good food showing up in the office during my 15 years in accounting.

It goes on in the writing world, too. Agents gift authors. From time to time, readers gift authors. (And boy was that fudge good, yum!) Author Beth Ciotta talked recently about the same thing happening at the library where she works. It’s also fairly common in the blogging world. Since I talk books a lot and do reviews, I get some really nice freebies from time to time from publishers (and fellow authors, ahem), before their release dates. I do my best to blog about the books I get, and as you know, often give copies away.

One of the coolest blogging things I received recently came out of the blue, following an email from the PR firm helping to advertise Dove Chocolates personalized candies. I opened the box to find a Cross pen, a leather journal, a scarf and — the best part — a bag of the candies. (And, yes, I headed off to the site to order some for the husband for Christmas, but got sidetracked buying him other things that he opened and then wrapped for himself.) So, yeah. Their promo blitz worked.

Speaking of goodies and schwag, if you’re looking for a last minute gift for an author friend, or even for a reader who may want a banner for her blog, check out the design vouchers at Croco Designs. A fab idea. Croco does amazing ad work, book covers, etc.

Here are two more links on the topic of paying for promo: Super Librarian and Dear Author. I’m sure most of you have already seen them, but right now linking is all I got! Deep in creation mode and staying off the pc as much as I can because my shoulder continues to give me hell.

Re: Coming Together: For the Cure. Since only 7 of you posted for the final copies, I’ll be emailing the zip file to all of you later today.

Can I just say how much I LOVE standard time!?!?!? Whoo-hoo!!!! Since I don’t set an alarm clock but wake up with the sun, now it won’t seem like I’m wasting half of the morning!

Interesting article today at RTB about booksellers giving authors the idea that they have worn out their welcome. Even more interesting is the comment thread agreeing that the booksellers are slitting their own throats. I’m more interested in Susanna’s question: Have romance authors promo’d out their welcome?

I recently heard of an author admitting she’d paid readers (through a service?) to talk about her book online. All I can think is that if an author is willing to go that far, then yes. Some may find it acceptable, all being fair in the love and war of publishing, but there are a lot of authors who find the practice dishonest and smarmy. What say you?

I have succumbed.

My profile. Brava Authors & Readers Group.

Come be my friend. (Uh, didn’t think to mention you do have to have an account to see others!)

From author Anne Frasier:

Three years ago I was presented with a verbal list of possible self-promotion ideas:

Start a blog, attend conferences, get involved in more online groups and online events, give talks at libraries, travel to small towns and speak, make a book trailer, have online contests and possibly a writing competition, join more organizations, enter my books in more contests, do a monthly newsletter, put together a mailing list, visit more bookstores.

The argument for all of this is that publishers have no idea if any of it helps, but it certainly can’t hurt.

Wrong.

The few who agree with me about the futility of self promotion usually say it takes away from a writer’s writing time.

It took away all of my free time and left me mentally exhausted.

What she said. ;)

Readers don’t care about author’s sites. They care about author’s booklists.

Since last weekend was a freebie bonanaza for everyone, this weekend’s is not. It’s a special promo giveaway, explanation to follow. Before I get to it, if you expressed interest in the Camel Book Drive, I’ll be contacting you in a day or two to get that together - and if you didn’t see the post and want to participate, go and read and do!

Via Lee Goldberg’s blog, here’s Steve Weber’s PLUG YOUR BOOK: ONLINE BOOK MARKETING FOR AUTHORS. Lee says:

(…) while it told me a lot I already knew, he provides plenty of good advice, many useful short-cuts, and lots of real-world examples drawn from all over the web.

The husband, seeing I had the page pulled up says, “You’d better not be buying that book because you could write it.” Which is a perfect segue into this weekend’s giveaway.

Since the THE PERFECT STRANGER copies I have arrived a month in advance of the book’s release, I feel a need to use them promotionally to get the word out. I’ve done the blogging thing in the past, giving copies to bloggers to read in exchange for their reaction to the book, good or bad.

In order to reach a broader readership, this time, I’m going to give bloggers a copy of the book to GIVE AWAY on their sites. I’ve got 30 books up for grabs, meaning 30 bloggers can participate. Reader bloggers, author bloggers, I don’t care.

Here’s the deal. You need to have an established blog with a regular readership. I’ll give you a .jpg of the cover to post, the code to either of the video trailers below if you’d like to use one (the server hosting them is rather slow at times, so you may have to refresh to see both), the back copy, and an exclusive excerpt found nowhere else on the web.

If you’d like, I can do a mini interview of one or two questions, or a short blog for you, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome around the web, and I don’t have tons of extra time!

All you have to do is post the info and offer up the book before the release date of March 27th, running whatever sort of giveaway you’d like to on your blog. That’s up to you.

I’m not asking anyone to pimp the book - unless you have already read it (and if you’d like to, I still have 6 ARCs which I’ll supply on a first come first served basis). This is just a giveaway for you to do aimed at reaching readers who don’t visit my site and might be interested in the book.

I’ll also offer up this quote from a bookseller to explain a bit of what I do:

“I’ve already recommended you to my customers, but I’ve just thought of some others who I’ve turned on to Cherry Adair, Suzanne Brockman, Amy Fetzer, Cindy Gerard…the women writers who construct great adventure novels with fierce romances attached…that I’ll have to turn them on to you, too.” — Lee Ann Daugherty, Romance “Mistress”, Waldenbooks #1393, Elizabethtown, KY

In return, I’ll give you your choice of anything from my backlist (subject to availability). If you’re interested, email me at tpsblogging@alisonkent.com - that’s the only place I’ll be checking for responses!

If you’re an international blogger, you can still participate, but instead of me sending you the book to mail out, I’ll mail it from here. Once I get my official author copies, I’ll be doing more giveaways, so if you’re not a blogger, don’t worry! Your time to win will come!

Buzz Balls & Hype reports today on an early February roadblocking experiment:

Does Roadblocking work?

I ran one across 7 writing blogs for the launch of my column on Feb 1.

(…)

For the week before and after the Roadblock, Buzz, Balls & Hype averaged 309 page views per day.

Feb 1: 552 page views (+79%)
Feb 2: 504 page views (+63%)
Feb 3: 310 page views – back to normal

Nearly all the incremental traffic on Feb 1-2 came from linked referrals.

Of course, then there is this:

Roadblocking is obtrusive. You risk annoying potential customers who were trying to avoid your commercial in the first place. But in advertising, sometimes it’s better to get noticed than be nice.

So, yeah. Noticed or nice. What’s an author to do?

Sorry for the recent absenteeism. Sciatica issues. Carpel tunnel issues. Am trying not to sit and not to type, which makes my life rather interesting since I work the switchboard at the day job and I write books by typing (or handwriting) while I’m sitting there. Heh.

Even the handwriting is giving me pain. We upgraded my laptop to Windows Vista, but now need to reinstall the voice activation software I had only started toying with. So if I post sporadically for awhile, you’ll understand why!

Anyhow, yesterday I was reading online reading about mindfulness . . .

If you want to get more done, be mindful.
If you want to have more time, be mindful.
Mindful means one thing at a time.

. . . catching up on class assignments from the Girls in the Basement class, and ran across a post at the same site titled Inspiring your user-evangelists. It’s not about writing or marketing our writing (and it’s not about religious evangelizing, heh), but some of the points made I think can be applied to the way authors push their books.

If you have to PAY people to evangelize your product or service, you probably don’t have a product or service worth evangelizing.

For me, this is the biggest one. I’ve done blog giveaways where I’ve given out freebie books to bloggers who’ll talk about them, but I always always ALWAYS tell them they must be honest. I don’t want blanket posts about my books’ juicy goodness. And I’ve seen posts where the bloggers who’ve gotten the freebies have had problems with the stories. That’s fine! That’s honest! That’s exactly what I want!

So to see (which I recently did) an agent’s blog encouraging authors to get their friends and family to post positive reviews at Amazon . . . that bugs the living crap out of me. Don’t those who do this understand how easily it can backfire? Or is any publicity good publicity? I dunno. I’m more of the mind to write a product worth evangelizing and leave it at that - to give “users” (aka readers) the tool of a good book as part of their “street team” effort, as the article goes on to explain . . .

In the past 30 days, did you enthusiastically recommended something–anything–to someone else? Maybe it was a new restaurant, web app, game, sport, note pad, band, indie film, car, micro-brew, lotion, operating system, environmental cause, dog food, or pillow. Chances are, you did. More than once. Our users want to recommend or (if they’re passionate) evangelize things they believe in, and it’s our job to give users the tools to do it. Indie bands often have “street teams” of loyal (unpaid) fans who hit the streets to post flyers, etc. Do you have an unpaid street team?

Users will want to evangelize on your behalf for two main reasons:

1) You’re small–or in trouble–and they want you to succeed.

2) They believe in the benefits of whatever you offer, and want others to experience that (especially their close friends and family)

I want my “street team” to believe in what I’m offering. Not to “evangelize” simply because they want me my product (my books) to succeed. You?

I wanted to bring up this comment Mari Mancusi left in yesterday’s post about MySpace - and why it can work better than a traditional Website:

Anyway, there are LOTS of reasons MySpace works better than a traditional website.

1) It’s very simple to update and add multimedia to. I’ve even done webcam videos talking directly to readers.

2) It’s all based on six degrees of separation so you can easily discover new authors just by playing follow the profile.

3) It’s very easy to do push marketing - sending bulletins to all of your “friends” instantly. (Not everyone who checks out your website will sign up for your mailing list, but if they friend you on MySpace they’re instantly on your list.)

4) It’s a two way street - your readers post comments on your page and you comment back on theirs. Then all of their friends who go to visit their page will see your book cover (if you use it as your default pic) in the comments section. Curious, they click - and voila! come to your page. These are people who would have never known about your regular website.

5) You can find readers yourself by doing searches and adding friends instead of waiting for them to find you.

In romance it seems so much of the time we’re marketing to other writers cause those are the ones directly in our circle of online friends. MySpace is the first really effective tool I’ve found to introduce my books to complete strangers.

Oh and lastly - if you feel lost when it comes to designing your page - you should talk to your regular webmaster. They can, like Alison did so nicely, make your page have the same look at your static site!!