Post #81 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Business – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
It was a late spring afternoon. A Saturday, and I was in my room reading when I heard him, “Kendra, come help me.”
I recognized the tone of his voice. My father wanted me to help him in the yard. Slowly I closed my book, reluctantly I swung my legs off the bed and started for the door. Impatient for my help, Daddy had started for my room. We met in the hall.
“Good. You’re here. Let’s go.” As I followed my father out of the house, down the back steps and across the yard, he began explaining the project he had in mind: “Kendra, I’m trying to run a water line down to our deck so we can have running water near the beach. Of course, we have to get the water line deep enough so it won’t freeze in winter. I need for you to help me dig a little hole.”
He handed me a shovel and pointed to a string he had stretched across the yard and running from the house to the seawall. “Just follow the string, Kendra, and start digging.”
I started digging. I dug down. I dug side to side. I dug a swath across the lawn that was about a 8 inches wide and about a foot deep. After about an hour, and as I came up to the seawall and the end of my labors, Daddy came to check on my progress.
“That’s not big enough. Dig deep. Dig wide.”
“But it’s only a small pipe…with a 1 inch diameter.”
“I’m going to add electricity too.”
“But Daddy, I have a blister.”
“I’ll get you a BandAid. Keep digging.”
After another two hours, he checked on my work again. “Keep digging, Kendra.”
Now in those days, I went to a private girls’ school. I invoked it for all it was worth. “Daddy, I’m the only girl at Greenwich Academy who has to dig ditches.”
My father laughed, and then turned his sage advice on me. “Kendra, you’re probably right. And you probably won’t ever did another ditch, but if you ever have to hire someone to dig a ditch, you’ll know if you got a good one.”
He was only half right. Ten years went by, and low and behold, I was spending the entire summer digging ditches. I was working as an archaeologist for the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. I also had a team of volunteers digging with me. And yes, I knew a good ditch when I saw one.
So what does this story have to do with memoir writing or even book marketing? I’ll tell you.
Promoting Your Memoir Starts with a Plan
If you’re finishing up your memoir, better still, if you’re just beginning your memoir, you’re probably starting to think about how you’ll market your book. You’re looking at blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, Amazon, ebook distributors and even blog book tours. Possibly you’re thinking about hiring a publicist.
That’s good. But do you have a plan? Do you know what each of these tools and sites will do for your book promotion? Do you know how you’ll spend your time? And where do you start?
We’ve got answers that will put you on the right path. Then, when you hire experts and services, you’ll know exactly what to expect. You’ll know when you have a good marketing approach.
Some of you know that Matilda and I are working on a series of ebooks on book marketing for the memoir writer. These will help you build a strategy and put it into practice.
But you may not know that we’re also giving a two-part workshop on book marketing and publishing this fall. Join us on October 18, 2011, in Las Vegas at the Association of Personal Historians Annual Conference. In the morning session, called Expanding Horizons for Your Book: Promotion Ideas Every Author Needs, we’ll talk about how you create a marketing strategy and discuss some of the tools and social sites you can use…and how to get the most out of them.
In the afternoon session, called Expanding Horizons for Your Book: From a Publishers Point of View, we’ll help you plan the production of your book. We’ll talk about what agents and publishers are looking for and how to write a book proposal that is much more than a rite of passage. We’ll talk about self-publishing versus independent publishers, publicity and some of the options available for ebooks today.
These workshops will give you three hours of ideas, steps and strategies that you can begin using long before you finish writing. This is one time when what happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas because we’ll load you up with information and get you started developing a game plan. And when you hire a site developer or engage a publicist, you’ll know that you too are “getting a good one.”
The Association of Personal Historians is a professional organization for anyone writing memoirs, autobiographies or company histories…either their own or for clients. Their Annual Conference is a great opportunity to learn more about turning your writing into a business and to network with other writers.
This is the time to sign up. Registration prices for the conference go up on September 15th.
Writing Alchemy Returns…Bigger and Better Than Ever
And if you want to work on your writing skills, Matilda and I are also teaching an all-day pre-conference workshop, Writing Alchemy: Reach New Horizons in Your Writing. We’ve refined our original Writing Alchemy workshop, added a new Quick Start component to get you using our Writing Alchemy techniques immediately. We’ve added more time for writing, questions/answers and discussion. And you’ll team up with other writers in the class for writing games. So even if you’ve taken Writing Alchemy with us before, you’ll get a lot of new information and insight. Sunday, October 16th will be a day for fun and writing mastery. We’ll equip you with unique, innovative writing tools that will make your words fairly explode with emotion, sensory detail and energy.
See you in Vegas.
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