Post #79 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Marketing Your Memoir Can Seem Scary
Part of the pleasure of living in Oregon is that we can be around family for all kinds of occasions, not just the once-a-year vacation visit. Participating in birthday parties for our two grandsons now seems obvious and reasonable. When we lived in California, we only managed to be present for our first grandson’s first birthday and his’s now eight. Our younger grandson, Rowen, has a January birthday, actually January 2, and we’d never been to one of his parties. So this year, it was a special treat to coordinate with our son and daughter-in-law about their plans for the upcoming birthday party.
Rowen told his parents he wanted a laser tag party. A laser tag party? Where did that come from? When asked, even Rowen wasn’t sure. We suspect his older brother planted the idea. In any event, our son went to the only place in town with this activity to check it out. The store has a paintball facility on the first floor and a laser tag room on the second. Once he decided it was a safe (and fun) place for a group of six year olds, the time and date was settled.
We showed up after the first round of tag while the children and parents were sitting around the picnic tables snacking on hummus, carrots, celery, edamame, tortilla chips and salsa. Well, it is Eugene.
Soon after we settled in, another child and his mother arrived just as my daughter-in-law was passing out the finger flashlight favors. If you haven’t seen them, they are about as cute as can be — so much more fun than the party favors available when my children were little. These are multicolored plastic rings with a flashlight where a gem would be, designed so children can easily turn them on and off. The latest arrival chose a green ring and tried it on while the others were getting ready to don the vests that allow the recording of laser hits.
“Sweetie, do you want to join the others?” said his mother.
He shook his head, looking equal parts shy and frightened. His mother asked if he just wanted to walk inside the laser room — a place cleverly designed with a series of wood dividers turning the room into partial mazes. Most of the dividers had large round holes cut in them so that even small children could see what was happening.
The little boy again shook his head. Since I was the only grandmother there, I used my additional years of experience to casually keep the door to the room open, inviting the mother to stand with me. Soon we had the boy standing at the entrance and then inside. It wasn’t long before he was using his finger flashlight as his pretend laser gun, aiming it through one of the holes in a divider. He didn’t go all the way in to the room and didn’t put on the vest, but was clearly having a great time.
Between that round and the third one, everyone again gathered at the tables — this time for the gluten-free carrot cake with fresh raspberries on top and vanilla ice cream on the side for those who wanted it. When it was time for the final round of laser tag, the little boy still declined to put on a vest but eagerly ran into the room, finger flashlight gleaming. This time, he moved around the entire room into many different parts of the maze.
He didn’t completely feel comfortable with the unknown game of laser tag, but he participated. What was originally scary, soon became something he understood and was willing to try, even if on his own terms. If there had been a fourth round, perhaps he would have put on the vest. That doesn’t really matter. He checked it out and started getting involved.
New or unknown situations are often scary to children. As adults, we might dress up the emotion and say that the task or activity is daunting. We can rationalize why it isn’t something we do…or are good at…or have time for. This is often the situation with building a platform, an audience, for our memoir.
Kendra and I understand the feeling. Many of the women we work with consider writing the memoir to be their only task. Aren’t publishers supposed to do the marketing? By now, you probably have gotten our message that publishers expect authors to have a network of people who follow them, who like what they write, who may be interested in buying their memoir. However, getting involved, putting on the vest and walking into the laser tag room, is still scary.
MEMOIR MARKETING PROMPT:
Here are two tasks, both more similar to putting on a flashlight ring than a laser vest. We hope you’ll do both of them. They don’t take long and get you started on building a brand for yourself and your memoir.
1. Do you leave comments on other blogs? Getting your name out there is a great, but simple, way to begin to build recognition. This is especially true if you provide real content in your comments. But do you have your personalized photo that shows up next to all of your comments? Wonder how some people get photos next to their names while others just have the generic blue profile?
Here’s what you can do.
A. Make sure you have a photo you want to use.
B. Go to Gravatar.com
C. Follow the directions. It’s not as scary as it seems.
2. Brand yourself and/or your memoir every time you send out an email. If you don’t already use a standard signature at the bottom of your emails this is the time to do it. Because each email system has slightly different ways to add a signature (it gets added automatically so you don’t need to type it), I won’t go through the steps. Be sure to include your name, Facebook page (if you have one), Twitter name (if you have one), name of your memoir (even if it is a working title, you can start letting people know about it), YouTube channel (if you have one), etc. You can include you photo or the cover of your book.
Don’t have social media in place yet? Do something as simple as pulling a great quote from what you are writing, place the quote in your signature and use the working title of your memoir as the source with you as the author. Get people interested in what you are doing and writing. Build your brand, one email at a time.
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