Introduction
Good Morning, the month of September was spent working on my first draft of my current work in progress. I made a lot of headway this month, but still on my first draft and I gave myself a deadline of Dec. 31, 2022. By that time I would like to move into the new year and begin my 2nd draft and begin to work on the story, right now it’s a somewhat organized mess. What I can hint at is that it will be a contemporary romance. I’ve written contemporary romance before, (nothing yet published), but this is a different kind of contemporary romance. That’s all I can say right now, it’s different. It’s different from what I’ve written, it’s different from what others have written.
I also worked on preparing promotional material for the Norwalk Public Library. They will host an event on November 4th & 5th to promote indie authors. Cynde Lahey, Librarian will host the 2-day hybrid event. Both, in person and virtually through Zoom so that authors like me can attend an event at my childhood library. The challenge here was: how do I communicate to potential customers that my book is published but only in ebook format? I printed copies of the book covers onto card-stock paper. I folded it in half so that it can stand up like a physical book. Inside I put the book blurb, a bio and some pictures. I also included a special code they can redeem on Amazon for a free copy. The librarian can use it for a swag-bag and/or give-aways and I sent extra copies without the code for advertising only.
“This event recognizes independent authors and publishers in Norwalk and beyond. The Library welcomes both experienced and aspiring independent authors and we will feature them on our website. We will highlight authors and publishers who are invited to share their personal stories and their books with readers and other writers.” –Cynde Lahey
I may be doing a small presentation or be asked to talk about my books. Last year we did it all virtually, each author shared what they knew about getting published, and deciding to self-publish. But I have to get over this hurdle of public speaking, selling my story. I decided to go to as many book tours of my favorite authors and study what they do and say on their book tours. Do they talk about prior books, do they take pictures, personalize the signing or how do they organize their books for presentation purposes? In the past two months I’ve attended book signings for Jamie Ford, author of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. He was promoting his new novel, The Many Daughters of Afong May. I can’t wait to read it. It is next on my list. It has to do with DNA so I’m all in. I also went to see Taylor Jenkins Reid and bought a copy of Carrie Soto is Back. I read two of her other novels; Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six and enjoyed them. B
Story
I’m still playing around on TikTok and working on increasing my followers. It is a slow go. I’m now at 341 and last month it was 309 followers. That’s only a 9% growth from one month to the next. I need at least 1,000 to do anything worth while. I’m so clumsy with the video production and the editing them. I will continue to improve videos and creating cohesive content. I never posted that video, I didn’t like what I saw and the song I wanted it for isn’t available for duets, so that complicated it. What I’ll end up doing is maybe just do a picture similar to their artwork for the single. That is what I’m going to work on in October.
Conclusion
In October I’m looking forward to returning home (back East) again for the birth of my future grandson and to visit with my family and friends. I returned to making a schedule and a to-do list in order to keep me focused and on-track with my personal goals. The next thing, I will work on is learning more about audiobooks. I want to look into recording them myself. I will need a mic, a pop-filter (that round thing in front of the mike) and a quiet room. I think it’s worth more of my time to launch this as my next type of media and wait on the physical book formats until last. We will have to see.
Barnes and Noble is announcing something new, they brought in new management to change things around. We will be watching them carefully. Are they loosing to Amazon? Amazon will operate their book division at a loss just to get the traffic to their site.
Until next month.
All my best,
Lorri