Some Notes from WriteOn! Roundtable on BlogTalkRadio
To Lisa Graziano from Leapfrog Press and Peggy Keefe from BookPros, thank you for participating in our show! You had such wonderful things to say, and we love you for it!
To those who tuned in, thanks!
We took some notes while the ladies chatted, and wanted to give you a brief overview of the helpful tips they gave writers:
It is important that the story you are telling be a good one, but it is also important that it has marketability. Publishers want to know that their authors will go out and market their books and garner attention for it.
Publicity training is invaluable. It helps authors prepare their book pitch, as well as allows them to practice interviewing techniques.
Authors should have a marketing plan.
Online media is becoming vital to authors and their marketing campaigns. Bloggers help spread the word. Author facebook pages make them more accessible to their readers. Getting mentioned on twitter allows for more global recognition. In other words, the online community is becoming very important!
Thanks to the internet, authors are becoming “people”- they are more relatable to their readers, who in return are happy to support them on a more personal level. It is allowing authors to get out there, in front of their readers instead of just being a face on a book jacket.
They also shared an incredibly helpful tip (one we have never thought of before) for editors: use an e-reader. It is easier to hear the typos and editorial errors, and much harder to get “into” the story!
The ladies had plenty to say on their publishing companies, and taught us a lot we did not know about the process of publishing books. Did you know that most books have a typesetters note that tells the history of the font used in the printing of the books? They also shared their thoughts on the future of publishing, and the impact of e-readers.
It was a pleasure to spend our afternoon talking with these ladies. We look forward to another lively roundtable discussion on WriteOn! next month.