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Writer to Writer

Rie Sheridan

Guerilla Promotions 101

You're broke. Know the feeling! You want to promote your baby now that you've finally got someone to put it out for you. How can you do it on the $2 budget that is all you can afford until the royalties start rolling in? There are lots of free (or as good as) things that will enhance your share of the market. Here are some of the tricks that I have learned from my networking (remember what I always say about networking?) First of all, use the signature capability that most email programs give you to plug your work. My signature changes maybe once a month at least. I am always trying to perfect it. Currently, it reads like this:

Newsletter: RieNews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Chronicler of all things Bardic... http://www.thebards.net/rie
And meet my partners Alexis Hart and CC Hammond at: http://www.echelonpress.com/authors.htm

This gives the subscription address for my newsletter, which I will talk about in a moment; the website that my dear friend Marc Gunn has put up for me on the Brobdingnagian Bards server; and a message that promotes two of my fellow writers at Echelon Press. The website has descriptions of all my major books with links back to the sites where they can be found. In return for my page, I am collecting impressions for an article on the Bards and archiving photographs from their live gigs. I promote the bards every chance I get, and they promote me. They have a gig at DragonCon at the end of the month, and they are taking some of my books. I am hawking CDs for them at the Texas Renaissance Fair. The Echelon partnership is a new venture that we are trying out in hopes of boosting each other's sales. I put their names and a link on every message I send out, and in return, they put mine on their messages. I believe I've mentioned this before as a wonderful free advertising opportunity. The newsletter is new. I've had it in place at yahoogroups since the 26th of July. So far, I have 36 subscribers. It is a great way to target a group of readers at one time, and having an author newsletter is becoming a very popular method of advertising. I can announce new contracts or releases; promote other writing activities (for example, a poetry contest a friend is running was featured in my last issue); and run little contests of my own. Many authors post reviews or excerpts in their newsletters. I expect to expand mine as time goes by.

Now, if you have that $2 budget I mentioned earlier, I have a great recommendation for spending half of it. Karen Syed, owner/editor of Echelon Press, has a Dollar Download called "Promotions for Paupers" available here: http://echelonpress.com/Dollar/Element/ks-pfp.htm. I highly recommend the purchase. More marketing tips as they become available. Next month, we will discuss some of the things that the publishers recommend for their writers.