booktour.com – Kevin Smokler

Book Promotion Series Continues: Part III: “Getting Your House in Order.”

Smokler on August 9, 2010

My 10-part series on book promotion continues today over at the BookTour blog. Today's segment: "Getting Your Own House in Order."

Imagine that you’re in the weeks and months right before your book is published. What’s the best way to get ready for the big day? How much time will it take and what needs doing? All of these questions are part of the answer to the one that keeps authors awake at night when they have a new book on the horizon.

How ready would you like to feel?

When entertaining guests, we clean the house and stock the icebox. Before a trip, we pack a suitcase and notify the neighbors. We do this because the best antidote for fear of the unexpected is readiness. Just as you won’t be a good host if you don’t plan for your guest’s arrival, you’ll be a lousy spokesperson for your book if you don’t get ready before its due date. Put more simply…

In order to best promote your book, make sure your own house is in order.

Read the rest of the essay here.

Book Promotion Series Continues: Part II: It’s Who You Know

Smokler on August 2, 2010

My 10-part series on book promotion continues today over at the BookTour blog. Today's segment: "It's Who You Know."

Book promotion is a block party. If you’re lucky, the party is thrown by someone else (the New York Times, your well-paid publicist, Oprah) and you just show up. You don’t even have to bring potato salad. But that’s simply not the case for most writers, and everyone knows that. Which is why most publishers, publicists, booksellers and members of the media will be most impressed by the effort you put in yourself, by your willingness to bring what you have to the party, or to throw it yourself

I know perhaps you are shy and it’s no fun to ask for favors. This is the time to get over it. If you can’t ask the people closest to you to invest in your book, how do you expect complete strangers to invest their time and money in reading it?

Read the rest of the essay here.

10-Part Series on Book Promotion Begins Today: Part I: “Tell Me About Your Book.”

Smokler on July 26, 2010

I'm writing a 10-part series over at the BookTour blog. Today was Part 1: "Tell Me About Your Book"

A highlight…

If book promotion is matchmaking between your book and everyone who you want to know about it, “tell me about your book,” is the first date. And nobody wants to be on a first date with a motormouth who can’t keep their thoughts straight. If you WROTE the book and can’t say, with confidence, what it’s about, is there any point to continuing the conversation? All I’m thinking is “If this author writes as badly as they explain…”

I know you’ve worked on this book for two years and want to talk about everything in it. But it isn’t time for “everything.” You’re on a first date. You goal is to get a second date.

Read the entire essay here.

Introducing The Pick 3 Podcast…

Smokler on July 1, 2010

I'm proud to announce that I'm one of the three contributors to a brand new audio series called "The Pick 3 Podcast." a joint project of myself, my wife and my best friend.

Each episode of Pick 3 will offer highlight one movie, one book and one piece of music that may be used to celebrate a special time of year. Our first episode (listen, subscribe) is about the 4th of July.

The idea for Pick 3 came about during a panel at South by Southwest Interactive this past spring. The three of us were sitting together and Cariwyl (my wife) noted that the three of us each ran startup businesses devoted to our passions for books (Me with BookTour.com), music (her with Salon97) and film (Dave with Straight to DVD Movies). Could we do anything with that?

One long walk to lunch later and we'd sketched out the basic idea for the podcast. The specifics came together over email and Google Docs, in the squibs and squabs of free time, that define the existence of anyone with creative projects in the fire.

We think the concept is a gusher of rich possibilities and are excited to see where it takes us. We also want to know what you think. Would you be so kind then as to listen to our first episode? It's only 12 minutes and moves right along.

Of course, if you don't want to miss next shows, subscribe by taking this URL and dropping into the "subcribe to podcast" window in iTunes (it's under the menu marked "advanced").

And thank you for your support.