Promotion is a never-ending process--so get started: an article by Lyrical author, Gwenna Sebastian

The following article was written for me by author, Gwenna Sebastian, who is already jumping on the promotion train. And I'm glad--her book is fabulous. (I should know...I demanded to be her editor. )

A few days ago, I mentioned to Cyn that I'd managed to get myself booked for several blog interviews. She immediately wanted me to spill my secret on how I managed to do that. In all honesty, I'm just fumbling around a lot as this really is my first time in the e-publishing realm.



But I can tell you what I am doing and will continue to do. With my first novel, Lost and Found, coming out in late June, I decided to get brave and start tagging some of these bloggers who were specifically asking for authors to interview and books to review.


Where am I finding these bloggers? To start, I'm a Lyrical Press author, so I'm on their various lists. That's where I found out about Rayna, who is putting together an entire month on her blog, Naughty Editions, dedicated to GLBT authors and their works. Since Lost and Found is a M/M romance and coming out in June, I took the chance and contacted her. That was the first one.


Another thing I did was join the Yahoo group, Marketing for Romance Writers. If you aren't a member of yet, you should be. One great thing about them is their monthly newsletter which features, among other things, upcoming releases. I will definitely place my novel in it, along with my cover art. There is a large readership here; you can't go wrong. They also list upcoming writers' conventions which are always looking for promo items.


While I don’t have an interview set up with MFRW, yet, there are bloggers who are members, and they’re always looking for authors to interview and promote. It was to one of these folks, Toni V. Sweeney to whom I responded. Toni booked me for an interview on her excellent site, Guests, Blogs and Interviews, in late May. She's also going to do a review of Lost and Found once it's out in June.


I commented about these two interviews with Rayna and Toni in my own blog and one of my followers nudged me toward Reviews by Jesse wave, noting they love new authors. And because this is a blog that reviews only M/M, I contacted them. Yes, they said, they’d be happy to set up an interview with me—in June. They also wanted to review the book.


Reviews are an excellent form of exposure, too. When a fellow Lyrical Press author posted that she got a review at Author Interviews, Book Reviews and More. I followed her link back and again found they are looking for authors to interview and books to review. Once again, I made contact. Just last night, I discovered that they, too, would love to interview me and review Lost and Found.


So what did I say to all these site owners? I told them all pretty much the same thing: I'm a new author and this is my first release. That I write M/M romances with characters that are based in the military. I gave them the book’s release date and included my website, blog, and Live Journal urls and—most importantly—the link to my book's page at Lyrical. That way they know who I am and what my book is about, up front. I also kept my eyes open, googled and followed back links to places I knew did reviews.


Here is a list of the contacts I made so far and hope can be helpful:


rayna@naughtyeditions.com - Rayna who is doing the entire month of June for GLBT authors and their books.
tvsweeney@neb.rr.com - Toni V Sweeney. I'll be interviewing with her on May 28th.
MichelenJeff@live.com --Michele Montgomery and Jeff (who doesn't give his last name).


And I can't say enough about Marketing for Romance Writers Yahoo list at yahoo groups.

You can be sure that I'll be harrassing Gwenna to give me updates to share with you (and use, myself). Thank you, ma'am. You're a marketing maven!