Congratulations, you got your first book contract and now the publisher wants you to go out and talk about your book. Where do you go? What do you do if you are a new author just starting out and don’t have an advance?

I found myself in this position a few years ago and discovered innovative ways to get my name out there. I looked for free places to go to chat with readers, introduce myself and “pimp” my book. I also talked to established authors on marketing ideas and made up a ton of free promo items at home off my computer like bookmarks, post cards and other items to send to review places/conventions as promotional items to get readers interested in my work.  

Blogs are great, yahoo loops, interviews, spotlights, a professional looking website and more all help get your name out to the readers. I try to do a blog spotlight a month and a few interviews or chats a week if possible. I go on loops and start asking reader questions, use my signature line with links for readers to go to.  I just started using Twitter, which I’v heard helps readers get to know you better.

It doesn’t have to cost a ton of money for you as a beginner author to get your name out there. All you need is perseverance and a little ingenuity to make your name known.

~*~*~*~

Raine Delight is the author of the Devon Falls series now available at Aspen Mountain Press

Our business is selling e-Books.

Sometimes selling e-Books isn’t as easy as the media and others would like us to believe.  Despite the fact that nearly two million new e-readers were sold by the end of 2009, a lot of people you might talk to on the street, in your place of worship, at work have not heard of them.

Many people are just now hearing about these portable devices thanks to commercials showcasing the Sony reader and the Nook from Barnes and Noble. 

But how will these new clients look for content for their readers?

That is where you, the author, need to think about the content of your story.

There are loads of products available via the web on how to promote your writing, but a good three quarters or more are dedicated to non-fiction writing.  So how can you take that information and apply it to your fiction work? (more…)

Seach in google for blogs with similar content/themes to your work and writing genre. Send emails to the owners and ask if they would consider letting you blog.  They usually will because people are always looking for content.

Announce your blogs daily ( a day or two before…you don’t want to make people sick of you, but you don’t want them to forget either) on the social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter and MySpace.

Leave comments to get your name out there and you will find people sending you invitations, especially if your post is reasonably intelligent, not insulting, and is as free of errors as you can make it.  Don’t be afraid to get together with another author; don’t be afraid to brainstorm all sorts of possibilities and then search.  You may be very well surprised by what you find.

If you really want to make your writing stand out, you need to actively hunt for clichés in your prose.  Clichés are tried and true, yes, but they are also boring and lazy.  You are a writer who wants to tell the best possible tale…do so by hunting those cliché’s down and killing them.

This may require another author’s eyes.  A critique partner, even a beta reader if you tell them in advance that you want them  to look for clichés.

What are some clichés you can look for?  Here are a FEW.  There are thousands, if not more.

A breath of fresh air.

Dumb as a rock.

Dog tired.

Dog days of summer.

Fresh as a daisy.

Sardines in a can.

Sharp as a tack/pin.

Played like a violin/Stradivarius.

As cold as ice.

Better late than never.

Time flies/time flies when you’re having fun.

Old hat.

No bones about it.

Like the pot calling the kettle black.

Dead as a doornail.

Stiff as a board.

Bored stiff.

Bored to tears/death.

I think you get the idea.  These things creep into our writing without us being aware of them.  Frequently, it takes another set of eyes to reveal these clichés. 

You can take some of these and turn them on their head.  What if you said, “Dead as a zombie”?  This is fresh.  This gives you a different picture of someone that may be dead and just extremely tired.  If you are writing a zombie story, this would be a phrase we’d identify as a thematic phrase because it echoes what your tale is about…zombies.  And, of course, if you use this phrase, you get a very different sort of picture as zombies aren’t entirely dead.  Your character could be telling another character that this person who is dead as a zombie isn’t really dead.

Have fun killing clichés.  Doing so will improve your writing and make it fresh and memorable.

This came from a handout I got not too long ago.  I don’t know if they truly are Barbara Kingslover’s 10 Rules of Writing Fiction, but there is some good advice in them.

1. Your first sentence or paragraph makes a promise that the rest of the story or novel will keep.

2. Give your reader a reason to turn every page.

3. Keep a very large trash can beside your desk. (I follow these faithfully, though I’ve updated the wastebasket to a recycling box.)

4.  Show, don’t tell.  Everybody knows this rule, and most of us still break it in every first draft. Be ruthless. Throw out interior monologue.

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Aspen Mountain Press is excited to announce three releases this week:

Phlogiston by Jefferson Dane; Storykeeper by Jade Buchanan; and Julian’s Second Chance by Claire Thompson.

In Jefferson Dane’s debut fantasy, Phlogiston, someone wants to break the truce humans have had with the dragons by murdering a noblewoman.  Can an apprentice scholar and a merchant savant hiding a dark secret uncover the mystery in time to prevent a war?

While this is Jefferson Dane’s first fantasy with Aspen Mountain Press, it isn’t his first work.  If you enjoy horror you may also enjoy Dane’s Flyover.  What happens in the night in Afghanistan where there is more to worry about than the Taliban?

Storykeeper by Jade Buchanan features an immortal falling for a human.  The Storykeeper provides inspiration, gives dreams and acts as a muse to those who put words to paper whether they are singers or writers or storytellers.  Never before, has this storykeeper allowed himself to dream.  But that is about to change when Enitan meets Jason after hearing him read one of the stories Enitan had inspired.   Enitan has never dared to hope there could be something in the world such as love for him.  Never before has he known if the possibility existed to find happiness with a human.  Will Enitan be able to claim Jason’s heart and give his in return?  And if so, what will be the cost?  Pick up a copy of Storykeeper and find out what the future holds for Enitan and Jason.  

Our next story is a tale of self-denial and perhaps, love deferred.  In Julian’s Second Chance by Claire Thompson, one man, Julian denies the attraction he feels for a friend he’s met on a trip to Sri Lanka. 

Julian fears the cost of his attraction to Alex, including the repercussions from his family will be more than he can bear.  Yet, he can’t forget the time the two men spent together. 

When a meeting brings them together once more, six years later, Julian is older and wiser.  But Alex is no longer the same man he spurned and has moved on with his life, relegating Julian to the past.  Delve into the denial and self-deception two men use to protect themselves from emotional pain in this re-release by talented author, Claire Thompson.

Twitter Marketing: 6 Steps to Creating a Viral Marketing Campaign with Twitter Hashtags

by Donna Gunter, The Online Biz Resource Queen (TM)

Twitter, as a popular social networking platform, is a viral marketing strategy all on its own, especially if your followers like your tweets and retweet them to their followers. However, I’ve recently noticed another trend in Twitter usage that increases its viral marketing capabilities through the use of hashtags.

What’s a hashtag, anyway? Also called the pound sign, the hashtag (#) is added to a tweet as a way of creating trackable categories, groups, or topics that others can use to search for info using the Twitter Search feature. One of the most common uses of the hashtag is to tweet what’s happening at an event or conference. The event organizer will request all attendees use a specific hashtag, i.e. #yourevent, when tweeting about the event to your followers. So, then, someone who isn’t present at the event but wants to follow what’s happening there can simply search for #yourevent and see what’s going on and what participants are saying and sharing about the event. (more…)

July 21st, 2009 was the 3rd anniversary of the opening of Aspen Mountain Press and The Romance Studio helped us celebrate with a drawing.

RoxAnn won five downloads of her choice, downloads that will go far in alleviating the dog days of summer.  What did RoxAnn select from over 220 stories?  She chose the following: (more…)

You know you love it, the extra crispy fried chicken not unlike what you might get at KFC (what do they do to that chicken that it makes your mouth water?) or if you are in Denver, The White Fence Farm…

Here is a recipe for a fried chicken  that will have you salivating.  Poke around the site.  There are tons of recipes for all sorts of tastes.

For those of you interested in marketing, you might want to take a look at this article:

10 Rules for Advertising on Facebook that is available at www.BusinessInsider.com