Happy New Year from Karen
I spent the holidays with family and have started the New Year withseeking God’s direction for my writing and promotion. I realize that beyond my personal family I am part of a writing family of authors that make up CAN. These members are wonderful and have worked hard at their craft and marketing. This year I want to help you gain insights for the CAN members and pass on tips that have contributed to their successes.
I plan to let each one share how they landed contracts and what seemed to help their books sell as well as pitfalls they may have encountered.
I will start with a little about myself. I never dreamed of writing. I earned a degree in math in college. However, I always loved crafts and children and followed God since early childhood. As I raised my five children friends encouraged me to share the activities I created in writing. However, five children took all my time. I did keep little notebooks with ideas of what I did. Finally, when my oldest entered college and my youngest entered preschool (the same year) I found I had a little free time and began to write.
I prayed about the writing and God sent me a mentor (a published author) and directed me to a writer’s conference. He also gave me a vision that called me to become a writer (not just one book). So, I listened and began working at it. Unlike many others, I received acceptances fairly quickly and then launched into writing book proposals. While submitting proposals, one publisher I submitted children’s activities to regularly, called and asked me to write a book. My own proposals took longer to receive contracts. The first one contracted tied to what I did and had a lot of passion for (puppetry).
When you write about what you know about it often means you also have some good connections to help promote the books. For my puppetry book, I belonged to a puppet guild who had set up an educational TV series and then asked me to be the host of the series. I knew some of the major puppet vendors and one chose to carry the book and sold them at more than 60 shows a year. Another friend in puppet industry was heading a ministry teaching team and going to 50 cities I that year and chose to use the book as part of the tour. I learned quickly that networking and connections make a huge difference. I also felt thankful that God opened so many doors.
Over time, with acceptances, some very good sales, some poor sales, and rejections, I have learned many lessons. I’ve seen that we can work very hard and do all the suggested ways of promoting a book and not have many sell (sometimes due to circumstances beyond our control) and other times God opens doors we never expected and sales happen without our efforts. Persistence and staying the course will pay off in the long run.
My biggest problem in marketing came with bbooks too tiny to be seen on store shelves and the fact that they didn't get into many stores. A compact book to help people sounds good, but it needs to be visible!
Marketing tips fro Karen:
- Network at every opportunity
- Know that God is in control
- Be consistent in what you do
- Set marketing goals and work at reaching them (not sales goals, butones youn can control like contacting three radio stations a week or updating your speaker sheet)
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