Book Signings

I love to set up book signings. It’s not that I sell a lot of books but it’s a great opportunity to create a media event. When local media such as newspaper, magazines, radio and television cover your book signing, you can include the media on your website.

The first thing you want to do is find a book store who will be willing to host the event. The smaller local bookstore has the best potential. You’ll want to find out if they will want an even 50/50 split on the books you sell. Some will offer at 60/40 split with you receiving the 60%. Let them make the offer. Only once has a bookstore offered to buy my book, typically they want one copy at no charge prior to the book signing. Approach the owner or the manager and ask if they have book signings. They will typically know the type of book signing which will work for them.

Most often, it will be a matter of the bookstore sending out a notice to their database talking about a local author being available for a private book signing.

They will also want you to participate in inviting people you know. The idea is to drive traffic to the store.

You’ll want to create a poster for the store to put in the window; set up an event on your Facebook site; Twitter the announcement to your followers and look for local groups like book clubs or women’s groups who would support your book signing.

The day of the event, make sure you know if you will have an ideal atmosphere to read from your book or if it will strictly be a signing. The store will typically provide cookies and tea.

Adding Media to Your Site

I thought I was clever when I added a photo slide to my speaking site by using slide.com (http://www.sharynabbott.com/gallery.html). Then I learned how to put a Capture Box on my site (look at ezine.html) and I was truly excited. Then if you remember I discovered how to embed video on my site by loading the Flip Videos to MySpace.

And I know you all have a Twitter.com account, right? Well if not, please do, but, if you do, are you loading your Tweets to your Blog and website? The reason you want to do this is it will make the search engines see that there is new content loaded onto your blog and site on a regular basis. It drastically improves your rankings. So t hen I thought after all of that, “wow, I’ve really got it nailed”.

But it never ends, does it?

I had been trying to find an audio converter program I could purchase rather than paying a monthly fee and have the audios stored on someone’s site that might not be around in five years. Finally, I discovered ImpactWebAudio and it only costs $37 and is a one-time fee. It’s very easy to use, has six recording buttons to choose from and a full color spectrum for choice of colors so you can match your website scheme. (Example: BeYourOwnBossGuide about half-way down the page.)

You can use your computer to record small segments of audio and load them to your site and blog. You can also use the Sony IC Recorder ICD-SX57 which you can upload to your computer and use audacity.com (no charge) to create mp3 files to generate audios to let your followers know what you’re message is.

Have fun with it and remember, it’s one thing at a time, and I’ll try to stay one step a head of the technology for you!