Deborah Woehr

How old were you when you decided that trick-or-treating was uncool? I was 15 and would have gone out again if another girl hadn’t ruined my fun by saying, “Aren’t you a little old for that?” I swear, some people can be such killjoys.

Both my kids decided that they didn’t want to wear a costume or go trick-or-treating this year, which is highly unusual because both of them have a healthy sweet tooth. There was no particular reason. They just didn’t want to go. So I shrugged my shoulders and brought out a gingerbread haunted house kit to assemble and decorate.

I figured that if we weren’t going to do the trick-or-treat thing, we could start a new tradition. It sounded like a good idea until I tried to put the thing together. Did I tell you that I’ve never attempted to make one of these things before? I did manage to get the sides and most of the roof glued together with frosting, although the walls liked to slide around.

Then I set the boys loose on it. About a minute passed before the oldest cried out, “You broke the house!”

“No, I didn’t!” the youngest argued.

Uh-oh, I thought before I returned to the dining room to assess the damage. The house was totaled. Not a single wall stood. Frosting smeared every surface. My youngest cheerfully munched on one of the walls and proclaimed that the cookie was too hard.

Our haunted house project got scrapped and sent to the garbage can outside before our resident rat (who we’ve yet to banish and/or kill) can have a midnight snack.

I hope you all have/had a delightful Halloween!

I just performed a Google search for the anthology and found that it has been picked up by the following retailers in the UK and France. So far, nothing in the US, except for Lulu.

Tesco
Telegraph Books
Amazon.com France

I’m an avid Mac fan/user, but I found myself laughing as I watched this video.

I finally figured out how to work with MySQL to separate the database into sections in order to upload everything into the new site. Yes, it took me forever and a day, I know. I’ve yet to master pHp and MySQL.

I had some major problems with the admin (getting locked out of the blog once I uploaded the database) and receiving only the topmost portion of the content. The rest of it turned up 404 messages. To put it bluntly, this process turned out to be a major pain in the ass.

I’ve reinstated the memberships of those who contributed regularly via posts and/or comments. I’m still in the process of reinstating the rest of the members, which I plan to finish by the end of this weekend.

I’m keeping all of your old usernames, but have changed your passwords (because the database wouldn’t provide them to me). I’ll send you an email with the new password shortly.

I’m not sure when this latest version is coming out or what features it’s going to bring, but the new 2.05 version has just been released, which contains more security patches. I just updated this blog and The Writers Buzz due to my newfound paranoia of hackers (i.e., the demise of the Murder and Mayhem wikki). You might want to do the same.

Internet Marketers swore by this technique in the Spring of ‘05, claiming that they received thousands of hits per day. So I decided to try it because I needed to promote The Writers Buzz. I slammed out a couple of articles and threw them to the wind . . . and got more spam and scrapers (plagiarists) than quality visitors.

There was a positive side in that these scrapers kept my byline (and my link) intact so I was able to get more inbound links, thereby boosting my web presence. I also found some useful articles to post on The Buzz as well as some good writing sites. Unfortunately, they weren’t attracted to my site because my articles sucked.

On Saturday, I decided to give this technique another try, although this time I’m not expecting miracles. You may have read the book marketing plan article I wrote. I added my byline, mentioning both The Writers Buzz and providing the Lulu link for the anthology. That way, I won’t get penalized by Google for posting duplicate content.

I posted this article at ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, and articledashboard.com. All of these sites have a PR5, which will give that link more exposure in the search engines. That’s my ultimate goal.

I plan on writing more articles to submit to print magazines as well as the heavy-weight writing sites such as WritersWrite.com.

I logged onto my Lulu account this morning and found out that someone has bought a copy of the anthology yesterday. I’m not going to get too excited yet, but I am hopeful. I’ll consider this project a success if I’m able to sell at least 50 copies.

Why such a small number? Because this is my first attempt at publishing and marketing a book. I read somewhere that the average first-time author is lucky to sell 500 copies of their book, and that’s when they publish through the traditional route.

Effective tomorrow, PRWeb will no longer offer it’s free press release distribution service.

From David McInnis of PRWeb

We pioneered free press release services. But over the recent years we’ve learned that free press releases have been drowned out by increasing noise in the media, no longer delivering what our customers want–visibility for their news. In addition, the burden free releases present to our editors and the quality of content of many free releases diminishes the resources we need to continue our pace of innovation and scope of our customer support. PRWeb intends to remain the leader on Online Visibility.

Their basic distribution package will cost you $80, which isn’t all that expensive considering what you’ll get. I’ve copied the list from the site to show you.

• PRWeb® Distribution
• Search Engine Optimization
• RSS/XML Feed
• Gold Stars
• Improved Placement
• Statistics (Quick Stats)
• Next Day Distribution
• Additional Industry Targets
• Keyword Search at PRWeb®
• File Attachments
• Yahoo!/Overture PPC
• Google News Inclusion
• eMediaWire Distribution †
• Sponsored Press Releases
• Thumbnail Views of jpg/gif Images
• Free NewsCrafters™ Consultation
• Listed in: Yahoo! News, Excite, Dogpile, MetaCrawler, Webcrawler, Verizon, and NBC

  Featured Press Releases
  Trackbacks

NOTE: Editorial Score of 4 or higher is required for some of the above distribution options

The selling point for me was the higher visibility, which I’m hoping will produce some book sales. I’ve used the free press release distribution services in the past, when promoting Writer’s Blog Alliance and received a smidgen of traffic (less than 100 hits during that month) because my release got buried under tens of thousands of new releases.

Once you submit your press release and it gets approved, you may upgrade to the $200 package, which will include distribution to blogs and podcasts.

I’ve never written a press release for a book and found it somewhat daunting at first. How do I write one? Lulu gave me a template to use, but I still needed to figure out the best angle that would attract readers. I’ve attached the result below. I’ll let you know how well it works.

Once the anthology becomes available at the major online book retailers, I’ll send out another press release with the links.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAN JOSE, CA–October 18, 2006–Writer’s Blog Alliance has produced its first anthology, using the blog medium. Think of a blog as an online newsletter or website, where writers can communicate with their readers and vice versa.

The 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology is a compilation of essays, poems, and short stories, written by the members of Writer’s Blog Alliance as well as other writers in the blogosphere. This is a multi-genre collection, composed entirely of posts and reader responses.

Deborah Woehr edited and compiled the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology to help herself and other independently published authors gain exposure and more readers for their blogs and books. The 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology is available for purchase at www.lulu.com.

“Blogging has become a powerful tool for writers to reach their prospective readers on a global level,” said Deborah Woehr.

Link to Publication: http://www.lulu.com/content/415394

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The writers in this collection are diverse in their careers as well as their writing styles. What they have in common is how they draw and entertain their readers.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Deborah Woehr is the founder of The Writers Buzz, which helps promote the books of new and established writers, and the former co-founder of the Writer’s Blog Alliance, a community for writers who blog.

###
MEDIA CONTACT: Deborah Woehr, deborah.woehr(at)gmail.com, 555-555-5555.

A book marketing plan is an outline that will help you determine where and how you will promote your book. It can also serve as an indicator of how well your book may do in the market, once you publish it.

Ideally, you should draw up this plan well before you send your manuscript to a traditional or POD publisher. Today, many publishers require writers to submit a marketing plan along with their queries.

The problem is, many writers have no clue as to how they’re going to market their books. Often, they publish and hope for the best. The information below is a template that will guide you through the process of creating your first book marketing plan.

1. Your Target Audience: Who is going to read your book? Find out what kinds of books are the most popular in your genre and why. What makes your book stand out from the throng of books currently on the market? Have you tested your book’s idea with prospective readers to determine their interest?

2. The Product: What kind of book have you (or are about to) published? Is it a romance novel or a how-to book on underwater basket-weaving? Will it be available in other formats such as an ebook, podcast, CD-Rom, etc.?

At this stage in your marketing plan, you will need to research your competition to find out what the latest marketing trends are and how to use them to your advantage. You’ll also find out how well your competition is doing. Are their books (and derivative versions) selling like hotcakes or are they struggling to make a single sale?

3. The Price: Research your market to find out what readers are willing to pay for your book’s genre. Where are you going to sell it?

4. The Packaging: Decide how you’re going to design your book cover and marketing materials. Consistency and good design are critical. Again, research your competition to see what their materials like.

How does the design and copy measure up? Both play an equally important job in attracting the reader. How are you going to improve on what they did?

5. Promotion and Publicity: How are you going to promote your book? Where are you going to promote it? Take this time to research every available resource both online and off. Write them down or enter them into a database. Creating and keeping a database is the better option because you can set up columns to track your progress.

Once you have gathered all of this information, you are ready to create your book marketing plan. If you are going to submit this plan to a prospective publisher, make sure to follow their guidelines, if necessary. Otherwise, you can type everything into a report and print it out for future reference.