Report on ice sales

I’ve been a bad girl.

I’ve been sorely neglecting the promotional part of my writing life. Aside from running another Goodreads giveaway, I’ve done pitifully little in the last few months to promote “Dance of Souls.” Instead I have been happily, deliciously, wiling away the hours working on my new novel.

That must change, but I’m not sure I have it in me.

Even as a corporate marketer, I was never very good at blatant promotion. You know, sidling up to people at cocktail parties, sticking out my hand, introducing myself, and giving the elevator pitch for the product du jour. I was always more likely to… you know, stick my head in the sand.

I’m even worse at self promotion, at least as far as my fiction is concerned.  For some reason, it’s not hard for me to promote myself in my other career, as a birth doula—perhaps because I can clearly see and articulate the value of my services in helping families when they’re having babies.

At some level, most fiction writers may be this way. After all, if we were great promoters, we’d probably be out starting companies or selling ice to residents of Alaska.

I’m not naive enough to think that my book is going to sell itself. Still, when I consider the psychic pain of getting “out there” in all the ways that I should be—showing my face at local independent book stores, talking myself up in every conceivable social context, virtual and real—vs. the payoff of getting more readers, I usually find it easy to tell myself that I don’t really need more readers.

So, dear blog followers, you heard it here first: I am (re)committing to executing the marketing plan for Dance of Souls that I wrote up last fall. It’s not rocket science, as they say. I just need to start doing it. I’ll keep you updated on what I’m trying out, and how it’s working. If you don’t hear about some marketing activity every few weeks, feel free to excoriate me!

First up: 1) sending books to the winners of the Goodreads giveaway and 2) exploring ads on Goodreads.