I Will Do a Book Club Anytime and Anywhere

For authors a book club can not be beat. First of all you are in  a room of people who have read your book. Does it get any better than that? And they have all bought your book which is also amazing. And usually it is a group of ten people or more so that means a real nice spike in sales for you. I am always asked if I will speak at the book club...YOU BET. Why not if it is within a hundred miles I am there. It is the least I can do for people who have bought my books.

So then you go there and not only has everyone read your book there is usually dinner first and drinks. Bonus. So now you are being fed and having some glasses of wine or a drink and good conversation with people who want to talk about what you just wrote. Ok. So if there is an author heaven then it has to be a book club of about thirty people who just want to talk to you about what you do. Do any of us get this in this life?

And then the discussion begins. You get to listen to not only peoples view on your book but also far ranging discussions on theme and relevancy and what they liked and didn't like. It is mostly a stacked deck and pretty much everyone likes your book. And the booze continues and sometimes these things go pretty late and then you drive home feeling very good about being an author.

So I say it loud and clear. You want me to do your book club then email me. bhazelgrove@gmail.com
I'll be there with bells on.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Why PR Doesnt Work Anymore For Books

Used to be you did the big hits. USA Today. NY Times. NPR. If you could get them. You did newspapers and local television and radio and went on tour and the PR people booked you into these circuits and everything worked pretty much the way it was supposed to. That was because people all listened to the same sources.  And the PR people could deliver on what they set out to do...now all bets are off.

Social Media has moved in on the vacuum of the collapse of newspapers and mainstream media. I don't mean collapse like they are not there I mean that they are there in a different formats. There are no book sections left really. Go try and get a book covered in a newspaper. Very difficult. All the people who covered my earlier books are gone. Their positions don't even exist. Television and radio is deluged with content now. Books are way down on the totem pole if they are on the pole at all.

And worse than all this PR people don't really get social media. It is too personal. It really has to be done by the author for it to work because it is not big hits but a million small ones. You couldn't pay a PR person enough to pull this off though some may try. The truth is it is an eat what you kill world now and every author must master PR or risk not selling.

On the positive side it is a poor mans game again. You just have to roll up your sleeves.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Why I Left The Literary Festival

There comes a point where you have to go. It happened in my first writing group. I had just had a book published by a tiny press and I could not stay. And now it happens when I go to the Midlist Author events. I just can't stay. There is something about walking into some town hall or VFW or restaurant and seeing authors captive behind their tables and books. They look in pain. They stare into space confronted with the egos of others in crisis. The authorial dream cannot stand up to ten authors eyeball to eyeball confronted with the obvious truth. No one cares that you wrote this book and no one is coming.

And the reason no one is coming is the same for book signings. That world is now online. The midlist author always had a hard slog but the dregs of the old ways of marketing assure us that truly the world of brick and mortar is on a time limit. And when the woman calls and asks for thirty five dollars to sit in a small town in a town hall and face down those other authors then it is insult to injury. Because you pay it. Marketing is marketing. But is it?

The waste of time is evident. The marketing that occurs on a booksite or on Facebook or shooting out tweets blows away sitting in a room with ten other writers trying to sell books. To add another pin to this scenario the library has a large room of books they are discounting for about a buck a book in the next room. So all the authors have to offer is their personality and that is buried behind embarrassment and depression over the fact this then is the real world of selling self published books to a world drowning in such books.

And so I leave. I see my table with my name. It is empty and in a way I should go and sit down and do my time. But I have done that before. It is time to move on. So I do.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

What Media Does an Author Pursue?

You could just go after the newspapers. They used to be pretty good at covering novels. But a lot of these journalists are gone. I know that most of the people who covered my other books are no longer employed by the paper. If there are reviews they are assigned out. So that leaves radio. The bookshows used to be a safe bet. A lot of them are gone and the ones that are left are on a shoestring. Of course there is NPR and I have done that but it is not a sure thing ever. And the other question is how many books does radio really sell?

So that leaves the internet. This is where most authors now make their stand. At least one can take a shot. But again what do you pursue? The Social Sites? Twitter. Blog. All of it. Yes all of it. That is the approach now. Do it all but of course you quickly realize this is impossible. There are just not enough hours in the day and if there were you would be bleary eyed and spent. Forget about writing. That is not even an option.

So what media does an author pursue? Local media is not a bad bet. A local author has a good shot at a local paper. And local papers can be picked up by bigger papers. And of course blog. Tweet. Interact socially. Do your newsletter. Do giveaways. Take a shot at a radio interview. Give speeches. Go to festivals. Jump up and down. Scream. Build a website. Build another website. Give books to teachers. Give books to anyone who will review. Pray.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The PItcher

The New Author Tour At Home

Once upon a time you did the bookstores and radio stations and television and drove a lot of miles or flew and this was how you pushed your book. Now you never leave your home. You are still touring and it is as grueling as the old stay in motels and eat crappy food grind. Now you sit down in front of your computer and hack it out with blog tours or book blasts or hanging around social media sites. You still do interviews but of course you are on the phone and you do your radio in your bathrobe and slippers.

And that is it. That is the big tour. Apologies to the authors who are still touring but for the most part authors don't tour. They tweet. They Skype. They blog. They twitter. They retweet. They network. They work like hell and never leave their house. It is all really strange and being on the road seems like heaven compared to this online beating your head against the wall. Because nothing really comes back except maybe a tick in the Amazon numbers. Maybe not.

But that is the way it is now. The big author tour behind the screen. And you can hear the crickets as you scream from the rooftops about your book with a million other authors screaming from the rooftops. That is another thing. You never ran into other authors on your tour. I ran into a Governor once at a radio station but that was about it. Now it is like five o'clock traffic every day. A gridlock of online authors.

But that is the new world. Lump it or leave it. Or just don't turn on your computer.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher