Category Archives: Marketing Madness

Make Believe Anthology: The back of the cover. Yay! Another Reveal!

Along with the book cover, and here ya go, in case you missed it.

Sigh… just don’t get tired of looking at my name on there…

Anyway…

Along with the book cover, we now have the back cover copy with details on all the cool stories about this little lady in red.

And no, It’s not Little Red Riding Hood.  It had to be about anything BUT that fabled character.  So without further ado, here is the back cover copy for “Make Believe”

Oh!  It would be great if you’d click on these lovely ladies’ names and give them a shout out on their blogs.  We’re all celebrating!

Back of the Book

Sacrificial Oath by Terri Rochenski

An impetuous act unwittingly makes Alesuela the fulfillment of the Sovereign’s Blood Oath to their Goddess. In five days, she’ll be forced to make the greatest choice of her life: become the virginal sacrifice already promised, or force the man she loves most to die in her place.

With an impossible choice in front of her, she searches for ways to undo the oath, and in her quest, finds not everything in her life is as she expects.

The Amulet of Ormisez by J. Keller Ford

There is only one way to save Elton Fletcher’s brother from an insanity-ridden death.

After years away from home, fighting for his people, Elton returns to discover his only sibling, Cayden, possessed by greed and malice, and responsible for malicious, unthinkable deeds. Cayden, though, isn’t the only one afflicted by the Amulet of Ormisez, and Elton finds himself in yet another battle, where the price of failure could be his own life.

Birthright by Lynda R. Young

Christa can mask the pain and hide the scars, but running from a birthright is impossible.

She’s tried to escape her grief by fleeing to a small town in Florida. Much to her frustration, the locals think they recognize her even though she’s never been there before. To make things worse, a man named Jack spouts outrageous theories about her.

Both spur Christa to bolt, to start fresh yet again, but there’s something about Jack that intrigues her enough to stay. The only problem? Someone else wants her to leave, and they won’t stop until she’s dead.

Petrified by Kelly Said

A mysterious storm has replaced summer with winter, devastating crops and smothering Castle lands in snow.  Prince Sterling August stands alone as a leader, lost in personal grief as well as a desire to help his people but with an inability to do either.

The answers he needs await him, but without Lochlyn, a woman who’s just as isolated as Sterling, he’ll never see what stands before him, cloaked in illusion.

Last Winter Red by Jennifer M. Eaton

Emily is a Red, a woman whose sole purpose in life is to produce offspring. When her husband dies and leaves her childless, she risks her life and forsakes the safety of Terra—a disease-free city born after the nuclear holocaust. Beyond its boundaries, she knows, survives a man with whom she can be properly paired.

The Outside, though, holds secrets the government struggles to keep, and what Emily discovers on her quest for a mate will change her life forever.

Escort to Insanity by J.A. Belfield

From a charity auction, to a stroll in the park, to the craziest night of her life. Nicole Harrington can’t help but wonder how a simple event went so drastically wrong.

Of course, the male escort she booked is wholly to blame. Not only charming but shrewdly intelligent, Benjamin Gold drags Nicole into a platoon of unimaginable problems—ones from which she’ll have to find the courage just to survive.

URL: http://www.jtaylorpublishing.com/books/17

So, Whattya think?

Are you Excited?

How do you feel about your Facebook page?

I admit, I am behind the times.  Facebook is not my friend.

I cannot use my knowledge of HTML to make it do what I want.  I can’t make it be what I want it to be.

Yes, I have a Facebook page.  No, I don’t really take care of it, and it shows.  As a yet to be published author, I have nothing definitive to promote, other than www.jennifermeaton.com, which I think I do reasonably well. (Proof is in the pudding… you’re reading this, aren’t cha?)

I’m just not really sold on Facebook’s value.

Why do I bring this up?

When I recently submitted my manuscript to a publisher, they asked a lot of questions relating to my “marketing value/expertise”.   One of them was the link to my Facebook page.  Ugh.

It was required, so of course I gave it to them, but this is the one part of my submission that I am not proud of.

Here is my pitiful Facebook page Author page interactive page

Does anyone have a Facebook page that I can copy they are proud of?  I’d love to see it.  Mine is sorely lacking.

Marketing your novel while querying.

How do you do this?  Should you do this?

Everything I’ve read, and every author I’ve spoken to says: “Yes.”

When I pressed the submit button to the Publisher for my novelette LAST WINTER RED, I mulled for a little while about how important Marketing was to them.

Now, don’t let that surprise you.  All publishers are interested in authors who are marketable or able to market themselves.

As I’ve said before, my Facebook page stinks. (From my perspective)  My website/blog, however, I spend a lot of time on, and I am very proud of it.

I hoped they would see the value of that.  But then, as I thought it over, I took it a step further.

I decided to post my LAST WINTER RED query on my website.  I gave it its own tab.  But that was boring, and I don’t do boring.  I need to spruce it up a bit.

As most of you have noticed, I have an arsenal of artwork, and I am more than capable of manipulating graphics and text to bend to my will. (All of this artwork is copyrighted and paid for, by the way.  Don’t copy it—that’s stealing)

A short while of scanning brought me to a model that looked just like my MC Emily.  Throw an ashen Victorian dress on her and plop her into the snow in the middle of the woods.  Perfect.  Now, add the red cloak, laying on the snow.  Pout, Emily, you’re sad and confused.  Walla! Instant marketing piece.

If you look long enough, and if you are willing to pay for it (it’s not too costly) you can almost always find exactly what you need.

Now, I plopped this “advertisement” up really quickly, and spent more work on the art than the text since I used the actual query that I submitted to the publisher.  I’m not crazy about the tone of the query for the advertising purposes, but I wanted to get it up quickly, in case the publisher stopped by.

In the next few days, I tightened the query to be a little more readable, and make it look better visually in conjunction with the picture.

A little extra effort shows that not only am I marketable, but I will also be willing to, and have already, marketed my novel.

Please take a look and let me know what you think!

Is this a great idea?  An awful idea?  Whattya think?

Click the LAST WINTER RED tab in my title bar or click HERE to take a peek.

The Significance of Social Networking. Blogging, Facebook, and Twitter

Circuitmart recently ran an article about research that was just done on Social Networking.  It focused on Twitter, and Facebook… not so much blogging, but the principles are similar.  If you’d like to see the article, you can click on the link below, but I’ll summarize for you.

http://www.circuitmart.com/mart/49609.shtml  (There is a 30 second commercial, followed by the 1 minute video presentation, or you can click “read more” to read the full article instead.)

What I found interesting is that they interviewed someone with 200 Facebook friends, and they asked them how many are really friends.  The answer was only 30.

I thought about my own personal Facebook account.  I actually know everyone I’ve friended.  Yeah, to be honest, many of them are people I went to high school with, who I barely even knew back then, but I DO KNOW THEM.

(By the way, don’t try to “friend” Jennifer M Eaton on Facebook… that’s not me.  Nope, I’m not a blonde.)  You can find me under Jennifer M Eaton – Author.  If you see Castillia’s fire in the profile picture, or an eye with the reflection of fire in it… that one’s me.  (Wow, that eye looks creepy when it’s not cropped into a square.  EEEK!

Anyway, I was thinking about how this relates to blogging.  This is my professional area.  Here, I have a lot of followers, but I’ve actually never met most of you.

Is that weird?  Well, no… it’s not.  That’s what social networking is all about.

Finding people who are seriously into writing is hard for most of us.  I’m in a local writer’s group, but the people I’ve learned the most from are the people I interact with everyday on the internet.  (I do get a lot out of small group writing workshops, though)

Through my connections on the internet, I find out about contests, seminars, training classes, resources, and I can get great advice anytime I need it, just by posting and asking for help.  When I didn’t have my own blog, I jumped onto Nathan Brandsford’s… and that site is always there for me to get additional advice from a broader spectrum of writers.

Social networking has helped me tremendously.  My novel wouldn’t be what it is today without it.  I have “friends” all over the world to help me out.  (The guy doing the art for my WEB Site is in Hungary… and he’s read my novel.  How weird awesome is that?)

Used to its full potential, networking is a great tool.  I don’t care if I haven’t met you.  If you are here, you are my friend.  Friends help each other out.

Friends cheer each other on.

Now, stop reading this insanely long post.

Get up off your butt and finish your novel. 

The world is waiting to read you!