Research vs. Procrastination and I'm Off to See The Agents, The Wonderful Agents of Mine (Sung to the Wizard of Oz)

Tomorrow, I'm off to see my agents in San Francisco We are supposed to discuss "time lines." I guess that means how long I have to promote myself and my work before they can help me get this next project of mine off and running. If you recall, my agent did not manage to sell one of my projects, and her husband sent me off to promote another one. They said I was "antsy" when I asked if I could find another agent who might take the project on immediately and suggested this meeting. I guess we also will take a look at where I am going, how I am going to get there and how they will help me. Those are my words. I want and need that from them. Anyway, that's tomorrow's agenda, and I'm a little nervous. I don't often get a chance to spend time with them. I enjoy their company and value their time, but I'm always a little afraid of doing something "wrong." Just my stuff... I'll let you know how the meeting goes.

Here's another short bit of news: I finished the first draft of my Write Nonfiction in November project. In fact, I sent it off to my agents, along with a bunch of other stuff. It needs some work, but it's not half bad. I think I told you that its a booklet based on a four-part teleseminar series I taught. I plan to sell it at the back of the room when I teach or speak and on line as well. I'll produce it as an e-book, too.

Okay, a short post on research vs. procrastination (as per Linda's request). Here's my take on this subject, for whatever it's worth. It's very easy for a nonfiction writer to waste away the hours doing research, especially on the Internet. I have often found a whole day gone by without noticing as I've read surfed around the net reading all sorts of things that seem related to my topic. If you've got time to spare, this poses no problem. If you have a deadline or, like me, have few hours in the day to work, this does not serve you. So, Google your subject and try to find the websites that look most promising. Follow your best leads and links. Give yourself a time frame within which you have to quite researching -- 2-3 hours or whatever you can spare -- and then begin writing.

Use this same principle when reading for research. Tons of books have been published on most subjects. You could read for years. Pick the best few books, or the most recent few books, or the books by the most-well-known experts, and then call it quits.

I prefer conducting interviews over reading books, because I don't have enough hours in my day to read as many books as would be necessary to do extensive research. I read a few books or parts of books, and then I start interviewing the authors or other experts. They can tell me what I need to know in a lot less time than it would take to read their whole book. Plus, they answer my questions specifically. Be cautious about spending too much time interview, though. This can become a trap as well. You can spend all your time talking to experts and never get around to writing.

Then, of course, you simply need to know when to stop researching and start writing. Ask yourself, "Am I just procrastinating and putting off writing? Do I have enough research to begin writing?"

I always err on the side of doing too much research, and I don't recommend this. It makes writing more difficult. I think it might be better to research just enough, begin writing, and then go back and do extra research to fill in gaps. The way I do it, I end up having to distill pages and pages of research or interview transcripts into just a few paragraphs of copy. However, an overabundance of research does give you excess material for more articles, books, essays, etc.

Promote Your Book -- and Yourself -- with Online Articles

You can gain exposure for yourself and your books by using your nonfiction writing ability to write articles and “news releases” (short articles) that you post to online article directories and distribution services. You can also submit them to e-zines, which represents a more targeted approach. I’ve done this consistently for more than a year, and if you Google my name, you’ll find load of entries. Not only that, if you search for any of the many subjects about which I’ve written – all of which pertain to the books I’m trying to promote – you’ll likely find something I’ve written on that very subject.

Let’s start with e-zines. These are magazines published on the Internet. Some print magazines also have e-zines, and sometimes these carry different articles. I tend to go for the e-zines that are published only on line and that carry articles solely on topics related to my books. Therefore, you can often find my articles in Jewishmagazine.com or Interfaithmagazine.com. The latter pays me a little for my articles; the former does not, but it affords me its 3,000 unique visitors a day and a link to my web site. That’s great exposure and publicity, especially since my bio mentions my book or books.

As for article directories, many of these are free, and you can submit to them yourself. This can be very time consuming, however. Instead of doing this myself, I choose to use a service called SubmitYourArticle.com (There are others out there.), which costs me $37.00 per month for unlimited article postings per month. They are sticklers about what you post – no outright promotional stuff that sounds like a press release, for instance, but they then submit it to a huge number of article directories for you. (There is some upfront work involved; you have to get a Yahoo e-mail account – or some place where the tremendous amount of posted articles will show up – yes, other people’s articles arrive in your inbox -- and give it to all the directories, which takes a lot of time. Once it is done, though, it’s quick and easy. I never even look in that Yahoo e-mail box, by the way. I have to say that the upfront work has deterred me from leaving the service and trying another. I wouldn’t want to start all over again if I came back to them!) I am happy with the number of places I find my articles published, and I seem to get a lot of web site traffic from these listings.

Another service can be used to submit articles all over the Internet; I can’t even begin to tell you where all your news release will go, but boy it goes. It’s called PRWeb.com. They offer a range of services, the cheapest being $200. I posted a news release there last December, and it received 82,000 hits! My web traffic increased quite a bit, and I did find part of the news release used in a newspaper article in the South. I was hoping to enroll some people in a teleseminar, however, and that didn’t happen. Lots of people I know swear by PRWeb.com, but it isn’t cheap. I’m planning to use it to promote a teleseminar a friend of mine and I are running this January. We’ll split the cost, and see if we get some enrollment this time. Be sure when you write your release, however, that you use lots of key words, so people can find your article.

The more exposure you get online, the better when it comes to building your platform. You just never know what will come of it. I spent a year writing news releases almost every week and paying money to submit them on line or giving them away for free. I paid to have myself listed as an "expert" on Expertclick.com, where I can post four news releases a month and have them read by journalists. I thought it was for nothing, even though I knew that I'd plastered myself all over the Internet and increased my web site visitors from an average of 500/month to between 2500 and 4000/month in a year. (My unique visitors went from an average of 300/month to an average of 2500-3000/month in a year.) Oh, some lady did mention something I'd said in a blog once and, as I said, one part of a news release ended up in a newspaper article, and there were all those pieces picked up by e-zines. But nothing big happend. The media weren't calling me as an expert for interviews.

Then, after a little more than a year, suddenly things started to happen. I was contacted by a regional magazine for an interview for an article. I was asked to do a podcast interview (for a show with 38,000 listeners/month), and it looks like I'll be asked back as a regular guest. And I received a request to participate in a virtual book launch party wehre a possible 500,000 people might see my name and face -- and download my free gifts (related to my books). Then someone asked me to write a blurb for the back of their book, and now I'm speaking with someone about writing a piece for an anthology that is closely related in subject matter to one of my book projects.

It's taken more than a year, but my platform is building a little bit at a time, and I'm becoming an "expert." So use your nofiction writing skills to promote yourself online. It's time consuming and hard work, and it costs a bit of money, but I do think it pays off in the end.

The Internet as Your Promotional and PR Resource

These days publishing houses expect their authors to put up the money for most of the publicity and public relations necessary to make any book a success. That can be an expensive proposition for any author, especially since writers can’t rely on advances big enough to cover these costs. It seems the more money and effort we are expected to dish out to help sell our books, the less money and effort our publishing houses dish out to help us do so.

So, what’s a writer to do? Take advantage of the most underutilized (and free) writer’s resource out there – the Internet. Despite the fact that it’s been around long enough to have become part of a writer’s way of life, we have not yet begun using the Internet as the resource it will one day be for our publicity and PR needs. Yet, even now it can provide the cheapest publicity and PR campaign available – all from the comfort of our homes.

These days best-selling authors, like Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield, promote their books while sitting at home in sweats and slippers. Using their computers, telephones and podcasting and teleconferencing technology, they teach teleseminars, do radio and Internet interviews, and answering questions from readers and fans all over the world without ever leaving home.

Many authors have sent themselves to best-seller status using e-mail “blasts” – e-mailed letters asking people to purchase their books from Amazon.com on a particular day and offering gifts from other authors in return for doing so. This tactic works well, especially if you can get enough “partners” to agree to send your letter to their e-mail list. Usually those offering gifts will do this for you, as might some other people. If you sell between 200 and 600 books on a given day – and no other books sells more, Amazon.com will give you the title of best-selling author and your book the title of best seller. You can do the same thing for Barnsandnoble.com. Of course, best-seller status does a lot for a book’s promotion, but the e-mail blast itself does the trick by telling people about your book and enticing them to purchase it.

About four years ago, San Francisco writer and bibliophile Kevin Smokler organized the first virtual book tour for an author. His idea was to link up authors with bloggers. The underpromoted authors provide the bloggers with interviews, original essays, and such and the bloggers provide book reviews and content related to the book. This idea has expanded to include author taking over weblogs for a day and giving readings, interviews and discussions via video and web-conferencing as well through online chats, discussion boards and chat-rooms. In most cases, readers and authors can interact at any time from any place. Many authors are using virtual book tours these days, but many are not.

The newest idea to hit the Internet and the publishing world comes in the form of a virtual book launch party. Not too many authors are privy to those fancy and expensive book launch parties thrown by their publishers these days, but one author decided she wanted one even if she had to throw it for herself. So, self-published novelist Elle Newmark will host the second-ever virtual book launch party on November 27th when she releases Bones of the Dead at a party to which over 500,000 guests will be invited. She’ll be asking people to purchase her book from Amazon.com on that day, and if they do, they’ll gain entry to the “party.” There they’ll find a plethora of “party favors” (gifts offered by her promotional partners – including me), “food for thought,” pleasant music, and other fun things that go along with the renaissance theme of her book. (I tell you what, this woman knows how to publicize her book. This weekend she was out at the Southern California Renaissance Faire handing out invitations to her virtual book launch party. We could all learn something from her. In fact, I think she plans to write a book about how to gain promotional partners and promote books in this manner.) To check out Elle and her party, go to http://www.bonesofthedead.com/.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about how to promote yourself and your book online using free article directories. This is important if you are doing promotion and PR for your book or if you are building a platform. I've used this method, which is not free, quite successfully. If nothing else, my name is pretty well plastered all over the Internet.