THE CAREER NOVELIST
weeks in advance. Follow-up calls are made a week or two later. For
media coverage of an event, call no sooner than the day before.
It is also possible to bypass your publisher, bookstores, and the
media and go directly to your potential audience. The mechanism is
the Internet. A Web page (Internet site) is easy to set up. It is like
having a number that people can call to hear a recorded message,
except that your Web page is visual and interactive. Some Web
pages are stunning. To check out an exceptionally fine authors Web
page, look at the one set up by fantasy writer J. V. Jones and her tal-
ented brother, an award-winning Web page designer. You will find it
at this location:
http://www.imgnet.com/auth/jjones.html
Now, let us say that you have several books and several years of
self-promotion under your belt. You have built a file of reviews and
other clippings. You can begin to go regional, doing the same thing
but farther away and in bigger markets. Contacts are harder to make,
but there is help in the form of reference books like Bacon's and
Laramie's, and newsletters like Contacts. Check your library, or with
your publicist.
With luck, your story will someday be picked up by national
media. It helps to have built a critical mass of publicity, but keep
your expectations realistic. National media is celebrity driven. Even
publishers find it tough to book authors on national TV. Still, certain
avenues are open. Local bureaus of the Associated Press and the
New York Times are helpful. USA Today is another that publicists love.
True self-promoters will find a way.
Then there is the lecture circuit. For two hundred dollars a new
service geared to midlist writers called Authors Unlimited will reg-
ister you and book you anywhere from colleges to museums to
cruise ships, retaining 25 percent of your fee in return.
Meanwhile, be sure to let your publisher know what you are
doing. A brief letter giving a schedule of your appearances should
go to your editor, the editorial director, the head of sales, and the
chief publicist. They will notice, probably help, and maybe, eventu-
ally, when your sales and/or advances warrant, take over. (Maybe
your agent will even be able to get you advertising and promotion
guarantees in your contract.)