I had no idea how important a cover was until I needed one.  Now, with my second published novel blessed with a cover, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.

Cover artists are powerful because great book covers contribute to sales!

Meeting with Lisa Dawn, my Wild Rose Press marketing director, at the Romantic Times Conference in Chicago, was the single most important event for me in four days of amazing workshops, lunches and networking experiences.  She knows the power of a book cover.  On one brain-picking occasion (that is, my brain picking hers), Lisa said that because we advertise our books on line, the thumbnail art of our cover is the single most important aspect in promoting book sales.  Think about it.  My cover, a mere inch and 1/2 by half and inch, has to ‘sell’ my book (along with the blurb, the reviews, etc.)

Did I know that fonts come at a price, along with artwork and spine work and back-of-the book work?  Heck, no.  Did I realize that color (or lack of it) and ‘framing’ of the art on the cover, are key concepts?  Definitely not.  In fact, we writers convey to our cover artists what the story is about and how they might present our plot lines, themes and characters on a cover, but once we’ve articulated the information and the vision, we leave the interpretation and the marketing skill in their hands.

The amazing Kim Mendoza created this masterpiece for my Funeral Planner Suspense series that comes out in October.  I hope you enjoy her art enough to take a peek at what FADEOUT has to offer!  Rolynn

I’ve been desperate to find cool new promo idea to share with my amazing author friends.  Got it!  QR codes.

They are simple and they are so cool.  Yup, Toyota wasn’t happy with the limit of the linear 20 character bar code, so they invented an information-rich QR code.  A recent RWA magazine article (“QR Codes: Start Scannin’ the News,” by Alyssa Goodnight, in the January 2012 issue) gave me the prompt and I’ve been QR’ing ever since.

Easy peasy (if you have a droid phone or similar).  Get your QR code on line.  Free.  What I did was insert my website and the QR codemaker interpreted it into a QR code.  I downloaded and resized the image.  Now it’s time to get the QR reader on your droid APP.  Check the reviews on different APPs before you download one.  You’ll want to test all the following promo QR images beforehand, with your scanner, to make sure they work.

Here’s what I’ve done with my QR code so far:

1.  Put it on a tee shirt

2.  Bought business cards and postcards with it

3.  Made a promo item with a QR label printed on it

4.  Bought a stamp of my QR code to use on fabric promo items (not sure if this will be too fuzzy to scan…I’ll let you know later if it works on media other than paper)

5.  Bought a BIG banner with my QR code on it…so customers can scan it from way across a room!

If you’ve played around with QR codes, I’d love to learn what you’ve found useful as well as fun.

Cautions:

The code clarity, size and a light background are all important.  Black against white is best.  I’ve read that the three distinct squares of the code must be clear to the scan-reader.

From what I understand, you can “buy” more information to add to your code beyond a simple website address, blog URL or buy URL.  I’m going enjoy using the simple version of QRing until I see a reason to buy such a service.

Another caution:  not everyone has a scanner on their phone.  It’s always best to display your website URL along with the QR code, so no one gets lost on the information highway!

Have fun QRing!  Rolynn

LAST RESORT – on sale now, print and download

The Wild Rose Press: http://tinyurl.com/682vwgv

Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/3cq6d7b

Web:  http://www.rolynnanderson.com

Blog:  http://blog.rolynnanderson.com/

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/63vsnmt

I am new to the business of marketing a novel.  LAST RESORT, a thriller/romance, released in the summer of 2011, is my first book to be published, so I have a lot to learn about how to punch up my sales.  I’m conversing in loops, blogging, tweeting and face-booking, but not as much as I should, largely because the big question of how to find my readers has me in ‘stand-by’ mode.  I want to focus my energy on writing my next book, but I’m willing to devote a calculated measure of time and gusto to reach my so-called target audience.

You see, I’m beginning to wonder if my book has a specific target audience.  Men seem to enjoy my story, as do women.  I had the odd experience of watching a 16 year old boy dive into my novel on a day when my husband and I moored our boat at his family dock.  Conservatives get a kick out of my fun fiction as do liberals.  A 93 year old friend (who rarely reads at all any more), zipped through my book in two days and pronounced it wonderful (even though it had ‘curse’ words).

So I ask you, how much time should I spend searching for my audience?  What methods have you used to identify your reader?  How are you reaching him/her?  Those of you with a broader-than-normal readership, like mine…what have you learned about how and where to sell your books?

As always, thanks ahead of time to all my author friends for sharing their wealth of knowledge.  I am where I am today because of your encouragement and your expertise!

SUSPENSE SPIKED WITH ROMANCE

LAST RESORT on sale now, print & download

Wild Rose Press: http://tinyurl.com/682vwgv

Web: http://www.rolynnanderson.com

Blog: http://blog.rolynnanderson.com/

FB: http://tinyurl.com/63vsnmt

You know the term ‘gobsmacked,’ don’t you?  Gob=mouth.  Smacked=hit  The whole thing about chicken feet has me gobsmacked.  Did you know that without the ongoing and grand scale sale of chicken feet to China, U.S. farmers would have a hard time making a living?  I’m not kidding you.  Chicken feet are a delicacy in some cultures, and our chicken farmers are banking on the fact.  Literally.

What I’ve learned about readerships across the world has some parallels to the chicken feet story.  Now, my target audience for light suspense, sparked with romance, is out there.  I know it.  You know it.  My problem is how to find them.  I depend on those readers to buy my books, much like those chicken farmers pray every night for a new culinary concept for yumming up chicken feet.

As I’ve learned about fiction genres, I’ve become aware that each group is on the hunt for readers of their particular story line.  I’ve heard about a Regency author who has enormous sales numbers in Indonesia and she’s invested in figuring out why that is true.  All of us know that readers across the world line up behind specific category romances:  Paranormal, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Historical, Western, Contemporary, Chick Lit, Suspense, Mystery, etc.  Readers divide themselves further by choosing unique romantic premises: M/F, M/M, M/M/F and so on.

Back to the chicken feet.  It behooves the U.S. chicken farmer and me, to find out everything we can about our customers.  If not, we’ll never sell our stories (or our lip-smacking chicken feet).

I write, I golf, I garden, and I boat.  Okay, that last verb didn’t quite work, even though it’s parallel, but you get the drift.  Consider for a moment the verbs that define you…your dedicated efforts, endeavors that pull you deeply into “them” and challenge you immensely.

Have you got one or two?  Good.  Keep them in your head.

I just finished reading GOLFING WITH GOD: A NOVEL ABOUT HEAVEN AND EARTH, by Roland Merullo.   I’m not sure I would have read the book if it hadn’t been my friend’s pick for book club.  Even when she told me the book was a quirky approach to spirituality, I viewed the first few pages skeptically.  Still, I love to golf, so the teacher/golfer main character and the faint hope that I might learn something to improve my game, moved me to read on.

A side-note about a fellow author (from his Amazon bio) “Roland Merullo’s best-selling novel, Breakfast with Buddha, recently went into its 11th printing. Like Golfing with God before it, and American Savior after it, Breakfast with Buddha treats questions of philosophy/spirituality from a multi-denominational viewpoint and with a healthy dose of humor.” http://www.amazon.com/Roland-Merullo/e/B001IQXCGE

Turns out the book is a funny and instructive allegory about one multiply reincarnated human’s journey toward being a better person, and, you guessed it, becoming a better golfer.  In a good portion of the novel, God is an attractive woman with a case of the short-game (chipping and putting) yips, that our main character, Hank, is supposed to eradicate.  Typical of allegories, this isn’t about golf, it’s about character improvement.  Hank says: “When your soul is riddled with quirks and urges, old failures and fresh embarrassments, you need help.”  Turns out he not only learns how to be better person by instructing God, but he also sees how golf is a tool and a template for working out his internal issues.

Now it’s time for you to trot out the endeavors you chose, above.  Hank would say that if you pay attention to the elements of that endeavor (mountain-climbing, say), they will help you learn how to become the kind of person you want to be.  Is he (Merullo and Frank) right?  Take my writing.  Does the act of writing as well as the characters and stories I choose, teach me something about my own struggles and serve as a tool for managing them?

What do you think?  Cool or crazy idea?  My tentative take: I’m moved to think more about the concepts, because my golf game has improved since I read the book!

Great news!  I’ve signed a contract with Wild Rose Press for FADEOUT, the first book in my Funeral Planner series – three books, entitled FADEOUT, SWOON and FAINT.

Think: The Wedding Planner.  Now think: The Funeral Planner.  Jan Solvang has lost her Seattle job, her mother and her boyfriend.  To prevent yet another loss, she aims to end her estrangement from her father.   So, temporarily, she teams up with him in California as a boutique event planner, for “This is Your Life, Inc.”  Her father suggests that she plan memorials, calling them ‘low stress events.’  In fact, she’s always avoided surprise and conflict because of a chronic fainting disorder, Syncope.  But she finds out the dead come with quirky, demanding survivors, like Martin, a documentary writer she shouldn’t like.  She’s thorough in her research, as Martin is, but doesn’t know what to do about the nasty secrets she digs up about the deceased.  Soon, the dead take on new lives and danger comes with the job along with the kinds of conflicts she’s run from all her life. 

You all know that I had a big book-signing venture on 11.11.11.  Despite the rainy weather, my golf friends and neighbors came to my Writing and Art event…and I sold 40 books.  I was pleased with the event and want to recreate it (without the rain) next year.

But I found out that book signing isn’t as easy as I’d assumed.  At the moment my pen hits the title page, I trying to make conversation with the book buyer and attempting to write something special at the same time.  What’s more, I’m hoping I’ll spell all the words (especially the name of the buyer!) correctly, and use fairly legible handwriting.

I think my problem is I approach the event like a yearbook signing.  Instead of making reference to the novel itself, I have the notion I’m supposed to refer to the buyer and my relationship with him or her.  Is that nuts?  What does the reader want from an author’s comment?  I’m dying to know!

I organized my first book signing by gathering other local artists to sell products with me, timing with holiday gift buying (books make great gifts!).  On November 11, in a local fitness center, (across the street and free, because I try to get fit there , a painter, sculptor, jewelry maker, a baker and a couple other women with products, will gather from 4:00 to 7:00 to display, sell and ‘sign.’  I’m giving out bottles of water with 2 by 4 personalized labels taped over the brand label and I’ve got some giveaways (Jelly Belly air fresheners…”Sniff out the villains in LAST RESORT”).  Customers will sip high-rated boxed wine, and snack on simple appetizers.  A couple husbands will be bartenders.  The event has been easy to organize, but the outcome is a mystery.  I’ll tell you the results (and what I learned) after the 11^th.  Will I sell 50 books?  That’s the goal.  Stay tuned!

LAST RESORT – on sale now, print and download

The Wild Rose Press: http://tinyurl.com/682vwgv

Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/3cq6d7b

Web:  http://www.rolynnanderson.com

Blog:  http://blog.rolynnanderson.com/

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/63vsnmt

Gary A. writes:

I like to tell people half-jokingly that I’m working on a new Guiness world record for the most consecutive 29th birthdays, but actually I’m probably in my mid-to-late30s in my head.  I can easily see why an author would have progtagonists around that age, especially if said protagonists are going to be featured in other books.  I’m thinking of writers like John Sandford and Michael Connelly whose series’ of books feature the same main characters – and as their fans grow older and their lives change, so do those of the characters.  Makes perfect sense to me.

Last month I asked you to tell me how old you ‘feel’ in your head.  The reason I asked the question was self-serving.  My brain stopped ‘aging’ at about 35, and I wondered if I was experiencing that phenomenon alone.  (Truth be told, I wondered if I was a freak of nature!)  Anyway, I posed the question to you, friends and family.  Now I’m going to give my take on the results and ask you to comment further.

I am not alone!  A world of humans are out there with forever young brains.

Young people don’t even understand the question.  My twenty-some nieces and nephews, gave me funny looks, shook their heads at their nutty aunt, and named their actual age.  My theory: people don’t entertain the idea of a brain age younger than their chronological age until after forty.  Any thoughts on that?

After the age of 60, people pick a brain age at least twenty years younger than their physical age.  My 79 year old cousin is merely 55 in her head so she can’t believe what she sees in the mirror.  (My solution-avoid mirrors, or only look in them when the light is dim.)

For a few folks over the age of 60, the question raised discomfort. One 60-plus person who experienced the death of her mother, felt like nineteen again…a child, adrift and alone.  Another person, aged 65, weighed down by family issues, was convinced his brain felt like 80.  Some people seemed surprised by the dichotomy I raise, a little irritated or confused by the concept of a young brain.  I guess they figured I should let that sleeping dog snooze away.

Not me.  I find the idea interesting, especially as a writer.  This may explain why I like to write about characters in their thirties and why a wide range of 40-plus readers enjoy my novels.

Another question to explore: is there some kind of biological advantage for a person’s brain age to lag behind body age?  Maybe the brain is made of stuff that doesn’t age like muscles and joints and eyes…purposefully.  Could be that brains needs to stay extra agile in order to operate our deteriorating bodies.

Clever manufacturing or cruel joke, the phenomenon is strange… how we look into the mirror at wrinkling bodies with much younger eyes.  What do think about this curious state of affairs?

LAST RESORT – on sale now, print and download

The Wild Rose Press: http://tinyurl.com/682vwgv

Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/3cq6d7b

Web:  http://www.rolynnanderson.com

Blog:  http://blog.rolynnanderson.com/

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/63vsnmt