Jane Friedman at Midwest Writers Workshop 2019

As it won't be long until Magnetic Woman comes out (at least, so I hope... to the best of my knowledge we're in the copyediting stage), I thought it couldn't hurt to update my knowledge of book promotion tactics. This is one of those areas that, while the fundamentals don't change, always has new means of approach, new venues, new ideas, and all that. So although I like to think I did a pretty decent job of helping promote my friend Milt Wolff's autobiographical Spanish Civil War novel Another Hill back in the mid-90s (I created and distributed a press kit and set up a successful local book tour), I wouldn't say I've been remarkably au courant on how one promotes a book in 2019.

However, since I've begun attending the annual AWP conference for the benefit of my fiction projects, I'd seen Jane Friedman speak at a book promotion panel there and had signed up for her Electric Speed newsletter. When I saw she was doing an all-day Author Platform and Development Bootcamp at the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, I signed up.

I was not disappointed. Jane helps authors of a wide range of types of book figure out good ways of reaching their readership, and the focus at this session was on how we, as published or near-to-publication authors, can use our existing knowledge and contacts, and use smart but readily learned internet tactics, to build our name and title recognition. In other words, things like targeting readers who will be interested in our work and communicating with them. We were asked to think in terms of a specific book project, not about everything we write, so I focused on how to promote Magnetic Woman rather than the novel for which I am currently seeking a publisher.

Now, some of this was fairly straightforward for Magnetic Woman as I have a pretty good idea who the main audiences will be--people interested in Czech studies, art history (especially female modernists), surrealism, and women's/gender studies. Most of the exercises we did were quick and easy for me--but were nonetheless useful in focusing my thoughts. But I certainly wasn't aware of most of the tools Jane showed us that are available free online! Clever tips on using Amazon.com and Goodreads, for starters.

All of this will also be useful for promoting my novels, when they come out, but first things first.

Jane kindly encouraged us all to get selfies with her which we can post, and I did so, but for reasons unknown to me, initially Blogger was not cooperating and posting the photo here. Fortunately, days later, Blogger has consented to post it. It's a really nice photo of Jane and an acceptable one of me.