WIP: Last Week's Ghost

As you may know from the five bajillion posts and tweets and updates and god know what all else, I just had a book come out. I tried to have a somewhat coherent, or at least well-documented, promotion battle plan. Some stuff worked, some things worked better than others, and some stuff I dropped the ball on.

Things I did included:

• Making jewelry: Anyone following the blog has seen the jewelry based on the interior art that Mark W. Tripp and I put together. They turned out beautifully and were a lot of fun to make. I’ve used those pieces as giveaways at the book launch post, as well as various web giveaways, and people seem to like them. I’ve been able to post some pictures of people wearing those, and that’s been fun as well. I made sure the pieces I handed out at WorldCon had chains with them, so people could put them on immediately and many did. I also made special versions for blurbers and other people involved with the book design.
• Sending out an email: I sent out an email listing what people could do to promote Near + Far. I sent it to friends, fans, fellow writers, anyone I thought might be interested, and tried not to be too spammy about it, including a way they could remove themselves from my mailing list.
• Contacting book bloggers and reviewers: I contacted a number of people, making my list simply by poking around on popular spec fic sites to look at their blogrolls. I’d intended to set up a blog tour, but didn’t get my act together on that, so there was no organized effort along those lines, but I did do a number of interviews.
• Getting stories out there in both audio and print form: Figuring that samples of my work were one of the best ways to intrigue people, I sent out a lot of stories, including a number of audio reprints. I made sure that in the bio statements for each of these I mentioned the new book.
• Goodreads giveaway: I set up a Goodreads giveaway, following the excellent suggestions Emily Chand laid out in How to Run a Goodreads Giveaway with Maximal Results. The giveaway is currently on its last day, with 752 people requesting it, which seems like a good result, particularly since a third to half of them have added it to their to-read list.
• Blog giveaway: I gave away three pieces of jewelry on the blog, and had about a hundred entries all together. In retrospect, I might follow the poilicy mentioned in the Goodreads piece and just distribute one thing at a time, but next week I’ll be doing a sticker giveaway with stickers from the interior art.

So what’s in store for this week? Well, mostly preparing for a trip to the Baltimore Book Festival. I’ll be taking some stickers and jewelry along with me, but my focus is selling books. Beyond that, I’m continuing to send fiction out (got six pieces circulating over the weekend), preparing for another Goodreads giveaway, the aforementioned sticker giveaway, and trying a giveaway on Shelfari as well.

What all have I neglected? I’m still struggling with the mobile app intended to accompany the book, for one. I’d hoped to have more audio available, but still need to work on recording that (along with some other pieces I’ve promised to narrate). Overall, I’d give myself a solid B for my efforts, but I’ve made plenty of notes of things to do better next time.

I wrote this beginning of a steampunk Western story at ArmadilloCon this year. I’m transcribing a lot of stuff from my notebooks and thought people might enjoy this excerpt.

We came out of Texas with fire and iron in our blood. Our maker set us loose, said get ’em, gals! Then he stood back and spat.

She was in Kansas. Our leader, our model. We had to get to her.

So we walked, all thirty of us, dressed in tough black serge that tore nonetheless, got pulled away by thorns, and rough fingers of grass, and sand burrs. Bit by bit the clothes fell away and we weren’t a pack of black-bonneted little old ladies anymore. We were glittering steel and a spark of bright blue electricity in each eye.

Robot Carrie Nations, ready to spread the Temperance Word.

Let us backtrack and tell you the why and how that our Maker would have come up with. He talked about her all the time, had been in an Oklahoma saloon when she came through! Smashed it to flinders, used her famous axe on a whisky barrel till an alcoholic sheen covered the floor and old man Harcourt was there trying to lap it up off the planking. That was what made him see the Light, he said. A grown man, old enough to be his father, lapping up whiskey like a dog. That was when he took the Pledge, the same one engraved over each of our hearts.

We’re going to find Mother Nation. We’re his gift to her — thirty automatons, powered by phlogiston and hot blue liquid, ready to be set to work on the Crusade. His tribute. Another man might have sent flowers, or a diamond the size of a buffalo’s eye, or lengths of paisley silk. Not Thomas Y. D. Swift (or so the soles of our left feet read). Is he wooing her or enlisting in her army? We’re not sure. Humans are confusing sometimes.

(is that teaser enough? 🙂 )