Computer Problems

It's been a long start of the year for me. I started having computer problems just before the release of "A Year of Book Marketing" and they persisted to the point that I either had to get a new computer or find someone to fix it. We found someone last week who said he could fix it on Friday, but was unable to get to it. With the promise of having my beloved computer up and running like new by Monday afternoon, I charged into the weekend doing what I could. Monday evening I got the bad news that my computer was in worse shape then originally thought. In fact, by all means it should have quit working a long time ago - and not just quit working, according to the tech, it's a miracle that it didn't short out and completely fry. Besides the loads of spyware, there was also a wire that wasn't grounded and a short to something else.

It would be easy to look at this year with dread. Pondering on how far behind I am on projects, and focusing on files that got lost during one of the multiple crashes that happened in the last two weeks, but today I'm focusing, not on the fact that I'm missing a deadline because my computer is still at the shop, but on the fact that I'm blessed beyond measure that I still have important files and will be back up and running sometime this evening. So, if you're waiting on something from me, you'll have to keep waiting just as I am. That doesn't mean that this year will be a wreck, it just means that I got some much needed time off - even if I didn't think it was the right time for it, apparently God did. And it's been nice.

But, enough about me! Onto our Year of Book Marketing Challenge...

Day 8

“You can’t expect to just write and have visitors come to you – that’s too passive.”

~Anita Campell

Wouldn’t it be nice to just sit back and let the readers find us on their own? It reminds me of the movie with Kevin Costner – “If you build it, they will come.” You know the one. The sad truth is that that is fictional. If we write it, readers won’t just start emerging from the cornfields or driving down to the local bookstore to pick up a copy. They first have to know that it is there – which means that we have to tell them. That’s what marketing is all about – and people will come once they know your book exists and is worth reading.

Marketing prompt:

Start a list of tweets that you can use for promoting your book on a regular basis. We call these evergreen tweets, because they are always usable. Having a few of these to fall back on can be a great time saver.

Days to go: 357

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