Tagged: marketing

Trip Report – Domestic Edition

We’d like to speak to you today about an exciting new product we’ve recently learned about. It’s called a “calendar” and you can use it to keep track of all your upcoming appointments. Truly groundbreaking stuff!

If only such a revolutionary product had been available to us in the early days of this year, we might now be slightly less exhausted. Alas, it was still in prototype format which means that when we registered for a writing conference in the far-off month of November, we had nowhere to record it. We merely saved the emails for future reference and went about our lives. And so, weeks and months later when we booked our European escape we had forgotten all about the conference. As luck would have it, they did not actually overlap. But they might as well have.

We returned from our Adriatic adventure on Monday evening and headed off to Philadelphia that Friday morning. To make it even more exciting, we were still adjusting to being back in the Eastern time zone, and daylight savings time ended while we were at the conference. In Europe we’d gone back and forth through a couple of time zones, plus several of our devices were in airplane mode the whole time which meant they were still on “home” time. We rarely knew for sure what time it was, and probably still don’t. What day is it? Anyway – the clock in our Philadelphia hotel room assured us that it was 11:00 pm on January 20, which we were pretty sure was wrong no matter which dimension you looked at it from. We were so fucking confused, but we made it to the conference on time so we must have done something right somewhere along the line.

Being antisocial miscreants, we skipped out on the Friday evening author-mingling festivities and instead went to Fogo de Chao and stuffed ourselves.

The Independent Authors Conference was a great big kick in the pants in regards to marketing. The constant refrain from the presenters was basically “yeah, you boneheads, you have to market your stuff.” Which sounds obvious when you say it. Luckily, there was also a ton of practical advice for how to market, and some of it doesn’t even cost an arm and a leg. We especially enjoyed the presentations by Lee Wind of the IBPA, and Dana Kaye of Kaye Publicity.

Our hope is that next year they’ll have more sessions focused on the needs particular to fiction authors. And that the conference dates don’t fall right after another big trip.

In closing, either invest in one of these newfangled calendars everyone’s talking about, or start tattooing important information all over yourself, Memento-style so you don’t run yourself as ragged as we did.

PS – of course we had cheesesteaks!

The Glare of the Flashbulbs, The Clamor of the Crowd

We are celebrities!

Last weekend we had our very first book signing, and it was phenomenal. The event was held at a local independent bookstore and there were dozens of people in attendance! DOZENS!

We had a box full of Miss Brandymoon’s Device to sell, and sell we did. We left the store empty-handed. Except for the memories.

One of the reasons we have pursued writing instead of, say, acting or rock stardom, is that as an author it’s possible to have success and a certain amount of name-recognition without all of the scrutiny that goes along with real fame. (Our lack of great acting or musical skill also has something to do with it.) But, we gotta say, getting a little bit of VIP treatment was quite fun. The store’s staff was very kind and helpful, and bent over backwards to make us happy. They catered to our diva demands (one black coffee, one peppermint tea), provided snacks, and introduced us to our adoring fans.

The reading went well because Jen made Kent do it, and since she makes him do (almost) all of the reading aloud at home, he was well-practiced and in fine voice. The audience was rapt. At the end they all held up their lighters for an encore, and did the wave.

The coolest part was after the reading, during the signing. Mixed in with our friends, relatives, and coworkers were several strangers, one of whom had purchased the book before the event and was about halfway through reading it. She came up to us with compliments and questions, and was eager to chat about our characters! It was AWESOME!

So now that we’ve had a taste of fame and fortune, there will be no stopping us. It feels great to have a writing partner to share it all with, especially one who doesn’t mind doing the public readings. Plus, as a bonus, we each only had to sign half of our pen name in the books (Kent = Rune, Jen = Skelley). No writing cramps!

Location Location Location

r-avatarIf you reached today’s post through a bookmark, you’ll want to update it. We’ve relocated the Skelleyverse to the newly constructed Blog Wing of runeskelley.com. All of the content you know and love made the move, and everything is arranged exactly the same way. The only difference is the beginning of the URL.

Yeah, this means we’re still wallowing around in the “not-so-much-writing” part of writing. It’s leavened with a smidgen of actual writing and editing, so we shouldn’t get too rusty.

What does this mean to you, faithful reader? It means that we’re drawing ever closer to the big day when our first novel will be available for the world to see. We’ll keep you posted.