Success in the publishing world

Please excuse such a lengthy absence on my part. Richard S. Lowry, author of our Spring 2010 release New Dawn, wrote the article below for the Savas Beatie Author News, a monthly newsletter we send to our authors with ideas, tips, and suggestions. I think it is relevant here as well, and I am posting it as a guest blog post.

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Success in the publishing world requires 10% writing and 90% marketing skills. Don’t get me wrong, authors need to produce the best possible book they can write: that 10% is extremely important. Unfortunately, many very good books languish on the bookshelves and never achieve literary success.

Authors are usually introverts—observers of the world around them. They are precisely the wrong personality type to market their work. To be successful, we need to climb out of our shell and shout to the world that our work must be read. Today, we have all the tools we need at our fingertips. We can actually shout from inside our cocoon. Today, we have the internet.

In today’s internet jargon, we must do everything we can to take our message ‘viral.’ We can use the internet to acquire needed exposure in ways never possible before. I have built my own website at www.RichardSLowry.com and I am constantly adding to my blogsite at http://blog.RichardSLowry.com. Before I started my own blog, I befriended an administrator of a successful blog (web log – say it fast three times) www.op-for.com. He was eager to have my writing support as it added content to his site and I was happy in that I did not have to administer my own site. It was a way to get my feet wet in the ‘blogosphere.’

In addition, I became proficient enough to start my own facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rslowry and my own Twitter site too http://twitter.com/rslowry. It is surprisingly easy to start these pages. My only advice is to start small and add posts, followers/friends, and content as you become more familiar with the media. And, be careful to not put too much personal info out to the entire world.

Here is one more useful tool. The Google Alert is very powerful. You can sign up with Google and they will send you an email anytime any of your selected words/phrases are used on the internet. Best of all—it’s free. I use terms like USMC and Fallujah. When you receive an alert, it will direct you to the original post, where you can learn more about the subject, find websites devoted to your subject matter, and even post a comment to help gain even more exposure.

Lastly, I want to give you a place to write and gain exposure that requires little to no internet experience. I recently became a writer for Examiner.com. Check out my articles at http://www.examiner.com/x-30068-Orlando-Military-Headlines-Examiner. I can help you and you can help me. Please visit my posts, comment and subscribe. This will help me expand my exposure on Examiner.com and if you contact me through Savas Beatie, I can submit your name for consideration as one of their reporters.

If you have any questions, or need any assistance, please feel free to contact me through Ted Savas or Sarah. Next time I will talk about going out in public.

- Richard S. Lowry, author of New Dawn: The Battles for Fallujah, http://www.richardslowry.com/