Creating your very own promotionaly flyer to help market your book is a fantastic idea. You can print copies to hand out at an author’s event. You can e-mail it to potential customers. You can hand out copies at your critique group. You can ask your local library or other public venue to display your flyer. You can also forward it to people who want to feature your book on their blog.

Based on the design a publisher once made for another of my books, I created a promotional flyer for my new book, Yes! You Can, and saved it as a pdf file called Promo flyer. Click on the link and print it out. Use it as an example to follow as you create your own.

And hey–if you want to help spread the word about my book, please feel free to share it with your writer friends, too!

Meet Editor Jesse Florea!
Featured Publisher: Focus on the Family’s magazines:
Clubhouse
Clubhouse Jr.

“The most important advice is not to talk down to children. Children learn from and enjoy stories, and this is something you want to cultivate as a writer. By preaching at them, it can hurt their love of literature,” advises Jesse Florea, editor of Clubhouse magazine from Focus on the Family. “I’d like to share that as children’s writers we have the awesome responsibility of shaping the next generation. Like I said, kids develop their values and learn from story. We need to make sure we’re helping them build a solid foundation that will help them have a positive impact on the world in years to come.”

At conferences, Florea makes it a point to give positive feedback and encouragement to every author whose work he reads. Following Philippians 4:8, “If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things,” Florea encourages everyone. Himself an author of several books for Tyndale House and thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, Florea has held his current position as editor of Clubhouse for 11 years.

Clubhouse magazine is a Christian kids’ magazine targeted to 8-12 year olds who desire to know more about God and the Bible. It began 21 years ago as Focus on the Family’s first children’s product. “It’s also an award-winning publication,” says Florea. “Every year our art and editorial is recognized amongst the best by the Evangelical Press Association.”

Focus on the Family also publishes another Christian kids’ magazine, Clubhouse Jr., for 4-8 year olds. Both publications are designed to inspire, entertain and teach Christian values to their target audience.

Clubhouse publishes fiction (humor, historical, mysteries, fantasy, contemporary multicultural) of 500-1600 words, and nonfiction (essays, interviews, how-to, profiles of ordinary kids, news articles) of 800-1000 words, plus activities and quizzes.

Clubhouse Jr. publishes wholesome fiction for beginning readers (250-750 words) or read-aloud stories (700-1000 words), nonfiction to 600 words, Bible stories up to 800 words, rebuses, poetry, activities and puzzles. Fiction for both magazines should have well-developed characters and a fast-paced storyline built upon a foundation of Christian values. Stories can have a lesson or moral but should not be didactic.

For writer’s or illustrator’s guidelines, send your request to Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, CO 80995. Requests are filled within 7-10 days, or feel free to call them at 1-800-232-6459. Send all submissions (full manuscripts) for both magazines with SASE to Joanna Lutz, Assistant Editor, 8605 Explorer Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

At one of his workshops, Florea offered these tips for writing for Clubhouse and Clubhouse Jr.:
1. Don’t underestimate your audience.
2. Get into a child’s mind. What are kids interested in?
3. Work on a gripping opening. Grab the reader in the first ten seconds.
4. Use vibrant action verbs. Take out passive verbs.
5. Think like a poet.
6. Omit needless words. Every word should count. Vigorous writing should be concise.
7. Leave children a nugget of truth. Give them something to take away from your article.
8. Play by the rules for writing and submitting.
9. Use humor.
10. Stay away from clichés like “quiet as a mouse.”
11. Don’t wrap up the story in a neat little bow. Realize you do not always have happy endings. If you make bad choices, you have bad consequences.
12. Be creative.
13. Be industry savvy. Keep up with the trends. For example, Clubhouse is now eco-friendly and looks for writing that is “edutaining”: educational and entertaining. Pay attention to movie trailers for trend ideas.
14. The main character should be a compelling child character.
15. Be yourself. Children can sniff out a phony.

Note: A special thanks goes to Jan Parys for writing this wonderful interview of Jesse and sharing it on my blog!

One of the best ways to market your book is to set up a blog. If you haven’t yet started a blog, make a file in your Marketing Plan file folder and start gathering information to get one up and running as soon as possible.

Check out the free blog opportunities. If you don’t know much about computers, Blogger at www.blogger.com is very user friendly. If you’re brave and want to explore a blog service that offers more features but takes a little bit more computer savvy, try the one I use at www.WordPress.com.

The advantages of having a blog are huge. You can run your very own marketing campaign on your blog. I’ve landed a book contract based on my blog. My friend just signed with an agent based on her blog. The list goes on and on.

A key for maximizing marketing your new book on your blog is to think of some sort of strategy to draw the same readers who will buy your book to come to your blog. Since the target audience for my new book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career is children’s writers, one of the strategies I use to attract children’s writers to my blog is to feature interviews.

My goal is to interview authors, illustrators, editors, and agents on my blog. Each time I post an interview of a person, they get their friends, publishing associates, and family to visit my blog. It’s free advertising and that spells success for any marketing campaign.

In fact, all through these upcoming weeks as I’m marketing my book on my blog and sharing marketing tips with you, I’m also planning on featuring various interviews of different folks in the children’s writing industry. This will draw more and more readers to my blog and introduce them to my book.

As you set up your own blog to market your book, think TARGET AUDIENCE. Showcase features on your blog that will draw the target audience for your book to your blog. Do you want teachers to buy your book? Feature “Teacher Tips” or a “Classroom Study Guide” including activities to do with your book in the classroom. Do you want pet owners to buy your book? Feature links to great sites about pet care or choosing a pet. On a regular basis and spread out over time, continue to showcase a feature or two that appeals to your target audience and will draw more readers to your blog. This helps spread the word about your book.

One of the file folders in my Marketing Plan pocket folder is labeled “Friends.” Here, inside this folder, I’m gathering information and ideas for marketing my book through my friends, including many of you who are reading along on my blog!

I’ve heard lots of advice about getting your friends involved to help them market your new book. Some of the advice, however, seems obnoxious and too hard-sell for my palate. I don’t want my friends to feel obligated to help me market my book ’cause I value your friendship more than any promotional strategy that might help sell a book.

However, many of my friends are also writers, so we all understand how important it is to help each other as much as possible. We do this by posting reviews of each other’s books on Amazon.com and including links to each other’s blogs or websites on our own blog.

In my file folder labeled “Friends,” I’m therefore making a list of my friends who I know like to help out fellow writers. I’m also jotting down HOW each of them usually like to help, so I can be sure to connect with them in a way that’s within their comfort zone and in a way that will build our friendship, not damage it.

Another thing I’m doing is gather ideas. Some of my friends, especially my writer friends, have said they’d love to help get the word out in any way they can. I’m trying to collect ideas to share with them to make their labor of love easier.

Here are some of the fantastic ways some of my friends are already helping to spread the word:

Sherri Crawford posted a blog about my book on her blog, Sherri Tales

Tina and Mirka, two friends from my awesome online picture book critique group called Pens and Brushes, posted 5-star reviews on Amazon.com.

Members from Pens and Brushes are also posting comments about my book on a Message Board at Children’s Book Insider that Tina started after the publisher posted an ad.

Friends are a great help in marketing a new book. I’d like to personally thank all of you who are going to the extra mile to help get the word out about mine. Thank you and lots of hugs!

As you’re making plans to market your book, it’s also good to plan to challenge yourself to step OUTSIDE of your comfort zone and explore new methods to get the word out about your book.

For instance, I’ve never been comfortable with the thought of using Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. But as I’m planning on marketing my new book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career, I’m challenging myself to try ONE new thing that’s outside my comfort zone. So I’ve decided to add a folder for each of these and am going to explore setting up accounts and networking with other writers on each of those connections.

How about it? As you read my upcoming posts on the different marketing I’m doing to help promote my new book, choose the ones to do first that are in your comfort zone. But after you’ve got those under your belt, how about challenging yourself to choose one, just one, strategy to try that’s outside your present comfort zone. Who knows? You just might find out you like it! And it will help spread the word about your own book, too.

What’s in my comfort zone is probably different than what’s in your comfort zone and that’s okay. As you’re exploring the marketing strategies I’m putting into place for my newest book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career, some of the things I describe might be outside your comfort zone.

For instance, you might not yet feel comfortable designing your own bookmarks or postcards with an online printing service. It can be well outside your techie abilities. I’m barely able to do it myself. But since my son is a computer major at college, he helps me navigate through the sticky parts and now I have a great bookmark to hand out to help advertise my new book. (I’ll explain more on making promotional items in a later post.)

Please don’t feel obligated to do something that’s outside your comfort zone to help market your book. If you get the heebie jeebies just thinking about doing something I’m doing to help market my book, then don’t stress out! Just print out my Marketing Tip and put it into a folder in your Marketing Plan. Place this folder at the very back of your files. Don’t worry about it and don’t even think about it right now. But one day, if you’re ready to explore new ways to market your book, you’ll have that tip handy and you can read how to do it. Who knows? At that point, you just might be ready to try it.

For now, just focus on using the tips that fit into your comfort zone. Start making plans to market your book in a way that you feel ready to try. After all, getting your next book published is an exciting new point of your career! You want to enjoy this precious time and not get bogged down with dread about marketing it. There will be plenty of things you can do to help market your book that fit your personality like a glove. For starters, focus your energies on these and enjoy building your platform.

As I prepared to write my new book Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career, I started planning a marketing strategy.

One of the first things I decided to do was target periodicals whose readers are my target audience for my new book. Since my book is for writers, I made it my goal to get a column for writers in at least 3 writer’s magazines or e-zines in the months leading up to the publication of my book. I also intended to try to sell articles in 1 or 2 other writer’s periodicals.

First I landed a column in the online magazine for The Writer. Then I sold reprint rights to my column to appear a month or two later in the Christian Communicator magazine for writers. I also gave reprint rights for my column to appear in the eNews for the Institute of Children’s Literature.

I also sold an article about writing to the magazine for Cross and Quill and writer articles on my group’s blog for writers at Wordsmiths.

I’m not making very much money from any of these articles or columns, but that’s okay because my goal for these manuscripts isn’t necessarily to earn money. It’s to help build name recognition among other writers to eventually help market my book.

Now that my new book is out, I’m going to add this information to my columns and to my articles in my byline (a byline is the place where it tells the author’s name at the end of the article).

Targeting periodicals is a great marketing strategy because it helps get the word out in big numbers. A publisher may only print 5,000 copies of a book. Or with today’s technology of print-on-demand publishing, they may not print any copies unless they’re ordered. But a periodical or e-zine has thousands of subscribers and word can spread quickly about your new book when it comes out if your articles or columns appear in them.

So how about it? Have a new book coming out? Put your thinking cap on and brainstorm a list of periodicals, both printed or online, whose readers would want to read your book. File this list under MAGAZINES in the folder for your Marketing Plan.

Make it your goal to submit articles to these periodicals while your book is getting ready to be published. After your book is published, you can continue to submit articles to various magazines and include your byline as the author of your new book.

Marketing Tip#2: Target Periodicals

A key to remember is that a successful marketing plan starts long before the book ever hits the bookshelves. These days I like to start thinking about marketing even before I start writing the book. Why so early? you may ask. Because I’ve learned from experience that a book that doesn’t have a successful marketing plan in place can go out of print fast.

For example, one time I wrote a series of 4 children’s novelty books, but never gave marketing a thought. I mean, these were being published by a fairly large publisher. They would have a marketing plan, right? Not necessarily so, as I found out. These particular books went out of print so fast that I hadn’t even received my own author’s copies yet in the mail.

I found out later that this particular publisher, like some publishers do, have a constant flow of new books coming and going just to have new titles in their catalog. My 4 books were in this category and didn’t have any particular marketing plan other than to see if anyone would purchase them in the bookstores. When that didn’t happen in the first month, the publisher listed them as out of print and sold them at huge discounts just to get them out of their warehouse.

That’s one of the reasons I now try to think of a marketing plan for a new book even before it is published. A great place to start is to target periodicals. Look for periodicals, either paper magazines or online e-zines, that the same people already read who would want to read your book.

Try to write articles that will appear in these magazines during the time that you are writing your book and it’s getting ready for publication. Try to get your name out there in front of the same people you want to read your book. This is a great way to build name recognition in a practical way.

Check back in for more tips about this.

Marketing Tip #1: Get Organized

In my last post, I shared about my Marketing folder for my brand new book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Career. Here is the continuing list of the folders I have in my pocket folder. You can add these same folders to your Marketing folder for your current or future book. Or, you can add folders of your own.

*Virtual Book Tour: I’m planning on hosting a Virtual Book Tour in the fall to help promote my book, so I’m gathering notes and ideas in this folder now.

*Promo Flyer: I’m jotting down notes and ideas in this folder for designing a promotional flyer I can send to people or hand out at author events.

*Daily Newspapers: Contact information and an actual press release get stored in this folder for sending info about my book to newspapers all over the country.

*Lists of Bloggers: Bloggers spread the word quickly, so I’m gathering URL’s of bloggers who might be interested in posting an announcement about my book on their blog.

*Bookmarks and other Promo Items: This is where I store info about printing out items such as bookmarks, postcards, and business cards to help promote my book.

*Magazines: I’m gathering a list of magazines that might feature an article I could write that could include a byline of my book. I’m specifically interested in magazines whose readers would want to read my book.

*Friends: This file folder has e-mails and names of all my wonderful friends who are so graciously offering to help promote my book in any way they can. Wow!!! I’m so overwhelmed by everyone’s amazing response. What would I do without you?!

And of course, the file folders in my Marketing folder will continue to grow as I continue to market my book. For now, though, this is a great place to start. Over the upcoming posts, I’ll share in-depth details about what’s inside each of these folders so you can implement these very same strategies to help develop a marketing plan for your books, too!

Marketing Tip #1: Get Organized
The very first thing to do to help market your book is organize all your notes and strategies in one place. I love to use pocket folders and here you can see that I made one pocket folder to hold all the various file folders I’m creating for notes about marketing my brand new book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career.

Since we have the wonderful privilege of writing for children, I like to have fun in as many ways as possible during my journey as a writer. It helps me stay connected with the world of a child and also the child within me. So, of course I just had to decorate my pocket folder with a colorful title and picture of my book. Go ahead. Have fun, too! Spend some time decorating your Marketing folder. It will help you prepare for the fun times ahead that you’re going to have while marketing your current or future book.

Your Marketing folder might contain different file folders than mine, but for starters, here are some of the folders I have:

*Marketing: This holds any general ideas I have that don’t yet have their own folder.

*Publisher’s Info: This folder is the place I keep any information or e-mails from my publisher about marketing my book.

*Calendar: I have a master calendar in here to help keep track of any deadlines or time-sensitive events

*Book Reviews: This stores information about potential people to contact who might be willing to write a professional book review for my book.

*Community Magazines: In this folder, I keep an article I wrote that I plan to submit to Community Magazines. I’ll keep contact information in here as well so I can submit this article to small community magazines all over the nation and get the word out about my new book.

Check back in next time for a look at the rest of the file folders in my Marketing Folder!