Today’s the day! Two of my poems have escaped Experience Writing and are out exploring the world. I hope you will pick up a copy of Washington’s Best Emerging Poets 2019 and read all the great poetry by Washington State poets. It will also make a great gift for the lovers of words in your life.
I want to thank all the poets of OctPoWriMo, NaPoWriMo, dVerse Poets Pub, and PAD Chapbook Challenge for keeping me motivated and inspired over the last few years.
Pictured: Wooden jigsaw puzzles from Artifact Puzzles, Gator McBumpypants picturebooks, and T-shirts and pillow cover from Red Bubble
Gator McBumpypants is a fun, sweet read that takes you through the highs and lows of friends that discover the greatness with each other and with themselves. What a delightful read and the choice of photography is brilliant! The perfect story to fuel the imagination in us all. – Amazon reviewer Zappathedog
I often stop by the local Goodwill to peruse the books. I recently found a hardback of Eco’s Foucalt’s Pendulum in excellent condition and a Complete works of Poe. This week, I found an extra special treasure: A Stephen King Pop-up book! For those of you that haven’t read the story (originally published in 1999), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is about a girl who gets lost in the woods. Because she is a big Red Sox fan and her favorite player is Tom Gordon, she pictures Tom Gordon guiding her through her ordeal. Following the baseball theme, the story is broken into innings. The pop-up features are very creative.
This will be the perfect gift for the biggest Stephen King fan in my family. I had no idea Stephen King had a pop-up book. What a great treasure. The copy even has a signature on the back.
Anyone have any idea who’s signature that is? I couldn’t find anything on the internet. A treasure and a mystery.
Exploring the thrift store can be great for special gifts. I found three nice books to check off my shopping list.
Happy Hunting!
Gator McBumpypants and Herman’s First Movie is on Gator McBumpypants’ Youtube.com channel.
Since my writing life is completely consumed with promoting Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise this week, I’m jumping off schedule and continuing to talk about promoting your book. I announced my kindle free days everywhere I could think of yesterday, so how do I keep the internet’s attention today?
I stepped away from writing today and explored a couple other art forms. I took some pictures that didn’t get used in the books (book 2 coming soon!) and made a little youtube movie. One of the fun things that you can do with google+ is create a youtube channel. I made one for myself and a separate one called Gator McBumpypants and Friends.
Making the movie in Windows Live Movie Maker was pretty straight forward once I figured out that I could speed up the picture rate by using fractions in the duration box. The hardest part was picking some music since the program didn’t include music editing and just started the music choice from the beginning. Luckily, I have a large library of music I wrote, so I don’t have to infringe on anyone’s copyright.
This first film is just a quick, fun promo. I plan to do more with pages from the book and perhaps reading the first few pages. I’ve seen some really nice book promo videos online. I think video is a great way to get people excited about your book. Check out Michelle R. Eastman’s promo video for The Legend of Dust Bunnies, a Fairy’s Tale. Andy Mulberry did a really nice interview with Michelle R. Eastman on her blog andymulberry.com/blog
I also went over to RedBubble,com and made some Gator McBumpypants merchandise.
What about a fun T-shirt?
or a lovely tote bag?
or enjoy your hot beverages with Gator McBumpypants and his friend Herman the baby pterodactyl.
RedBubble is a great site where I’ve set up a portfolio of my photography. They will put my photos on a variety of merchandise including t-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers, cards, pillow covers and the adorable items shown here. All would make great gifts! It is also, yet another social media site with a nice journal entry space where I’ve been letting people know about my kindle free days.
So, to sum up, book promotion doesn’t have to be hitting people over the head with your book and free kindle days announcements, it can be fun promotional art projects that then give you an excuse to go post about them on all your social media sites.
Anyone else found promotional ideas that are a bit outside the box?
Each guest the petal of a flower
As the happy holiday season is now upon us and many writers are wrapped up in NaNoWriMo, time is sucked away in more ways than usual and I’m guessing many blogs will be quite neglected over the next couple months. This made me think about guest posts. Not only looking to do some myself – gifts of time to my fellow bloggers, if you will- but also to invite bloggers to guest post here.
If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know I’ve set up a five day schedule with specific topics for each day and if you are new, here’s what I’m doing:
Monday- marketing, promotion, self-publishing, children’s picture books
Each a part of the Natural Tapestry
Tuesday- agents, query letters, middle grade fiction
Wednesday- Revision, re-writes
Thursday- Reading, book reviews, book lists, reading sites
Friday- Exploring, writing prompts, adventures, filling the creative well
Want to write on any of these topics? To be a guest writer on this blog, please let me know in the comments or send your post idea to mariaberg@mbercreations.com. Please, original (not previously posted on your blog) posts only. If I get enough interest maybe I’ll add Guest Post Saturday! I’m excited to get your outlook on these topics. Offering a guest post would be a lovely gift to me, to ease my fear and anxiety of running out of time to post while I make gifts, work on publishing the sequel to Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise, get over this stupid cold and try to revise my novel.
I look forward to hosting your fabulous writing and anyone whose interested in trading guest posts, or book reviews, I’d enjoy that as well. ‘Tis the Season for giving and I will do my best to give as much (or more) than I get.
Gator and Herman stop to smell the flowers.
Happy Monday! This is the second week of my new posting strategy and I want to thank all of my new followers and commenters for making this part of my writing life so much fun! I’m enjoying these targeted daily posts: They are not only fun to write, they inspire me. So as a thank you (and a marketing strategy suggested by readers), I’m having my first Good Reads giveaway. Over the next month, you can sign up for a chance to receive one of two signed copies of Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise. The winners will receive their copies in time to give them as gifts! That is if you can bring yourself to possibly part with all that cuteness.
Giveaway ends December 10, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Any other authors having giveaways you want to tell us about?
Do you have other promotion suggestions?
Experience Writing 