Projects by Margot Justes

I'm happy to say my novella will see the light of day February 1st, in time for Valentine's Day. A Fire Within along with Amy Alessio's Blast from the Past and Mary Welk's Framed complete the Hearts and Daggers anthology. We're celebrating Valentine's Day in style, by releasing three stories that celebrate the holiday. Hallmark move over.

We talked about the novellas while I was still with Echelon Press, the project fell through, we got busy with life. It seems we never let go of the idea, because we finished the stories, but life continued to move on.

One day I received an e-mail from Amy to see if we were still interested in the project. My immediate response was yes. Yes, I am. Mary said yes, and the anthology was re-born. The next thing we need to do is let everyone know it's out there, or soon will be.

This year I made a resolution I want to stick to-no, not the diet-that is a one day at a time project, and today we won't talk about that. I want to learn how to market on line, follow in the footsteps of Joe Konrath and Rob Walker, fellow Acme blogger.

Yes, I know they are both well known authors and masters in the craft of promoting, and I'm not, but if I'm going to learn, I'm going to learn from the best.

I have an ambitious plan this year to re-release a short story in May, a newly edited version of A Hotel in Paris in June. Paris is lovely in June, well, Paris is lovely any time of year, but I picked June.

I digress here, back to my planned releases, Blood Art, my vampire tale should be all set for Halloween and there is talk we'll do another anthology for Halloween.

The time not spent at my day job, hopefully will be spent in my office, doing what I love to do. Write.

Till next time,
Margot Justes
A Hotel in Paris
www.mjustes.com

There's Psychopathy then there's Marketing Apathy!

Norm Cowie w/Rob Walker @www.loveismurder.com conference

Thanks, Rob, Morgan, and everyone at ACME Authors Link for having me back here at youZ guyZes great blog where almost everything goes. I had once been one of youZ, a regular contributor with Acme until I was sucked into the black hole of author marketing apathy - as serious a disorder as writers block!                      

On that note, it’s time for me to come clean on something that I’ve been hiding from my friends, neighbors and publishers. Something so horrible and ... well... (sigh)... let me just come out and say it.

I was an advertising/marketing major back in college.

                             Joe Konrath w/Norm Cowie in Galena, IL 2009

There, I said it. And I was pretty good at it, too. I was even selected as one of the University’s five representatives for a national advertising competition. So wouldn’t you think I’d be pretty good at marketing my books?

Nope, I suck at it. And not just a normal suck, but more like the big magic, steroid-inflated Hoover vacuum cleaner of suckage. Even worse, my instincts for knowing which way the wind is blowing pales even compared to that of a naked mole rat.

In August 2009, I went to Galena, Illinois with several other authors including Joe Konrath, Henry Perez, Luisa Buehler and Margot Justes to market our new anthology Missing. We were hosted by fellow author Barbara Anino and her husband in their Bed and Breakfast.

One late evening after we wore everyone else out, it came down to just Konrath, Perez and me lounging in the living room, wearing courtesy b&b robes and bending elbows with liquid we’d liberated from one of Galena’s many wine outlets, and Joe started talking about something he called ebooks.

Ekkk-books?

Joe (we know him now as the Pied Piper of this ebook revolution) said ebooks were going to be the wave of the future, and he was converting all of his previously unpublished work and releasing every title onto Amazon’s Kindle himself. I laughed (easy when you’ve been drinking) and told him he was crazy. Who’d want to read on a tablet?

The truth was I was a bit intimidated by the thought of wrestling with formatting a book to meet this new technology.

Joe wouldn't let it go; he insisted ebooks were about to explode in popularity, so I said, “Tell you what, Joe. How about I give you one of my unpublished books and you convert it to ebook, publish it, and we’ll split the profit?” He firmly and politely said, no, that he wouldn’t feel right, and insisted I consider doing so myself.

Well, we all know what happened with Joe and other of his friends who follwed the Pied Piper into ebooks, and I sure wish he’d have taken me up on my offer -- and/or that I'd gotten off my duff and looked into the possibilities.

Two years later, I belatedly began taking Joe's advice--as had many another 'smart' writer. My first try was with a non-fiction collection of humor essays called, The Guy’d Book, why we leave the seat up ... and other stuff. The Guy’d Book is a collection of humor essays I’d written over the years dealing with being a guy, father and ESPN addict, some parts of which had been published in the Chicago Tribune and Cynic Magazine.

I wrestled with the formatting for both ebook and printed book (using Create Space where I stumbled onto something they called their Cover Creator). With this nifty little tool, I was able to cobble together a usable cover, seeing as without a publisher, I was on my own for covers. Soon after, The Guy’d Book was available as an ebook.

Right around the same time, my contract was expiring with my publisher for my first book, The Adventures of Guy. They offered to renew, but flushed with enthusiasm I took back the rights. In hindsight, I think they were ticked off because citing a clause in our contract, they demanded I remove all images of the book cover from my sites. The clause wasn’t well written, and while I disagreed about the intent of the clause, I decided not to fight (mostly because I never liked the cover all that much in the first place). But it did teach me one important lesson: whenever possible, control your own covers.

Then I turned down my second publisher’s offer to publish WereWoof, the sequel to my first YA vampire book Fang Face, and released it myself on Kindle, followed shortly by my newest adult humor title, Bonk & Hedz, a caveman ... and woman... story. I took my own advice to design and do the artwork for both books.

I now had six books, four of which were self-published, and I sat back and waited for everyone to discover me.

I wasn’t active in forums, did no advertising, no blog tour and otherwise totally neglected my blog, and basically my marketing efforts consisted entirely of watching reruns of Big Bang Theory, doing angry political tweets and checking the ESPN website for news of Peyton Manning’s recovery from neck surgery.

You can probably guess what happened with my book sales. Though the Guy’d Book once nipped into the Top 100, my others were flotsam in the Amazon jet stream. Readers aren’t Christopher Columbus. You have to bring the New World to them, not vice versa.

So I’m finally stepping into the marketing pool encouraged by the seemingly idefatiguable Rob Walker and his results with Kindle Select and other authors who are carving a path to show how to get books out to readers. I'm following his methods along with Joe's these days. Another suggestion Konrath had made was to do short stories, so I’ve released a few onto Smashwords as companion pieces to my other books. Rob's been great at advising me on many otherlooked steps I should be taking as well.

In other words, I’m finally getting off my butt, climbing out of the black hole of marketing apathy and putting fur on my naked mole rat.

So, hi, it’s good to meet you all ...again, and I hope you will please leave a comment. Finally, thanks to all the Acme family here for having me back!

The Guy’d Book is available for free with Kindle Select lending. Here’s my Amazon page: http://amzn.to/l9d9Ya , http://www.normcowie.com

NORM COWIE

Digital Books by Margot Justes

It would seem that even the Wall Street Journal is paying attention to the explosion of the digital books and the resourceful authors that navigate the complex and timely world of e-book publication.

A recent article in the Journal, 'Vanity' Press Goes Digital mentioned authors who either can't get published, as in an example of author Karen McQuestion, who was rejected, self published, sold well and even has a film option with a Hollywood director. Not bad a way to start your career.

The Journal went on to mention authors like Joe Konrath. Joe is already a very well established (check out his Jackie Daniels series) author who took his work directly to the reader via Amazon and is succeeding admirably. Joe is selling like the proverbial hotcakes, he is also a master of marketing and a personality with a goofy, funny sense of humor, his books are a scary, spooky good read. He is in fact the complete package to sell well.

For mid-list authors, the e-book avenue or any avenue for that matter, is not an easy one to manage. You have to let your readers know you're out there. But first, you have to figure out if you even have any readers. If you're lucky enough to have established a following, albeit a small one, you now need to grow that readership, and somehow let them know you're out there.

The social networks are always a good idea, in fact a great idea, but how to tell all your friends out in the nebulous land of the internet that you're out there, without hitting them over the head and becoming a nuisance. That is my question? Does anyone have a few answers?

I regained my rights to two short stories, and this weekend I plan to go to the Amazon site and learn how to download and sell them. Amazon, it would appear actually helps the author promote the work, and they have vast resources at their fingertips. We'll see how it all works out.

Matt Connor is the talented photographer, a man with an eye for an incredible eye shot. More next week.

Till next time,
Margot Justes
www.mjustes.com

A Blog by Margot Justes

I have completed by travel blogs, and will post soon but as the saying goes life interfered with my plans. My daughter came home for a long weekend and we're spending time together.

In the meantime, I have regained full rights to two short stories I have written and plan on putting them on Amazon and Kindle, as soon as I figure out the how and why, etc...

The best advice I have found is from Joe Konrath, he has an amazing web site http://www.jakonrath.com/ where he shares his vast marketing knowledge with his readers and offers terrific advice to authors who are part of the weird world of writing, advertising, promoting and everything else needed to get the name out there, wherever out there is. Joe is a master. I plan to use his his advice, thanks Joe.

The other thing I have done is hook up with author Susan Miura (introduction by Amy Alessio, thank you Amy)to do library events 'A Taste of Italy' is all set, proposal finished and submitted to many libraries and we have three gigs so far.

The Italian program includes tasty treats from Italy, pictures, (of course I have pictures of Venice and Murano) discussions on travel and our writing styles and how they relate to travel. I'm hoping at some point to include Paris.

In the works is 'A Taste of Mexico'.

For now, I'm going to prepare breakfast and spent some time with my daughter.

Till next week,
Margot Justes
http://www.mjustes.com/
A Hotel In Paris

A Brief Blog by Margot Justes

This will be short, I returned from Nashville Monday afternoon and the rest of the week got away from me.

Met my friend Miriam last night for coffee-what else-to share information about Venice, the next time I will be seeing her will be September 2nd in Venice.

It is bright and early and I'm on my way to Galena for a Missing signing, along with fellow authors Luisa Buehler, Joe Konrath, Mary Welk, Amy Alessio, Norm Cowie, Joe Konrath and local Galena author Barbra Annino , she did a terrific job organizing the two events.

Forgive me if I've missed anyone, it's early, I mean really early, as in 4: 30, at any rate, if you're in the area please stop by, all the information is on my website www.mjustes.com

Till next time,

Margot Justes
www.mjustes.com
A Hotel in Paris

Signing in the Rain

I spent the weekend with Echelon Press Publishing's authors at Printers Row enduring several extreme examples of Chicago weather. First, there was the heat ... not so bad .. but mix it up with enough humidity to drown a muskrat and it gets sticky. So you try not to get too close to the author next to you or you might end up sticking together.

Fortunately for me, on the first day, I was signing next to some lovely authors (Camile Hyytinen, Jackie Sylvan, Margot Justes, publisher Karen Syed, Luisa Buehler, Shannon Greenland).

You don't mind getting stuck with these ladies.

For these same reasons, I kept my distance from my new hero Kevin Helmold (an especially focused salesman), and especially Tim Broderick, not to mention Sam Morton, Bob Goldsborough, George Kulles, and ... uh, I think I got them all. If I missed anyone, let me know.

The next day brought more muggy stuff and then the rains. Half of Lake Michigan detoured on top of us from the skies and we took refuge under trees, umbrellas and each other (yeah, there were some tall people there ... like Sam Morton).

And I'm not going to mention the tornado that missed my house by five miles while I was in Chicago.

Oh, wait. I just did ... heh.

Anyway, I also ran into a few of my fellow Mystery Writers of America authors including Michael Black, July Hyzy, Libby Hellmann, Joe Konrath and Mary ... er, Morgan Mandel. We had a great time together and sold a ton of books. I sold out of both my Adventures of Guy titles by the end of the second morning and spent the rest of the day hawking The Heat of the Moment anthology.

One of the cool things about the Heat of the Moment was whenever I sold one I would bring the buyer around to meet all of the authors who were on hand (seven, I think?). I think they all saw it as a special treat.

I had a blast and can't wait til next year's event!

Norm

www.normcowie.com
The Adventures of Guy ... written by a guy (probably)
The Next Adventures of Guy ... more wackiness
The Heat of the Moment