Updates--Take 2

Thanks for the ideas from yesterday on blog blurbs, BGs. You rock. (Drat, can’t even run the phrase “blog blurbs” together and make a new word, thanks to the alliteration.) Some good thoughts. Especially the one from Rose. That was a creative covering of our eclecticism. (Is that a word? Well, it is now.)

And how about that photo shoot yesterday? Wow, was it cool. A photographer with many photos and magazine covers to her name, her assistant, and a makeup artist/hair stylist. I tell you, I’d like to take the latter with me wherever I go. A hair gets out of place, she fixes it. And what she does with makeup! I could get used to this.

The photographer took over 300 photos, in three distinctly different looks. If I don’t get a good shot out of this, it’s entirely my own mug’s fault.

Now, an important follow-up. Last week (Tuesday, May 2) I ran excerpts from an article in Publishers Weekly talking about the value of marketing. The article quoted findings from a study done by RainToday.com, a company that helps professionals market their services. A day or so later, I received a gracious e-mail from the editor of raintoday.com, Rebecca Gould. She’d discovered my post and wanted to correct a quoted error in it. Here’s her e-mail:

Hi Brandilyn,

I saw your post about our research “The Business Impact Of Writing A Book,” written up in Publisher’s Weekly. I wanted to let you know that there is actually a mix up in the article they ran. They will be running a “corrected note” about it in an upcoming issue.

The article says, "Comparing the average response, the study found that authors who had outside help sold 10,000 copies of their first book and earned royalties of $55,000, compared to 4,500 copies sold and royalties of $25,000 for authors who depended solely on the efforts of their publishers."

What it should say is, "Comparing the average response, the study found that authors who had outside help sold 10,000 copies of their first book, compared to only 4,500 copies without hiring the assistance of a PR/marketing firm. Among all books sold, the average of which was 3 books per author, those who hired a marketing service earned a median amount of $55,000, compared to only $25,000 without outside help."

This makes more sense to me. The dollars seemed like an awful lot of money to earn for that amount of copies sold of only one book, even if they are hardbacks selling for over $20.

Rebecca continues:

Besides the statistics, it’s interesting to take a step back and think about our research results in terms of fiction as well. The power of internet marketing was very strong for the 200 authors we surveyed, and I believe this would hold true for fiction writers, as well. (I see you have a site for yourself and your books separate from your blog.) If you have a website for your book, and you’re able to generate a buzz about it online, it’s amazing how many people you can actually reach. With blogs, RSS, and countless e-zines circulating the web, many people are getting much, if not most, of their news online these days. There are websites and blogs dedicated to virtually any niche topic or genre you can think of, and the power of the internet is only on the rise.

Ah, yes, the power of the Internet. For that very reason—long live the blog tour. (Blour, what else?)