WWYWWQ #8

Today's question comes from A.C. in Ms. Jurkowski's class. A.C. asks: Why do you need to have a book published before you can sell it?

Answer: Now, some of you might think this is a no-brainer - you need a product to sell; something the people want, but honestly, it is a bit more complicated than that. As authors, we have to promote our books long before they are published and sometimes that means "pre-selling" our books. Amazon does it all the time, especially if it is listed as a coming soon title.

The selling of your books is monetary. The promoting of your books goes deeper. You need to have a near finished product to start the promotion process and sometimes we start promoting a year or more in advance. We have to get our covers out there so people will be anxious to get the book when it is finally published; we have to have websites and blogs in place several months to a year before hand so that we can talk about our wips (that's works in progress for you students) and keep the desire up. We want people ready to purchase our books as soon as they are published. Of course, the promotion doesn't stop once the book is published. There are events and other things that go into promoting a book.

Right now, I'm working on a piece (non-YA or children's novel) that I will start promoting probably around September of this year, depending on how my research goes and how the story goes. I have plans to publish it by February of 2013. That may not happen if I don't get my research done and write the story. I hope by October to have a cover to show off and start really promoting the story. I've mentioned it in passing on this blog but haven't really talked about it much. I would love to see more copies of my YA novel sell but again, I've been in a non-promoting mood since December. Since it is now the conference and book festival season, I am back to promoting my state stories and my YA novel, Finally Home.

In essence, A.C., an author is really selling her books before they are published by promoting them up to a year before publication. Sometimes a shorter period of time for promotion happens but usually by time you get a cover, an ARC (advanced reader's copy) and publishing the book, a good bit of time has passed.

Thanks for the thought provoking question, A.C., and ya'll keep on writing and sending in those questions. Mrs. E :)

Revisions

Today I promised myself I would sit at my desk sans distractions and just revise until the end of the day. I started late - waking up after 11 AM, showering and doing the distraction things first (email, plurk, et cetera) and then started revising. Of my friends who sent comments back on Finally Home only one was a fully commented return but those comments are expansive. The other two were Chapters 1 & 2 and Chapters 1-3, respectively.

It looks like I am going to have to push back my publication date to November, about Thanksgiving time. These revisions should have been done months ago for me to have a publication date this month, but alas, I've been putting it off. The writing is okay but it needs punching up (needs to be stronger in places, more action, development of the characters a bit).

So are the revisions going like I planned? No. I need someone to read through Chapters 4 through 16 to comment and markup the ms so that I can finish the revisions. Anyone out there who would like to read an almost 200 page manuscript and make comments to help me revise? Drop me an email at eeldering at gmail dot com and let me know if you have time to read and make comments (not just things like changing a word or adding or deleting but things like intense comments - needs some action here, needs to be reworded, that type of thing) so that I can finish the revisions. Thanks to all of you out there who read my blog and who are willing to help. - E :)


UPDATE (Sunday, 10/02/2011): I found a copy of a friend's comments (from when I first thought I'd submit the story and get it published with a traditionally publisher) that I'm going to use for my revisions. I feel this will at least get me to the point of almost having a final draft. Lana is pretty right on with her comments - so going to revise some tonight and hopefully will finish this tomorrow between work that is left in my pool tonight and work that comes in tomorrow afternoon. Hoping by end of week to be announcing that Finally Home is revision completed - lol - see you in the postings - E :)