Getting Ready

With my path to publication getting closer all the time, I've been thinking more and more of marketing. It's not my favorite thought, but it's gotta be done--eventually.

Here's some things to do:

1. I've taken some classes--and will take more--on marketing by people who are pretty knowledgeable about it for authors.
2. I'm joining more online groups, especially where there's chances to mingle with other writers.
3. I'm attending this fall more writing seminars and smaller conferences close to home.
4. I'm getting to compile my contact list.

And that brings me to the point I want to talk about.

My contact list. Its a list compiled of people who can be alerted when (if?) I get published so that they can either buy the book (if they want it. Smile) or spread the word through mouth or online about it. As "they" say: word of mouth is still the best way of advertising.

So . . . I'm making a list--and definitely don't want a short one. I'm including you, readers, on it, and hope you'll pass on other names of possible interested readers. I'll probably run contests to get the word out, print up bookmarks, etc., do blog interviews for those interested in helping me out, and give a limited number of books away to those who make a good effort to help promote it.

Anyone else with some good ideas?

Anyone willing to help out?

Quote:

Trust your hunches. They are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. --Dr. Joyce Brothers

Blessings!

More Poem Fun

After Apple Picking
by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Quote:

Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. --Lady Bird Johnson

Blessings!