Making a list and checking it twice

Remember that old Christmas song about Santa making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty and nice. Well I'm not Santa but that's just what I've been doing. I've been making a list and checking it twice, and doing it again and again and again.

All you would-be authors take note. Your job is not over when the book is published. I speak from experience. I have been working since January to do what I can to help publicize my memoir, The Scent of God , that was released in April and I haven't stopped since. As a matter of fact, I have just spent the last 8 hours preparing for an upcoming interview.

No, I've not been rehearsing what I've got to say about my memoir, The Scent of God . Having done more than 30 interviews, I'm quite at ease doing interviews. What I have been doing is culling my lists of 2,000 and more contacts for those who might be interested in hearing that I will be on MPR's Midmorning with Kerri Miller on Tuesday August 15 from 10-11 a.m. Central Time -- people who subscibe to my monthly column, the many who have written to thank me for my book, as well as friends and family and others who might be interested in writing a book and learning about the process of getting published.

What I found during this process was that my Outlook Express had been saving many of these people automatically by adding their e-mail address only. No name. Just an address. What does rsj8975@xxxxxx.com mean anyway? Who is rsj8975@xxxxxx.com? Do I know them? Why are they in my Outlook Express program?  N.B. By the way,  I created this Email address which is just so much gobbledegook but look how nicely the computer automatically authenticates it making it look like an official email address. 

I had to make certain that in sending blind copies to these various groups I didn't repeat myself -- sending the same Email to people who might qualify for several groups. I quickly learned that sending a message off as a "blind" copy means that all those names disappear from the copy of the Email your computer faithfully saves, making it impossible to check for duplicates before sending to the next group.

I learned that it is wiser to create groups for these various contact types first, then scan them for duplicates and save them for future efforts of this sort. Create one group for those you don't know who wrote to you about your book. One group for relatives or friends who don't get your column (you actually do have a group for these), yet another group for those who might be interested.

Of course, you don't have to do this. I didn't do this for the other radio interviews I have done so far. But this is one interview that I'd like people to know about because it is on Midmorning, a very popular syndicated MPR program that can be accessed either live on public radio stations nationwide or through streaming (either live or archived) or downloaded as a podcast.

Making connections is just one of the things that authors can do to support their publishers' publicity efforts. But making connections means utilizing as many methods as you can to help spread the word that you've got a book out there and by golly, it's a good one.

From Beryl's Blog 

Beryl's Website

P.S. No, the lovely young woman on the book jacket is not me or my deceased daughter (though we were, of course, every bit as lovely in our own way . . . we just never posed like that ). Her name is Heidi Vierlingsberg, she is from the Netherlands and her photo captures the essence of the book. Actually, this book jacket is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen and has probably lured more than a few people to take note of a book that they might not have otherwise noticed..