I went to a training course over the weekend which was the DIY Book PR Guide, run by Emma Noble. It was based around her novel of the same name.
I bought her book when I first heard about it a few months ago because it was all about how to get your books promoted in mainstream media; in newspapers, magazines, radio and on television. I've always thought it would be kind of cool to see my book in these places so I read it and learnt a lot. I understood all of the concepts but the one thing I had difficulty with was actually writing the elevator pitch and the query letters.
This course gave me the opportunity to get direct feedback from Emma on how to improve my pitch. I have to say I was impressed by Emma's ability to remember details of what everyone at the course wrote, and how she effortlessly reworded pitches on the fly to make them sound ten times better. It was definitely worthwhile going.
So now that I have all of this information at my finger tips I need to do something about it. My plan is to do a little more work on the elevator pitch and the press release over the next week or so, and then dedicate a whole week to marketing and PR at the beginning of July (after I've sent Blaze a Trail to my editor). Who knows whether it will be successful, but I think it's worth a try.
Wish me luck!
