Enter your book into the prestigious Costa Award

One of the most prestigious book awards, the Costa Book Award, formerly known as Whitbread Book Award is still taking nominations for 2013. The deadline is the 28th June 2013 so time is running out.

There are 5 categories:

• First Novel
• Novel
• Biography
• Poetry
• Children’s Book

Each category winner will receive £5,000. One of the winners is finally selected as the overall Costa Book of the Year with a further £30,000 prize.

The category shortlists will be announced in November 2013 and the category winners will be declared in early January 2014 with an awards presentation following on Tuesday, 28th January 2014.

The 2013 entry form is available to download, you can find it here.

Short History:

In 1971 the Whitbread Literary Awards were first awarded which in 1985 became the Whitbread Book Awards. When Costa Coffee took over sponsorship from Whitbread the award was renamed to today’s Costa Book Awards. Winner of the past include Philip Pullman’s Amber Spyglass and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

 

Winner of the 2013 East Midlands Book Award

The winner of this year’s East Midlands Book Award was announced last Thursday, 20th June 2013 in a great ceremony that also marked the opening of the Oakham Festival. And it is … [drumroll] … Jon McGregor with his book This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.

Congratulations, Jon!

__________

About the Book:

It is a collection of stories which are all set in the low open landscape of the Lincolnshire fens. The sorts of things that don’t happen to someone like you do, in fact, happen to someone like you. A young woman is almost killed when a sugar-beet crashes through her windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. A father is arrested when he tries to watch his daughter’s school nativity play. A pair of itinerant labourers sit by a lake, talking about shovels and sex, while fighter-planes fly low overhead and prepare for war.

About Jon McGregor:

Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham.

Speak at a book festival

Sign on bookshop during the Hay Festival

With book festival (literary festival) season in full swing it might be a good time to talk about the benefits of having a slot as a speaker at one of those festivals. It’s a great opportunity to publicise your book, especially if it’s been released in the past 12 months. You get to talk about your book, answer questions about it and make it sound as interesting and readable as humanly possible. You might want to read a little extract from it, making sure you stop at a bit of a cliff hanger point so that people who haven’t read it yet will want to know what happens next.

If you’re writing fiction you can talk about the characters, what they might be up to next (if you’re doing a series) and maybe even get some inspiration from audience questions for further books. You could talk about the setting and what inspired you to write the book in the first place.

If you’re writing non-fiction you could talk about the research you have done that hasn’t made it into the book or how you came to certain conclusions. You could find out from your audience whether there is interest in more about this topic.

All in all it’s a great way to inform readers and potential readers about your work, what you’re up to next and to whet their appetite for your current and also your next book.

 

Hay Festival Round-Up

This year I attended the Hay Festival for the first time. I only made it to the second weekend, so I can’t really comment on anything that happened before Friday, 31st. May. So here are my highlights:

I attended a marvelous talk by David Crystal, a linguist who talked about his book Spell It Out, The Singular Story of English Spelling. He covered questions such as why is there an ‘h’ in ghost and similar English spelling phenomena. Absolutely fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable to listen to. Who would have thought I can get excited about spelling?

There was also Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, talking to Paul Blezard. Again, an absolute joy to watch and listen. Mr McCall Smith talks so warmly about his characters and their lives, as a father would about his children. He has a lovely sense of humour and was simply charming. As a result, I went out the next day to buy two of his books, as I hadn’t read any of his work previously.

Another interesting event was Abigail Brundin’s “Only a Pen Can Ease My Pain” – the tragic history of 17th century Italy where 75 % of all higher class women were sent to convents because of changes in dowry laws. Amazing what people throughout history have thought would be good ideas.

Then there was Nick Ross’ talk about Crime. His premise is that a lot of what we’re told about it, and think we know, is wrong. Very interesting concepts and results of research. His book is another on my list to get.

And finally there was Miranda Hart. Her conversation with Claudia Winkelman had been sold out on the day the tickets first came out, but persistence prevailed. I went many times to the ticket counter, asking for returns and finally, an hour before the show was going to start the lady behind the counter took pity on me and I was able to buy 2 returned tickets. Word cannot describe my joy. And we were definitely in for a treat. Ms Hart is such a joy to watch and listen to, whether she does stand up or an interview in this case. She seems very modest and real and she is definitely on the top of my list of people to invite to a dinner party. (You know the one where people ask: “If you could invite anyone dead or alive to a dinner party, who would it be?”.

All in all, a great event and I’ll definitely be back another year.

Related articles

• Hay Festival 2013: ‘Irritating’ silent letters could become obsolete (telegraph.co.uk)

Why not try a blog challenge to boost your blog?

Now that I have come to the end of the Ultimate Blog Challenge I must say, what a great way to boost my blog and get me writing. I actually started this blog on the first day of the challenge and thought it would be an excellent way to quickly populate this blog with some good content. The challenge is to write 30 blog posts in 30 days and with this very post that you are reading now I have completed the challenge. And just in time, too. 🙂

I can honestly recommend to you to join one of these challenges to get your blog going and keep it going, maybe give it a new lease of life. So after 30 days, what has the challenge done for me (and what could it do for you)

• got me back into the habit of writing
• filled my blog with 30 quality posts (since the title of my blog is 1001 book marketing ideas, it’s at least a good start)
• got to virtually meet some fabulous fellow bloggers
• received some great advice on other people’s blogs (part of the challenge is to visit other blogs and comment)
• got me to think about how to structure the posts into themes

And with that I promise to continue to provide good quality book marketing ideas as the title of the blog says. There probably won’t be another 30 in the next 30 days, but I’ll keep going strongly.

And finally how can you find out about blog challenges? You can go to the link of the Ultimate Blog Challenge and check when their next one is for starters. If that’s not soon enough for you, simply do a search on “blog challenge” and I’m sure there’s one starting pretty much every month somewhere. Good luck and let me know how you’re getting on! 🙂

Related articles

• 30 Day Blog Challenge (sonyacole.com)

Book Marketing Myths busted: The publisher will do all the marketing

Many authors are seeking to get published so that the publisher can do all the hard work for them. Well, fact is, the publisher will do some marketing for you, probably send out a press release or two about your book being published and some other initial marketing activities. But if you really want your book to take off, it is your job as an author to do your own marketing.

You want to use all the tools available which in this day and age is a lot of digital marketing, such as establishing a high profile on social media, keeping a blog and sending out email newsletters as a minimum. You don’t need to be an expert on marketing to do all that, just start with one medium, get some momentum going and grow your audience.

Or you could hire a marketing specialist (like myself) to do the work for you, letting you get on with your writing.

In future posts we will look at more book marketing myths and bust them one at a time.

 

A really easy book marketing tip

As I trawled the internet for yet more book marketing information, I came across a YouTube video that I would like to share with you today. It’s by the lovely Stephanie Newell, author of The Buzz. It shows a very easy way to increase traffic coming to your website and raise your profile as an author. Why don’t you click and have a look?

Good research sells books

Image courtesy of rajcreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Almost every author I have spoken to talks about research. It’s one of those topics that simply goes with writing a book. But authors do varying amounts of it. Some writers research barely enough to put together a book whereas others could almost write another book or two with the material they’ve had to omit from their intended book because of very extensive research. Of course, if you do research you will want to credit it in your acknowledgements page and that’s where the reader (as well as the publisher) will find out how much research has been done on a book.

Books that are well researched will generally sell better than books that are simply based on the author’s own experience and imagination. In fiction, the settings will seem more realistic, the characters better fleshed out and the facts more believable. In non-fiction, the presented facts will be more believable and authentic if you can back them up with solid research.

How much research do you need? That very much depends on your book. But don’t worry about having done “too much research”. There’s no such thing. Because whatever is left over and you can’t use for your actual book, you can use it for all your marketing activities. Here are some ideas where you can show off all your additional knowledge and up your marketing game:

• blog posts
• articles
• interviews
• book readings
• speaking engagements and talks
• your website (create an additional resources section)
• “did you know” posts and Facebook and other social media
• and if that’s not enough you can always write another book 😉

I am sure you can think of even more ways to show off that you’re an expert on your subject which makes your book even more desirable. Please share in a comment.

 

SEO on a shoestring

English: The three biggest web search engines (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you have a website you have probably come across the term SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation). You will also have come across businesses who are set up solely to improve your SEO (and costing a fair bundle in the process). Especially at the beginning not everyone has that kind of money but you still want your website to be easily found by Google, Bing  and their contemporaries. Don’t worry, this will not be highly technical at all, just some simple tips that you can easily implement.

Search engines keep changing, so what was all the rage 5 or 10 years ago and kept you ranking high might not work anymore, so make sure your website is always up to date regading SEO.

At the moment these are some things you need to keep an eye on:

Incoming links

These are links from other websites to yours. They have to be relevant and good quality, meaning that you can’t simply swap links with anyone. If you’re a romance writer, and your link appears on websites about car tyres or washing powder it will not count. Links on book reviewer’s blogs and other authors, however, will be good for you.

Keywords

Keywords are words and phrases that people type into the search engine when they look for something. Now once upon a time, the more you plastered your content full of those keywords, the better. Not any more. You need to have your keywords in the headings (make sure they’re also formatted as headings) and a few times throughout the content. Ideally, the main keyword you want to be found for is also appearing in the page description that appears at the top of the tab (speak to your web designer if you’re not sure how to do this).

No flash video on home page

If you have a funky flash video on your homepage to introduce your website which ends in something like “click here to enter the website” you have a problem. Google and Co cannot look past that and find out what’s on your actual homepage so will not rank you very well. Rethink where to put that video if you really like it, or get rid of it altogether. You could put it on YouTube with a link to your website – and create a good quality incoming link. 😉

These are my 3 top tips for DIY – SEO. I will offer more in the future and am very happy if you want to share tips of your own in the comments below in the meantime.

Twitter for authors – use hashtags

hashtag (Photo credit: danielmoyle)

The Twitter usage of hashtags has somehow crept into everyday conversation, so even though hashtags were originally meant for use on Twitter and other social media you can now come across them everywhere. In social media, hashtags mean a particular topic or sometimes an emotion you’re talking about, so that other people wanting to talk about the same topic can easily join in a conversation that’s already ongoing or start their own.

Here are some hashtags that are particular useful for you as an author if you want to connect to readers:

• #BookGiveaway
• #MustRead
• #LitChat
• #TeaserTues
• #FreeBook
• #FreeDownload
• #Kindle
• #Nook

You can, of course, also connect with your readers via genre, so any of these will do very nicely for you as well:

• #Romance
• #Horror
• #Scifi
• #Thriller
• #Mystery
• etc.

It’s worth checking your particular genre with a simple hashtag google search.

Related Posts:

44 Essential Twitter Hashtags Every Author Should Know (http://www.authormedia.com/44-essential-twitter-hashtags-every-author-should-know/)