Writers on Wednesday: Eric Mondschein’s Author-Driven Marketing: The Ongoing Saga

SOOP Author Eric Mondschein Smiles with His Signage

SOOP Author Eric Mondschein Smiles with His Signage

As my journey progresses in marketing my book, Life at 12 College Road, I find I still do not fully understand what people call social media. I keep posting to my Facebook page, my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and my own website. Fortunately, with the help SOOP provides, I have not been traveling this long and bumpy road alone.

In my next post I will go into more detail about what I have been doing via social media, but for now I want to share with you other avenues you can use besides using social media. In the last post, I had discussed local bookstores. Last month I gave a book reading in Lake Placid, New York, that was sponsored by the local independent bookstore, The Bookstore Plus, and held at the Lake Placid Public Library. The bookstore publicized the event in their newsletter and the local paper and placed posters outside their store and in their window. I got to know the owners and establish a relationship with them. We have entertained the possibility of my coming back to be a part of their book club program in the spring of next year.

How was this made possible? It’s not really difficult, but you have to be willing to contact the proprietors and arrange to meet with them and let them know that you are a local author and have written a book, and you would like to offer to do a book reading and/or signing. Most independent local bookstores want to promote local authors. It is a win-win proposition for both parties. I would also encourage you to ask if they would carry your book. It means being able to give them copies to sell; they usually only want a couple, and they will of course want to make money selling the book, so they usually ask for 40 percent of the sale price.

Eric Mondschein LPPL SignBesides local bookstores, if there are any local writers’ groups in your area, I encourage you to get involved with them. Here in the Adirondacks of upstate New York, we have the Adirondack Writers Center (AWC). Besides hosting writing workshops and conferences, they also publicize the work of local authors, and this month the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Saratoga Springs, New York, is collaborating with ACW to have a local authors’ day at their store on Sunday, October 19th. The event will showcase local authors (including me) and will serve as a fundraiser for ACW, which will receive a portion of the sales of any books sold at the store for the day. The event is from noon to

6 pm, and I will be selling / signing my book from 4 to 6 pm.

The other event that I will have more to talk about next month is Autumn Leaves: The 19th Annual Glens Falls Chronicle Book Fair that will take place on Sunday, Nov. 2, 2014, from 11 am to 4 pm at the Queensbury Hotel in downtown Glens Falls. The Chronicle Book Fair, founded in 1996, showcases hundreds of authors, publishers, and books of all kinds from our region. I will be participating and will have a table set up displaying and selling/signing my book. There is also the possibility of my reading and participating on an authors’ panel.

 In my post next month I will let you know how things went — and how they are going.


 

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It’s not always the earth-shattering events that are most significant in our hectic lives. More often, it’s the small things, many long forgotten, that touch and shape us most deeply. Our memories of these events might bring smiles, or anger, or even a desire to forget. But every one of them helps to make us who we are today — and in some ways, who we will become tomorrow. Join Eric Mondschein at the unhurried pace of a cup of coffee for a surprising and powerful journey in which laughter inevitably mingles with tears, sorrow turns to joy, and loss almost becomes bearable.

Life at 12 College Road is available at Amazon.com!

 

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