Monday, March 23, 2009

Promotion: It's a Mystery To Me, But Something's Working

There I was today, in my (cold but lovely) new working space, writing an article on book promotion to be published soon on the excellent How publishing really works blog and saying that I basically played it by ear, had no clue what to do, just blogged and used every online tool I could find, blogs, websites, Facebook, MySpace, Red Room, the website "where the authors are" - and lo and behold I get an email from Red Room saying they are featuring the author interview I did with Mark Budman in December on their front page - below a rather luscious picture of Jon Stewart (which seems to change into Salman Rushdie every now and then)!

I have been cross-posting my blog posts there for months, hoping I might get into the Most Popular blogs once or twice, but never imagining I'd make the front page. I don't know what this mean in terms of book sales, who knows what it means directly? But it's buzz, it's great for me, it's great for Mark.

Just goes to show...umm, something like, Try anything and everything and something might just pay off. Right? Hmm. If you haven't visited Red Room, go and take a peek. It's a great site.

In other news: I have given my thoughts on ordering stories in a short story collection, and collected some of the responses Short Review authors gave in their interviews here on the Eratosphere writers site, moderated by Tim Love. And, inspired by Vanessa's gorgeous new look, I with my very amateur web designing skills, redesigned my website, TaniaHershman.com. Comments welcome...! Ah, the things we do to avoid actually writing.

9 comments:

Anne Brooke said...

Well done, you!! It's obviously a good week for us, Tania - as they're featuring my book trailer for Maloney's Law on their front page this week as Best Video too, hurrah!

:))

Axxx

nmj said...

Hey Tania, I have still to read White Road but look forward to it! Thanks for flagging up Red Room, I had not heard of it - I spent considerable time in San Francisco off and on in early-mid nineties, so it has resonance for me.

Tania Hershman said...

Anne, congrats, that's great news! We rock!

Hi NMJ, thanks so much for stopping by. The Red Room is a great site for networking with other writers, not quite sure what else yet, but it's beautifully designed. See you there!

Group 8 said...

Thanks for the heads up re Red Room. It looks interesting.
You are a busy lady. Hope the room of your own works out!

Sarah Hilary said...

Now it's letting me comment I can say Congrats on making the front page at Red Room, Tania!

annie clarkson said...

I like what you say about the order of short stories in a collection, some really interesting points.

Vanessa's new look is amazing, wow.

But I can't see yours, link doesn't seem to work...

Tania Hershman said...

Hi N, I seem busy, and yet, what am I doing??

Sarah - thanks!

Annie, the link works when I click on it. Anyway, it's www.taniahershman.com. Nothing as radically sexy as Vanessa's!

annie clarkson said...

aha, I found it.
It's great, really interesting reading. I just read Coat and Shoes in Smokelong Quarterly. Brilliant.

Anonymous said...

Well done, Tania!
- Miriam.