The Marketing Campaign is Launched!

So things are starting to move along quickly now. On Wednesday, I received the bound galleys for Solstice, and this morning, they went out to the first batch of prepublication reviewers and two distributors. I guess this is the official start of the novel’s marketing campaign! ^_^

When it comes to having your work reviewed, the odds are stacked against self-publishers, especially self-publishers of fiction (or worse, apocalyptic fiction ^^) like yours truly. But I think that, with the right presentation, anyone can have a fair shot. Dan Poynter, the self-publishing guru, will be the first to tell you that presenting yourself as a legitimate publisher is critical to any self-publishing venture. What I’ve found through my own experience is that there are lots of little ways you can achieve this. And it doesn’t involve spending loads of money on hiring publicists, marketing specialists, or specialty services. It can start with something as simple as a clean, consistent look for all your marketing pieces.

I guess it’s helped me a lot that I work in a marketing department for a Fortune 500 company, in a Creative Services department to be exact ^_^; Where I work, there’s a big emphasis on image standards, so that every piece of marketing collateral produced by the company has a standard, consistent look and verbiage style. This helps to create brand recognition, so that anyone who sees one of our pieces can say, “Oh, this is a [company name] piece.” Even fonts need to be consistent across all pieces. So this helped me create a set of Tragical Mirth Publishing marketing pieces that, like my employer, has a common, consistent look. And this, in turn, has given all my pieces a more professional appearance.

The review packets themselves were in exercise in careful, strategic positioning ^_^ (don’t I sound all knowledgeable and stuff? Yeah right…). The first step was to buy good, black, laminated folders with a business card slot. On the cover of each, I placed a full-color label featuring the novel’s cover art, a teaser tagline, and vital information (ISBN, publishing house, etc). The hope is that it will intrigue them enough to actually want to open up the folder (which, in this industry, is never a sure thing)! In the inner left pocket, I put in a press release, a fact sheet (that again featured the cover art), and an “about the author” flier. In the inner right pocket went the cover letter and a full-color flier detailing the novel, its plot, and its pertinent information. As I mentioned before, every item had a consistent look and feel, with Melior being my font of choice, and blue/green being the company’s colors. So the reviewers aren’t getting a hodgepodge of randomly created fliers and things. They’re getting an information packet that’s reiterating key points, speaking in a consistent tone, and presenting a series of key images (the cover art and the company logo) repeatedly and consistently so as to create that elusive brand recognition.

This is just one thing I hope will present Tragical Mirth Publishing as a legitimate venture, and not just a one-time, vanity-press author trying to make a quick buck. Writing is my passion, and being an author is my ultimate career dream. So I wanted to make sure that passion translated into top-line professionalism when it came to designing this first marketing campaign. Because if a reviewer can appreciate your professionalism, then maybe he or she will be that much more inclined to review your book. So hopefully it’ll work. And if not, well, I blame the Melior font! ^^; And my friend Pam.