May 11, 2010

Okay, that title is remarkably uncreative, but it's early and my brain is too fried to come up with anything more useful.

So, my authorless book tour started yesterday. Moloch and the book travel to Mississauga, Ontario next, then on from there. There has got to be an easier way to maintain the flow of information about this kind of thing - and even as I type this, I realize that that way is to become famous enough that your publishing company pays for other people to organize these things for you. I don't mind, really, it's just that I'm scatterbrained, so remembering to update this blog and my other blog with normal blog like things, as well as update the tour blog, my news page, the Facebook page and Moloch's Twitter, is difficult for me.

Anyway, I didn't mean for this post to be a rant. Just the opposite, actually. I woke up way earlier than I intended to this morning, so I've just kind of been puttering around the house, and I decided to post my daily twitter post (I still refuse to say 'tweet' in that context, and I still usually post once per day or less). Whilst on Twitter, I noticed that Godchecker had posted something about the tour. My tour. Since I've been a big fan of Godchecker for years (not only an excellent reference site, but a great one for coming up with character (or pen ;) names), this made me qo squee in a huge way. They like my tour idea, they said, and plan to steal it. So that is pretty exciting stuff.

Also pretty exciting, Devereaux Court is going to be one of the stops on the June-July blog tour for Alison Strobel's new novel, The Weight of Shadows, released today. Alison is a member of Book Blogs and she found me in the Promote Your Books group (more on that site when I write the post on networking that I have planned for the nearish future). She suggested that we trade reviews, so here we are. I'm going to be interviewing her as well, about the writing/publishing process. I'll let you know when the post will go up as soon as I know. Sometime in mid-June to early July. Also, Alison is giving us a book for a giveaway contest, so there'll be details on that.

I think that's all of my news for today. Well, so far, anyway.

Introducing...

Marco, the marketing gorilla! I kinda felt like DevCo could use a mascot (not that I don't love the fish!). What do you guys think?

Also, on a total aside, I'm trying to find a way to a) put our profile pictures with our names at the bottom of each post and b) rotate the scribes list, so my name isn't always at the top. If anyone has any ideas on how to do either of these things, please let me know.

And now for the actual reason for the post, which wasn't really going to be about Marco, but was going to be about marketing. I want to know what you think of this idea for marketing on less than a shoestring:

My thought is this: I want to do a book tour, but without the author, the signings or the book stores. Not a blog tour (although I do plan on having one in the mid-to-late summer), but an actual physical tour. What I want to do is send a single copy of my book to someone who has agreed to read it, review it (this may be optional, not 100% decided) and pass it on to someone else who has agreed to read it (possibly review it) and pass it on to someone else, etc., etc.) Each person who receives it will write their name (full, first or last), approximate location (as long as they give province/state and country, they don't have to give a city if they don't want to) on the inside cover, along with, if they want, the date they received it. They'll also be encouraged to include small stickers/business cards/lightweight, flat tokens of their location (ie small canadian flag stickers, or whatever) next to their names or on the inside back cover of the book. For my specific purpose, I plan to include a little paper doll of Moloch which will fold flat and make the journey with the book, so that participants can post pictures on the Facebook fan page/blog that I'm going to create for the purpose of Moloch in their town/ wherever he ends up. I kind of want to make it an interactive sort of deal, where the page (wherever it is) would track the book's progress (and Moloch's adventure) as it travels around to various places.

So, that's my plan. Thoughts?