Out of the Comfort Zone

I admit it -- I fit the stereotype of the introverted writer. I've learned to enjoy booksignings, schmoozing at writer conferences, speaking to groups and teaching workshops, but not without some significant effort. I'm much more comfortable tucked safely away in the confines of my familiar bubble -- alone with my characters (at least in my head) at home or at my favorite table at the neighborhood coffee shop.

That said, I believe strongly that I always benefit in some way from stepping out of my comfort zone and doing something that makes me a little bit nervous. For instance, for the first 30 or so years of my life, public speaking was my greatest fear and I avoided it at all costs. But after I published my first book, I was asked to speak to a writer's group, and even though the thought of doing so made me sick to my stomach, I knew I had to do it for the sake of my career -- and for my own personal growth. And so I wrote a speech and I practiced giving it. Again. And again. And again. I stood in my office when nobody was home and pretended I was in front of an audience. I spoke out loud. When I finished, I started over again, repeating the process until I could ad lib and my notes were just a crutch for me to rely on in case I stumbled.

On the day of the presentation, I arrived early to get a feel for the room. I pretended to be calm, but inside, I was screaming, "What have I done!" Fifteen minutes before I was "on," I went to the restroom, barricaded myself in a stall and did deep breathing exercises to steady my racing heart, telling myself "you can do this," assuring myself how great I was going to be, that what I said was bound to help at least one writer in the audience in some way and make all the angst I was suffering worthwhile. I'm happy to report that the talk went well. I enjoyed myself. The next time I was asked to give a presentation, I repeated the above process, but it was all a little easier, a little less terrifying and time consuming. And each successive time was easier still.

Today I absolutely love giving workshops, teaching writing and creativity classes, and talking to writers, readers and students. It enriches my life. I never would've known that and would've missed out on so much if I hadn't stepped out of my comfort zone back when I sold my first book!

The point of all this? Recently, when I was asked to do two squirm-inducing things that, in the past, I've tried to avoid like a visit to the dentist, I said, "Sure, why not?" The first was an interview for the blog radio show A Book and A Chat, with host, Barry Eva. (You can't practice for an interview. Who knows what the host will ask? Besides, my West Texas accent makes Reba McEntire sound like a Yankee.What if Barry Eva can't understand me, or me him? His English accent is as pronounced as my Texas one.) The second was a video of me talking about writing for the Texas Library Association's Spirit of Texas Reading Program. (I'm hyper-critical of myself on camera. I make funny, twitchy faces.) What the heck. I did the interview and the video anyway. And I had fun!

What's the moral of this story? Push yourself to do something uncomfortable from time-to-time. As long as it's something positive, you'll learn and grow. You'll feel a sense of accomplishment. You might help or inspire someone. Chances are you'll have a great time and find out that you love doing whatever it is that once made you break out in a cold, clammy sweat just thinking about it.

A Book and a Chat with Jennifer Archer 

Spirit of Texas Reading Program/Jennifer Archer



Jennifer Archer's next YA novel, The Shadow Girl, will be released from Harper Teen 4/9/2013 and is available now for pre-order. Her book on the creativity/happiness connection, Happiness Rehab: 8 Creative Steps to a More Joyful Life is available now on Amazon. Her Samhain Retro-Romance novella, Breaking the Rules, will be available this month (11/20) as an ebook. Visit Jennifer's websites http://www.jenniferarcher.com/ and http://www.happinessrehab.com for more information.

Contest with tons of giveaways!

By Dan Haring

With my debut novel coming out this year, I was lucky enough to join a group of folks known as the Apocalypsies. We're all authors whose first YA or MG book came out in 2012. As part of that group, we've had two big contests, called the YAmazing Race with MGnificent Prizes, and they've been awesome. Basically it's like a scavenger hunt, where you go from blog to blog answering (easy) questions about each book. Once you finish, you're put in a drawing for a huge amount of free books and swag. But not only that...

That's right. In addition to the big grand prizes, most of the authors are having their own individual contests with more books and swag to give away. For instance, I'm giving away a copy of my book OLDSOUL as part of the grand prize, but I'm also giving away a copy to those who visit my blog.

It's time for the third YAmazing Race with MGnificent Prizes, and it actually starts today at 12 noon EST. So head on over to The Apocalypsies blog to get started, and have fun! (or head to my blog to catch that section first.) A ton of really good books came out this year that you may not have heard of, so this is a great way to catch up on them. And you just might win some free stuff in the meantime.

The Great Reveal

by Michelle Gagnon

Lately, there's been a lot of "reveals" in Young Adult fiction. One of my favorites was what they did for bestselling author Cassandra Clare's next release, CLOCKWORK PRINCESS. They let fans control the cover reveal; initially the cover was hidden behind a "veil" that only tweeting readers could remove.
And it was a huge success. Within two hours, over 30,000 tweets resulted in a full display of the cover. But it didn't end there: #ClockworkPrincess trended worldwide that day, and the tweet tally rapidly approached and passed the 150,000 mark.
Which was astonishing, and definitely eye-opening for a lot of publishers. There's always a question as to how social networks can be used to promote a book, and this was a clear success story.


My publisher has decided to try to do something similar with my YA debut DON'T TURN AROUND. Starting today, clicking on this link will reveal book chapters on Facebook: the more "Likes" the page gets, the more of the book will be "unlocked." By the end, if all goes as planned, the first five chapters of the book will have been made available (which is a fairly significant chunk of it!) I think it's a cool idea, and an interesting way to get people engaged with the story early.

We'll also be debuting the book trailer on Entertainment Weekly's "Books" page in a few weeks - I haven't seen it yet myself, and am excited to check it out!


So what do you all think? Is this too gimmicky for you, or do you like the idea of fan participation being part of a reveal?

Virtual Book Tours – YA Style

By Jordan Dane

On A Dark Wing (Harlequin Teen, Jan 2012)

When 16-year old Abbey Chandler cheats Death and lives past her expiration date, her lucky break comes at a heartbreaking price. And Death has never forgotten. 

After reading my Young Adult (YA) debut book – IN THE ARMS OF STONE ANGELS – YA fantasy author Trisha Wolfe of YA Bound loved my book and contacted me. We kept in touch. She’s a talented author with her debut book – DESTINY’S FIRE - coming out in early 2012. When she heard I had book #2 being released soon—ON A DARK WING (Jan 2012, Harlequin Teen)—she asked if she could host a virtual book tour for me. I’m learning so much from her. She’s a very generous soul. Here’s what we’ve done to date and I’ll share what’s ahead.

COVER REVEAL - I held off on revealing my cover until YA Bound was ready to launch the sign up for bloggers wanting to be tour stops. This took coordination with my house so they wouldn’t make my cover available to public forums like Amazon or Goodreads.

TOUR HOSTS – From my Twitter & Goodreads activity, I had the pleasure of meeting Trish of YA Bound online, but I’ve learned since then that hosts sometimes charge for their services to host a tour. Another site I’ve heard about is THE {TEEN} BOOK SCENE. Coordinator Kari has a great reputation and conducts her services for free, but asks for donations. If you query “Virtual Book Tours” online, you will find many links on the subject, including host sites that may specialize in your type of genre.

TOUR SIGN UP - On Oct 3^rd, when I posted a reveal of my cover, I announced that YA Bound would host my online tour and sign ups would start on Oct 4^th. On the first day, Trish told me we had a record number of blogs join the tour and more were coming. The sign up period ended Oct 31 and we had 52 blogs on our final list. Since we had so many and didn’t want to turn anyone away, we opted to have a BLAST TOUR. A blast tour is condensed down into a 2-3 week period with bloggers allowed to schedule their own tour stop through the host so each stop is different and not redundant.

TOUR REQUIREMENTS - What do bloggers do on the tour? Look at YA Bound’s tour requirements HERE. Trish’s experience as tour host shows in this detailed list of requirements. The more that is spelled out in advance, the smoother things will run, but an experienced tour host is vital to make the tour look effortless.

DISTRIBUTING ARCs - Harlequin Teen uses Netgalley to get advance reader copies into the hands of tour members as well as other online reviewers who are approved by them. My book is HERE on Netgalley. To read Harlequin Teen’s reviewer criteria, click HERE.

BANNERS & COUNTDOWN WIDGETS – Trish created a tour banner using my cover and the logo of my publisher. These graphic designs can cost money, but you can do it for free using WidgetBox. Click HERE to see my tour banner and the countdown widget. These banners and widgets can be cross posted by bloggers and sites signed up for the tour to help spread the word. Anyone can grab the code, even if they aren’t participating in the tour.

CONTEST GADGETS – I recently ran a book giveaway contest on Twitter that linked to my blog. It lasted several days. I promoted my giveaway on Twitter using a link to my blog and asked entrants to become eligible by using a contest gadget I had posted through Rafflecopter. I set up the gadget to garner more followers on Twitter, so one of the requirements was to have them follow me. They could also earn extra entries into the random drawing by posting tweets about the contest, at their option. I set up the gadget for all the mandatory and optional objectives and Rafflecopter uses Random.org to help select the winner when the contest is over. It makes everything easy to administer. Rafflecopter is by invitation, so enter and wait for their follow up that could take 7-10 days or so. It’s totally worth it.

TOUR STOP VARIETY –Tour hosts work with each tour stop to come up with different kinds of features. I’ve seen longer lists of ideas to make each stop unique, but here are only a few (some of my favorites): Vlog Interviews (video interviews with the author posted online), When I’m not writing (highlights of hobbies, family or pets), Author Book Picks, Cover Interview, Author with Editor Interview, Character Tweets (I’m planning one with Death), Character Interviews, or a Top Ten List that can be related to the author or the book. There’s more, but this will give you an idea of how creative tour stops can be.

GIVEAWAYS – My publisher has contributed books to giveaway on the tour, but my character, Abbey Chandler, will have a special gift for readers who win a book. She says it’s a secret. [Insert eye roll here. She can be a real drama queen.] And at the conclusion of the tour—on a live chat hosted by YA Bound—a Grand Prize will be given away. It’s really cool, but I’m not saying what it is yet. Shhh!

GRAND PRIZE – A grand prize will be given to tour participants on a number of criteria that the host will track through the fabulous Rafflecopter widget. Tour stops enter what they did and random.org makes the winners easy for the host. As you might imagine, the grand prize is aptly named for its GRANDEUR, incentive for blogger to FLIP OUT!

SOCIAL MEDIA TANGO – With every tour stop, it will be important to promote on Twitter or other social media sites. My tour host will help with this, so will my publisher & other bloggers on the tour. This could be significant & retweeting (RT) by others can add fire to the buzz. I’m a big lover of Twitter.

TWITTER CONTESTS – I recently saw an author run a series of quick contests on Twitter for a limited period of time. She had simple rules stated in advance, but her main reason for conducting the giveaways was to get her ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) into the hands of readers AND to gain followers. Her ARC freebies earned her hundreds of followers in 2 days. ANOTHER CONTEST TIP - If you’re running book giveaways on Twitter or via a link you are tweeting, use the hashtag #BOOKGIVEAWAY to call attention to your post and reach beyond your own followers.

GAUGING RESULTS – A daily posting group blog like ADR3NALIN3 can lighten the load of posting to a blog and is very helpful for name recognition. Plus, if you blog or have a website, you can use stats to gauge traffic to your site. Using Blogger stats, you can see where traffic comes from and Twitter is a big resource to drive people to you. If you’re not using Twitter to its fullest potential, you’re missing out on a freebie.

Please share your thoughts on what you like about virtual tours, as a reader or an author. What are your favorite kinds of posts? What do you want to know about an author and a book? How do you learn about a new book you want to read? If you’re an author, feel free to ask questions on this type of promotion. ADR3NALIN3 is about sharing ideas.