How To Promote Your Children's Book by Katie Davis

As a soon to be debut author, I am passionately interested in how to promote my forthcoming book. Fortunately for me, Katie Davis has already been down this path and recorded lots of tips in an easy to read style.

I highlighted text on my Kindle, but also took copious notes. Here is just a sampling of some of Katie's wisdom:

1. Buy the domain for your book title, then forward it to your main website. That way anyone who googles your book title, will be sent to your site.
2. Katie recommends working with a website designer separate from your website programmer. I'm intrigued by this notion, but need to research it further.
3. The book is chocked full of helpful links. One I found especially good is Darcy Pattison's "Tips for Skype Author Visits: Be Prepared."
4. Katie advises posting your book trailer on both YouTube and TeacherTube. I had never even heard of TeacherTube before, but Katie says she got more hits to her book trailer from TeacherTube than YouTube.
5. When being interviewed, know in advance the top three points you want to make and make them early.

I've read other books on marketing, but this is by far the best of the bunch. I'm collecting promotion tips so I hope you'll share yours in the comments section. 

Novel Writing Tips from Erin Murphy, Joyce Sweeney, and Krista Marino

As part of the SCBWI Miami conference, I attended a "Novel Writing Intensive" led by literary agent, Erin Murphy; Executive Editor, Krista Marino; and writing instructor, Joyce Sweeney.

Erin Murphy talked about the art of revision. She advised us to see our manuscripts with fresh eyes. She shared the following tips to help:

• Apply Darcy Pattison's shrunken manuscript technique.
• Outline after you've written a first draft.
• Employ the nine steps for plotting fiction (found on Verla Kay)
• Use wordle.net to look for overused words.

Joyce Sweeney started by telling writers to "be in scene almost all the time." She advised using the first part of a scene to orient the reader (e.g. who, what, when, where). She asked us to consider what each particular scene means to the novel as a whole. To remember that each chapter needs its own arc.

Krista Marino lectured about voice. There are two kinds: authorial voice, which she defined as the fingerprint of an author, think Stephen King and Meg Cabot. The second kind is narrative voice, which she called "the character's voice."

Elements that contribute to voice include:

• Diction - Word choices.
• Perspective - Mental view.
• Characterization - Appearance, age, gender, education level, ambitions, motivations.
• Dialogue

Krista said the #1 element missing from most manuscripts she receives is interior monologue. She read us a passage from REVOLUTION by Jennifer Donnelly without interior monologue, and then she read the same passage with the interior dialogue inserted. The manuscript was much richer and more interesting with the right amount of interiosity included.

Krista reminded us that when you're young everything feels like the end of the world. She said to write effectively for teens, we should erase adult perspective and in our minds go back to high school everyday. We need to actually listen to teens to get their dialogue just right.

The workshop provided lots of great tips, and I'm summarizing an entire days worth of notes. If anything is unclear, post a question and I'll try and answer it.

Happy Writing!