I’ve been asked again and again how I promote my books, which are published on Amazon. One way is “Meet the Author” book talks. I’ve done two of them now.
How did I get the opportunities to do them? By making people aware of my books, which are about the history of northeastern Pennsylvania.
After I started writing my first book, I began reaching out to places that had information about that history, including historical societies, historical sites, and libraries. While working on that first book, I felt a bit like a fraud when I identified myself in emails as someone who was “writing a book”. I mean, I was working on something I was unsure I’d ever finish, let alone publish. Could I really call myself a writer? Or worse yet, an author?
But the people I contacted couldn’t have been more helpful or kind. I eventually began to visit those places and became known as “the lady who’s writing/wrote that/those books.” The belief expressed by them, as well as friends and family in what I was doing, was one of my biggest sources of inspiration to finish and publish my first (and subsequent) books.
With my books published on Amazon I realized that my target audience—those from the region who are interested in its history—would likely never find my books in the needle-in-a-haystack world of Amazon.
How would I reach them? The answer was found in the very institutions that I’d gone to for help. I reached out to them and asked if they might be interested in having my books in their bookshops. My books are now sold at five locations in northeast PA (seen on this website under “Where to find the books”).
I also hinted that I was open to the opportunity of doing book talks–not that I had the first idea about how to do one. But I’m passionate about the people and history in my books and figured that I could figure it out.
I was offered opportunities to give book talks recently–one on the lawn of the courthouse in Wilkes-Barre and the other at Eckley Miners’ Village.
Because my books are heavy with images and records, I decided that images would help to tell their stories. I used handouts for the outdoor talk and a PowerPoint presentation at the other (I’d never used PowerPoint before except to create an image or two, but Google and YouTube were incredibly helpful).
While my audiences were rather small, that was fine with me. I enjoyed talking to and with people about my books.
One of my biggest goals in writing my books is to honor and remember the lives of the people in them, and I look at promoting my books as another way of being able to do just that.
ChessieWriter 