Marketing Madness in March

by James Meservy | Mar 9, 2021 | Monthly Discussions | 0 comments

Marketing Madness in March

Bleen, my least favorite, most hated aspect of publishing is marketing.

From everything I have read, and researched, marketing is all about finding your ideal audience. Well, I am about as far from finding my audience as I am from finding needles in hay stacks.

I start off with this so you understand I am far from knowledgeable, I am just an author who is trying things one baby step at a time, and often feels like I took one step too far underwater. Not a good feeling for a hydrophobe, like myself.

In point of fact, Burning Embers was born from my frustration with marketing problems, and my desire to share what hasn’t worked with other authors, and learn from one another what does work.

But here are some things I do know about marketing.

Newsletters. Personally, I send out my newsletter once a month, on the first Wednesday of each month. I have a reader magnet, The Viscount of Sternboard, A Realm of the Light Novella, that I give away to newsletter subscribers. I only have a modest following, about 750 subscribers at present, but the services provided by Story Origin have been incredibly valuable to me in maintaining that number.

Blog. I run a blog at jqmserv.wordpress.com.  Every Monday evening I post a book spotlight, every Wednesday I post an author interview. Every so often, not as often as I should, I post something on the other days as well.

That’s about it.  I have profiles on multiple social media platforms, but am not particularly active on any one individual platform. That is mostly because I am over the social media phase, and only use to keep in touch with friends and family.

What marketing strategies have worked for you, or is presently working for you, that you would like to share?

Writers & Poets Over the Ages

by James Meservy | Mar 4, 2021 | Monthly Discussions | 0 comments

I have been listening to ‘Man In The Iron Mask’ by Alexandre Dumas. There is a scene where four or five poets argued about what words rhyme and don’t rhyme. What types of rhymes are acceptable in contemporary French poetry.
I’ll tell you what, I caught a fit of the giggles.

As some of you may already know, Burning Embers is publishing a Dystopian Anthology later this year. As a natural consequence, I have been engaged in very similar discussions. Rather than talking about cadences and rhyme schemes, I have been talking about constitutes a dystopian story.

I suppose not much has changed over the 150 years or so when Man In the Iron Mask was published. When authors & poets congregate, we did, we do, and we will talk about literature.