Shopping for publicity

Tags

cover, Design for Writers, Flybe, Grafton Centre, MailChimp, marketing, Plank 6, publicity, Regency

It’s all been a bit quiet here recently, hasn’t it?  That’s mainly because just sitting and writing, with occasional forays into research, is not much of a spectator sport, but rest assured that work continues apace with “Plank 6”.  And here’s what else I’ve been doing recently:

• Booked time with my fabulous cover designer – that’s Design for Writers – to make sure that they will be available to work on that sixth cover next summer
• Done some fun, extra research on Regency jewellery in preparation for my November monthly update – if you fancy getting your mitts on that, you can subscribe by clicking on the map to the left…
• Appeared in the magazine published by our local shopping mall, the “Grafton Press” – you can see it online here.

The idea for this last one came to me a few months ago when I was walking through the Grafton Centre in Cambridge and spotted that they had their own publication, promoting the shops and businesses in the centre but also highlighting Cambridge-y things – presumably to tempt out-of-town visitors to return again and again.  And friends who work in periodical publishing tell me that freebies like this are always on the look-out for contributed content because they rarely have the budget to buy in the services of more than a couple of writers.  I contacted the editorial email address given in the magazine, suggesting a piece on local authors, and they sent back a set of about six questions – which, as you can see, basically form the piece.

So that would be my top marketing tip for this month: look around for local or trade publications that might welcome unsolicited contact, and think of a way to connect you and/or your writing to their target market.  You might remember that I managed to get into Flybe’s in-flight magazine last year, by writing a piece about London as a destination, while managing to mention Sam Plank or my writing in every paragraph…  I’m cunning like that.  If you can send them a fairly finished piece (with the Flybe one, I looked at past issues of the column and used the same questions to formulate my own submission), they might well use it pretty much unchanged, just to be able to fill a page with minimal effort.  And who knows who might be off on their hols on Flybe, or doing their Christmas shopping at the Grafton Centre – it might be that TV executive casting around for inspiration for their next Sunday evening costume drama, and there will be Sam and Martha, just waiting.

We have take-off!

Tags

Flybe, marketing, promotion

Back at the end of November, I told you about a brainwave I had had on a flight, and how I sent in a sample article (in reality, a big puff for the Sam Plank books) to the editor.  I heard nothing and assumed that it had gone into the large and depressing depository for failed marketing ideas – until I had a lovely email from the editor in mid January.  And today, the article has appeared in the April 2017 issue of “Flight Time”, the magazine put into all seat pockets on all Flybe flights.  (Here’s the link: I’m on page 20.)  According to Wikipedia, Flybe “flies 7 million passengers a year on 149 routes, from 62 destinations in 9 countries” – so that’s a huge number of potential new readers.  Of course the vast, vast majority of them won’t open the magazine or won’t read my article or won’t like the sound of the books, so I’ll keep you posted about any amazing spikes that I see in my sales figures.  But to be honest, just seeing one of my ideas come to fruition is exciting enough, as so many of them do fall into that depository of death and despondency.