Promotion and publicity, oh my!

Instead of blathering today, I'll post Nina's question from the comments: "Why would a site possibly not recognize an author's book w/o an ARC promo?
What kinds of sites (other than Amazon) accept reader reviews?"

I can only answer in generalities. I have little time or patience for sorting out the rapidly multiplying review sites on the internet. I suspect some of them are set up by eager readers who want free books, but many of them are excellent resources for learning about new books and authors. So I leave my publicity up to a person who works with review sites and knows the legitimate ones. Having talked to many of those reviewers, I am aware that they're swamped, literally swamped with towers of ARCs and books every month. The numbers of books published today, especially if e-books are included, is nigh on to astronomical. And if romance continues as 50% of mass market, then romance reviewers have to be saints to sort through the detritus of an avalanche.

All of that is to say that reviewers get to choose which books they review, and they have no reason to read or review books that don't interest them. So sending ARCs to every review site available is an expensive throw of the dice. Chances are far higher that reviewers would rather review Nora and Jayne and their favorite authors than a newbie who wrote her first vampire-erotica-thriller-futuristic. So reviews are not guaranteed.

As to places that collect reader reviews, I'm not certain. I know RT has a lot of chat boards where readers can discuss their favorite books. I believe All About Romance has reader chat boards. There's a new website where authors review their favorite books called Writers Are Readers. And there's a yahoo group that started as a list of librarians discussing romance and has branched out to include readers and authors. (I'm not sure that link works since it's not a website) Beyond that, we'll have to hope someone will drop by and supply better info than I can. Anyone out there?

Today I spent inundated in e-mail and revising the summary for the women's fiction book. Not one of my more productive days!

New Technology

All right, I spent my New Year's Day at the mall, get over it. I hate shopping, hardly ever go, and use malls as my personal exercise track. But the mall was empty and I was curious and I wandered into a Mac store and walked out with my adorable puppy of a Macbook. So far, I've figured out how to download Firefox and AOL for Mac, although AOL does not play pretty with Leopard, I'm warning you.

Tonight, I'm venturing onto the web with a wireless that doesn't snarl at me. If I knew anything at all, I could probably send my photo and enclose it, but it would frighten people if I did, so I won't try. I've spent the day at my PC fighting email wars on various lists, and tonight, I thought I deserved play time.

Just to prove I didn't waste the entire day, I turned my latest women's fiction idea into the rough start of a summary. Now, if only I could figure out how to end it... I wish I were one of those people who thinks of the endings first and works backward. Do you have to be someone who reads the endings first before that happens?

Home Again, Home Again

jiggedy jig, isn't that how the song goes? It's been quite a jig anyway. Except for white out conditions in Amarillo on the first day, we had wonderful weather (we went directly south after that experience!) on our holiday tour of the southwest. We arrived at our daughter's house in California on Christmas Eve, had a lovely holiday watching a six-year old's joy in Santa Claus, saw the Christmas Rockettes show (where same six-year old watched in gaped jaw awe!), and idled our way home again.

We extended the holiday by lazing about a few days and did some New Year's Day shopping. Did you know malls are almost empty on New Year's Day? Keep that in mind next year! Of course, it's exceedingly dangerous to idle through empty malls. We bought all kinds of stuff on sale, then wandered into an Apple store where the clerks didn't have anything better to do than talk to us. My husband and daughter had almost talked me into buying a Mac for my next notebook computer before we even set foot in the store, so I'd already been doing research. It only remained to play with one to see that I may possibly, eventually, manage the learning curve. And somehow, I ended up buying one. My very own Christmas toy!

Of course, I've spent today playing instead of working--although I did scribble out the idea for a new contemporary that's been building while I was playing. Road trips are great for ideas.

My Mac lesson for today--AOL and Leopard do not play well together.

Did everyone else have a fun holiday? Get more done than I did?