Greetings all!
I’m here at the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalitions’ Conference (EPICon) in beautiful Vancouver, Oregon. For those of you know don’t know where Vancouver (No, not the one in Canada) is, if you cross the stream from Portland, you’re in Vancouver. So far, it’s been quite awesome.
So why am I here? First off, as a new writer, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to network and expand my contacts of different industry participants – editors, publishers, other writers, cover artists, etc. – and a conference is a great chance to do so. Secondly, I entered Brass Legionnaire in their EPIC awards in the Action Adventure category, and was named a finalist! *Check it out here if you’ve never read it before!* Woo hoo! It was truly an honor to be nominated, but I’d love to win! The conference lasts for three days, and I’ve already met some wonderful people.
So far, in the last two days, I’ve learned a ton about marketing strategies and creating effective query letters. I also had the opportunity to observe a panel of publishers discuss different query letters and give their opinions about the book idea. So what did I learn already?
Marketing – I need to come up with a plan that includes…
1.) Specific Target Audience – Men ages 18-35 just isn’t good enough, I have to be more specific.
2.) Press Kit – I didn’t do this for the last book, definitely a must have for this one!
3.) Time & Research – I need to identify several steampunk or alternative history magazines (Or sci-fi/speculative fiction) to send said press releases to. Anyone out in the blogosphere know of any good ones before I get down to researching?
4.) Review my notes and come up with more information for you all to benefit from!
5.) Join Tribes for Twitter. Definitely a must do.
6.) Enjoy more Portland Breweries. Also a must.
I’ll be sure to write up another post about EPICon 2013. P.S. if you want to join me next year, I’m going to go to EPICon 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, March 13-15th. Here is the EPIC website for you to explore. They’ve got a great program for young authors (11-18) as well! Check it out!
Modern Papyrus 
Daniel,
I hear the advice often to identify your audience. Truthfully, I don’t have a clue how to go about doing that kind of market research. Any tips?
Do Press Kits really accomplish anything? I just have a hard time seeing anyone in the press being at all interested in a new self published author.
Thanks for the post.
Brian
http://www.brianwfoster.com
Hi Brian! First, think about the kind of book you have written. I’ll do another post on this later, but here’s a more general focus – gender, age, finacial status, education level, general geographic location (city, rural, etc) technology level, personal interests, other similar books they enjoy. That should get you started. A Press Kit is very helpful because it’s a one size package that can be used for bloggers big and small, reviewers, other internet sites, and even as a guide for when you meet people at conferences. Hope that helps!
Daniel,
It does, but I’ll need to do more research.
Thanks.
Brian
I’ll be putting up a post later this week with my own press kit so that you can see a better example.