Colorado Cons That Love Writers

From the wandering mind of Tamela Buhrke

If you've been reading my series on conventions, you know how much fun they are and how great they can be for your writing career. But what if you don't have the time or money for all that travel? Relax, I've got you covered. There are some awesome cons right here in Colorado.

Denver

Mile Hi Con - This is Colorado's longest running Science Fiction Convention. This year's toastmaster for the convention is RMFW's very own Mario Acevedo. The convention will feature 80+ authors, artists and speakers. For those you like fantasy gaming, get there early. There are workshops and panels for writers. There are parties and socializing is encouraged. There will be a costume contest, so drag out that Avatar costume you have hidden in your closet. Bring the kids! They can enter the Avistrum Academy, a magic school for witchcraft and wizardry.

When: Oct. 21 - 23 Where: Hyatt Regency Tech Center Cost: Weekend pass is $45 adults at the door, kids are half price. (Avistrum Academy is an extra $34) www.milehicon.org

StarFest - This is actually several "Fest" conventions rolled into one. The StarFest started as a science fiction convention but has grown into a celebration of media entertainment. HorrorFest celebrates all things horror. ComicFest is all things comic book related. RoboFest features robots from television and film. All these events are packed into one fun-filled weekend. Though each fest has it's own schedule of events and are priced separately (packages are available).

When: April 13-15, 2012 Where: Denver Tech area, hotel TBA. Cost: TBA (2011 prices ranged from $5 to $239 depending on package) www.starland.com

Denver Comic Con - Denver is finally getting it's own Comic Con! The founders of this con believe in the motto "Go Big!" They are taking over the Denver Convention Center. The goal is to make the Mile Hi City a big name in the Comic Con legacy. One difference with this con is that all proceeds will be donated to the Comic Book Classroom organization; a children's literacy campaign seeking to teach kids reading through comics.

The founders are comic book authors and illustrators who wanted to bring their love of comic books to Denver area schools. The event will feature those things you have come to love about Comic Cons, such as costume contests, artists, vendors, speakers, celebrities and much more. They will also be featuring local talent, vendors and speakers.

**As a new event, they are currently looking for volunteers, speakers and authors to participate. This is a great opportunity for debut authors! You can find more information on their website.

When: June 15 -17, 2012 Where: Denver Convention Center Hotel: Hyatt Regency Denver Cost: Weekend pass $45 www.denvercomiccon.com

Colorado Springs

COSine - This January will mark their 9th annual Science Fiction Convention in Colorado Springs. This con features a lot of gaming. There are also panels on writing science fiction and fantasy. Authors do readings and book signings.

When Jan 27-29 Where: Crowne Plaza Cost: Weekend pass $35, Kids $10

Galaxy Fest - This is Science Fiction Media & Literacy Convention. It is a charity event to sponsor the Colorado Literacy Foundation. The event features celebrities, authors, artists, gaming, anime, panels and around-the-clock gaming.

When: Feb 24-26, 2012 Where: Antler's Hilton Cost: Weekend passes range from $35 to $90, children from $17.50 to $22.50.

Genre Cons

From the wandering mind of Tamela Buhrke

Last week I geeked out over San Diego Comic Con. It was an amazing trip for my personal interests but it was also a great trip for my writing career. Many of these fun, genre-specific conventions are the perfect venue for promoting and networking yourself as a writer/blogger/screen writer/author.

But what if you are not a science fiction or fantasy fan? No worries—there's a con for practically everyone. Here's a small list to get you started:

Horror - September is the big month for horror fans. They just missed the 13th Horrorfind Weekend: www.horrorfindweekend.com. Don't worry, in a few weeks you can attend Monster Mania, in Philadelphia the weekend of Sept 16th: www.monstermania.net. Or wait until May, 2012 for Crypticon in Seattle: www.crypticonseattle.com.

Steampunk - Tesla Con is the big immersion con for this genre. It is coming up this November in Madison, Wisconsin: www.teslacon.com. This is a growing trend, so right now there are many local steampunk conventions. That being said, it seems easier to give you a website that lists them all, rather than try to list them here. Try http://containment.greententacles.com/tags/steampunk

Mystery & Thrillers - Things get hot in the big city when Thriller Fest takes over New York each July: www.thrillerfest.com. For those west of the Mississippi, there is also Left Coast Crime, which at a city in the west each year. The next meeting is in Sacramento in March 2012 and the conference will be in Colorado Springs in 2013: www.leftcoastcrime.org. Also, better act quick if you want to attend the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. They are in St. Louis this year Sept 15th: www.bouchercon.info.

Historical Fiction - The Historical Novel Society alternates their events between North America and the United Kingdom. They had a conference in San Diego this past summer and will be in London at the end of September, 2012: www.historicalnovelsociety.org.

Westerns - The Western Writers of America will hold their annual convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico this June 2012: www.westernwriters.org/2012_convention.htm.

Pulp Fiction - If your interest is pulp magazines and vintage paperbacks, then Pulp Fest is for you! www.pulpfest.com

Science Fiction & Fantasty - These two genres have more cons than any of the others. In addition to the well-known San Diego Comic Con, there is a Comic Con for nearly every major city (we now have 2 for the Denver area). Want more? Check out Wonder Con, Dragon Con, and Necronomicon. The list of sci-fi/fantasy cons is too long to mention here, but check out Convention Fans for news about upcoming cons: http://conventionfansblog.com.

There are so many cons! I know I missed some. If you have a favorite, or if I missed an important one, be sure to tell us about it.

Create A Blogging Crew

Part 3 of Creating Your Marketing Machine by Tamela Buhrke

In my last post, we looked at how to build a list of candidates for your marketing machine. This list will become your team for promotion and marketing. However, each of the members of the team will have different strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to match your marketing machine members to the marketing strategy that they do best. That makes them more likely to promote you regularly and eagerly.

Today, we will go through the list to find those whose strength is blogging. Begin by sorting them into five blogging areas:

1. Commenting
2. Blog Roll or Badges
3. Guest Blogging
4. Group Blogging
5. Blog post referrals

Any person on your list can be categorized into multiple areas. Just be careful not to stretch them too thin. If you have them doing all five, they will quickly get burned out.

So let’s take a look at each of the these arenas and how you and your marketing machine members can help each other build your readership.

Commenting

Commenting is an important part of building momentum on your blog. It can also help you in search engine rankings if you post a link back to your own blog when making comments on other blogs.

Choose three or four members from your list who are already good at commenting on other people’s blogs. If commenting is a regular part of their routine, then adding your blog will be easy. Send them a message that you’d like to be comment partners. You’ll regularly comment on their blog, if they promise to do the same for you. If they agree, I recommend that you come up with a plan that works for both of you. Ex. Only commenting occasionally or more structured, such as five times per month. The important thing is that you both agree to the terms.

Blog Roll or Badges

Having links to your site from another blog can quickly build your readership. The key is finding people on your list who already have badges, blog rolls or favorite lists on their blog. This indicates that they are willing to exchange blog links. Contact them through their blog to propose a link exchange. Some bloggers only exchange links with those who have reached a certain number of blog followers. Don’t get discouraged. Find out what those numbers are and ask them if you can contact them again when you reach that level. Most will say yes. Then just go on to the next person on your list.

Guest Blogging

Doing guest posts puts your writing in front of new sets of eyeballs. Reading the blogs of the people on your marketing machine list to get a feel for their style and substance. Now do a bit of brainstorming. Are their any contributions you can make to their blogs? Have any ideas for a series or an interview or critique that might interest them? Maybe it is the other way around, and they have something that could benefit your site.

Start with a few guest blog posts, either them on your site or you on theirs. If it works out, see whether that is something you can do regularly. Be sure to work out terms on announcing guest posts and providing bio information.

Group Blogging

The benefit of a group blog is that you have multiple people announcing their posts to different crowds of people. You may only post a couple of times a month but the blog is constantly being updated by all its members. That gives the blog a lot more traffic and vitality. It can also lower burnout and offers camaraderie.

It is important to find people who fit together for blogging under a common theme or banner. Be aware that this is a method that requires a lot more commitment. You will need to put together a brand-new blog, then agree on a name, a theme, a blogging commitment and more. It is really important that you take the time to create the ground rules, theme and tone so that your group blog will have a coherent feel.

Blog Post Referrals

With each of the above, you will getting and giving referrals on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. However, there may be people on your list who are not as good at guest blogging or commenting, but who are great at referring people to a good blog post. See whether they would like to team up to swap referrals for blog posts. Again, the key is to define the type, frequency and timing of the referrals so that everyone is on the same page.

This sharing of referrals is a perfect way to get you started Forming Social Media Allies—which, strangely enough, is the next post in our series.

See you next week!

Building & Brainstorming Your Marketing Machine

Post 2 of Creating Your Marketing Machine by Tamela Buhrke

Raise your hand if you’d love to have a team of people who would actively promote your book. Raise the other hand if you’d love it even better if they did it for free!

Who wouldn’t love to have a team of people who love our book as much as we do and who make a point of going out and telling the world about it? So today, we will start to build that team.

The first step is to build a list of writers who are similar to you. This will take a bit of brainstorming. Consider the people in your critique groups, on your twitter feed or on your blog readers. Evaluate whether these authors and writers would be good candidates for your marketing machine. You will be writing those people down on your list. In order to be successful, the people on your list should meet specific requirements.

Requirements for Your List

+ Add Same Genre Writers - Find authors who are in your genre and read their books. If someone who writes like you, and you respect their writing, then put them on your list.

+ Add Similar Writers - Add to the list people whose writing is in a similar genre but may not be in exactly the same genre as yours. Be sure that they attract a similar type of reader (for example, if you write adult mystery, then YA mystery writers would not attract the same audience of readers, instead try adult thrillers). They must be someone who’s writing you enjoy and respect. If they wow you, put them on the list.

- Subtract Those Not On A Publishing Track - Some people are wonderful writers, but they have no urge to publish. You will want people on your list who have books—or plan to have books—on the market. They can be self-published or traditionally published, but they can't just be bloggers or short story writers. You want your marketing machine to be populated with people who relate to your experience, know the processes and difficulties of publishing and have a fire to get books to market.

- Subtract Non-Marketers - Pay attention to the actions of the authors on your list. Are they on Facebook? Twitter? Do they blog consistently? Do you see them promoting themselves appropriately? They don’t have to do all these things, but they must do one or two of them with consistency. Take anyone off the list who doesn’t put effort into promoting their own books (because if they don’t promote their own, why would they promote yours).

It may take you awhile to build a list of people for consideration. Don't worry. Take your time and build it right. You want approximately twenty-five candidates, to start. Also, in this initial step don't tell the people that they are on your list and don't approach them about marketing each other. Instead, take time to get to know them. Connect with them on their blog or on the social network they use most often. Talk about their books. See how they respond. You want to make sure that these are people you can work with and that they can work with you.

If you find that some people just don’t mesh with you, take them off the list. This doesn't mean that you don't like their writing, or you don't want to keep following their blog or their twitter posts. You just don't want them on your marketing team. This list is not a friendship list; it's a marketing machine list. Keep up this filtering process until you have a list of about ten quality people who will be active, positive marketing members.

In the next few weeks, we’ll talk about what to do with these candidates. Some will become a part of your Blogging Crew and others will be your Social Media Allies. You’ll learn how to approach them and get them excited about promoting each other’s work.

Next week: Create a Blogging Crew

Creating Your Book Marketing Machine

From the insane world of Tamela Buhrke comes a new kind of author marketing.

When I mention marketing strategies to most writers, their faces squish up in a most unattractive way, then the whining commences. Finally, I’m given a litany of reasons why marketing doesn’t work; how it takes too much time away from writing or is something the publishing company will do.

It makes me giggle... a little hysterically.

Here’s the deal. If you have a book, then you already have a marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy might be that you depend on your publishing company to do all the work. Your marketing strategy may be to tell your friends and relatives about the book, then let word of mouth sell you book. Maybe you posted a website? Maybe you are on Amazon.com or Goodreads.com? Those are all pieces of a marketing strategy.

So people who don’t like or believe in developing marketing strategies are still marketing. They just aren’t marketing effectively.

The good news is that, for those of us who are eager to put our books in front of more eyeballs, there are better strategies to help us market. One strategy that works well is to build yourself something that I like to call the marketing machine.

What is a marketing machine?

A marketing machine is a way to multiply your efforts. It is created by building a dedicated team of market-savvy authors. They are not professional marketers or promoters. You do not pay them. Instead, they are authors that are in the same or similar genre. They have books available for sale (books you've read and enjoyed) and are dedicated to promoting their books—and yours.

Why would they market your books? Because you are going to market their books, in return. By building a marketing machine, all the members of the team help market each other. The team rises together. The effort of one is multiplied through the team. Plus, marketing ideas can be shared and tested. A marketing machine is a great way to quickly build your platform and sell more books.

There are several components to a successful marketing machine. They include:

• Building & Brainstorming
• Create a Blogging Crew
• Forming Social Media Allies
• Joining Author Marketing Networks
• Promoting Reviews

Your goal is to build a team that works together to market each other. This is why I had you building your board of directors first. You will want to mine the best people from your board to build your perfect team.

Join me for the next five weeks as we go over the ins and outs of building your marketing machine.

What Sucks? The Blog or The Blogger?

How successful are you at blogging? Feeling good about it? Sort of? Not so much?

If you feel ambivalent, you are not alone. Blogging has become the necessary evil. It is often viewed as a burden foisted on innocent writers by that dark force of the publishing industry -- the marketing department.

Blogging seems unavoidable. It is the axis upon which all other marketing strategies revolve. Got a radio interview? Make sure you tell those listeners your blog address. That newspaper article needs a link too. Literature for conferences must contain your domain. The list goes on.

That pressure to provide a link causes many writers to scramble haphazardly into building their blog presence. Often they do so without training or guidance. Soon their unfocused blog posts run the gamut of topics, seemingly based on the principle that posting anything is better than nothing. Blog! The readers will come. When no readers arrive, they have no idea why. Even worse, the visitors they do get leave without buying a book or even commenting on a post. What went wrong?

Where is the blog-love we’ve heard so much about? Where are the fans? The comments? The book sales?

Why didn't anyone mention all the work that’s involved? The extra writing takes you away from your manuscript. The blog promotion is overwhelming. Social Media. Keeping up with comments and email. Checking links. Organizing the site. Archiving. Tags. Meta tags. SEO. Lists of internet acronyms that you don’t even want to understand.

Is any of this really selling books?

All of it begs the question -- is the problem the tool, or the skill of the ones who wield it? Is the era of the blog over, the market saturated? Or maybe it’s that people are tired of authors who’s blogs offer nothing more creative than a running commentary on what they had for breakfast (Don’t laugh, I’ve read it).

Frustrated yet?

If so, join us each Wednesday of this month while I explore the pitfalls and successes of the blogging imperative. I’ll give you the unfiltered truth about why the blog platform really does suck and what you can do about it. Then I’ll reverse course, turning the spotlight on the blogger. You’ll see where nearly every writer (myself included) has gone wrong in their blogging. Then we'll both learn from those mistakes and master the number one rule of blogging -- readers, readers, readers.

So get ready for a journey into the foggy world of blogs. Let’s see if we can clear the air.

Dec 8th: Why Blogs Are Bad to the Bone.

Dec 15th: Bloggers Gone Wild

Dec 22nd: Blogs That Have Seen The Light

Dec 29th: The Number One Rule of Blogging

Posted by Tamela Buhrke