Monday, March 05, 2007

What I'm Doing Now to Pay Off Later

WIP update: I'm really happy with my progress - up to page 117 on my revise, and my goal last week was only page 100, so I'm ahead of the game. This week, I want to finish revising up to page 150 (where my draft ends), and then hopefully crank out another 10-20 new pages. The goal is to be at about page 175+ by the time my agent returns from her honeymoon. We'll see. So...how goes it with your WIPs?

A few people wrote me to ask what sort of PR stuff I'm doing right now for the book. I know that I glazed over this in a post last week, so I thought I'd elaborate. From what I understand, a lot of the PR work really will come once the book is released - going around to a lot of bookstores and introducing myself (with the hopes that this might draw attn from the staff to the book), signing stock, doing interviews that my agent says will inevitably happen, and I dunno what else. But I've steeled myself to be supremely stressed and busy. Blech.

Right now, here's what I have going on, in terms of the PR stuff: I have a bunch of Q/As for blogs and websites that I have to put some thought into and answer (thanks to anyone who has asked! I'm flattered and grateful); I'm redesigning my website with a professional (as opposed to the half-assed job that I created myself), so that's going to take some time this week, and I'm hoping to have it up soon; I'm writing the Reading Group Guide that HarperCollins offers on their site for book clubs; I'm brainstorming essay ideas and drafts for my publicist to submit to a variety of places such as the Lives column in the NY Times Magazine; I'm busy reaching out to libraries, readers and breast cancer causes on places such as MySpace and via their own blogs, etc; I'm putting the finishing touches on an essay that I wrote about my friendship with Lizzie for the June issue of Fitness; I'm checking in with writers I know who read the galley to see if they've been able to place any reviews in shorter-lead mags/sites/newspapers.

Hmmm, I'm sure that there's more, but those are the things that spring to mind right now...

Authors out there, what did you to at this stage (a few months out) to help your own PR plan?

3 comments:

Larramie said...

Allison, any idea of when REDBOOK will put TDLF's excerpt up on its site? Soon, I would think.

Trish said...

Good progress, Allison. Nice job. Keep it up, lady!

Allison Winn Scotch said...

Larr-not until May. :( I'm hoping to get one up on my site (which I'm in the middle of redesigning) in April or so.