To Market, To Market: A Daily Report

Well, the realization has hit me that I am going to be marketing my book like crazy. My first 2 books (children's) were traditionally published and my marketing has consisted of public speaking and signing books, giving workshops on writing to children, literary and educational conferences and flyers. Word of mouth does a lot also. But the publisher, Magination Press, also has a Marketing Department, which sends out review copies, press releases and rents booths in major conferences. So my books are seen whether I am out there pushing them or not. They have even been translated into Korean, which is way cool.
Now comes my next book. This book is self-publshed by iUniverse and I cannot complain about the quality of the book. One of the best things was that my assigned editor was a Baby Boomer Woman who totally identified with the book. She was my target audience and she was editing my book. I felt very fortunate. I had some reasons for self-publishing this time. I wanted my sister to collaborate with me on it and do the illustrations, a dream of mine I have had for years. In addition, I just did not want to go through the extensive rejection process with the slim hope that someone would want my book illustrated by my talented sister. So I went with iUniverse, since a friend had used them and was very pleased with the product and the process.
It was harder than I thought. Being traditionally published means that the most technological you have to get is to correct the editing that goes back and forth between editor and author. You never have to worry about how many spaces after a period, or a semi-colon or where to put the paragraphs, etc. So I was surprised how much work went into the technology of the book, especially since I had to scan the illustrations and make sure everything was the right size. Deciding where to fit the illustrations was also interesting. Would they take up a whole page, half page, quarter page? They were asking an awful lot of a person who is technologically challenged. Then there was the process of working with an artist. My sister does not do time lines well, I don't know many artists that do. She is a perfectionist and long after I would have pronounced the drawing "Perfecto!" she would still be rubbing it with her eraser and adding extra lines to it to get just the right look. And it takes a lot longer to draw illustrations than it does to edit. I have to say though, that her illustrations are amazing and I would not change them in any way.
So all that work, over a year to get the book in shape, over a year to get the illustrations in shape and finally, VOILA! A book is born. A bouncing baby book titled Wrinkles, Waistlines and Wet Pants! Now the real hard stuff began I had to market this book. How would I begin?
Read tomorrow's blog for my first steps into marketing....