Book Release Tips

My debut novel, Betrayal of the Band, released in August. Yay! Through the last month, I discovered a few marketing successes that caught me by surprise, and I wanted to share.

First off, marketing is not a strong area of mine, since it requires talking to strangers. Strangers who might reject you. But with the help of family and friends who love me (more than I expected!), I’ve managed to do some successful marketing. 

1. A Local Press Release. When the book officially released on August 11, a friend wrote a press release for me. Totally unexpected, and not something I’d even considered. She sent the release into the paper and the news stations. The paper printed it the following week, and I was invited to attend an authors’ day at an education conference happening in October and received a congratulations postcard from the Friends of a local library. Also, the press release included two book signing events I had scheduled, and a local bookstore owner attended one to invite me to do a signing or event at his store. So notifying local news agency of a release can generate marketing opportunities!
2. Book Signings. Bookstores are the obvious ones, but depending on your publisher, Barnes and Noble or other big booksellers may not be an option. But bookstores aren’t the only places to sell books. Local businesses like to be involved in their community, and you, a local author, are a member of the community, a really awesome member of the community because you actually wrote and published a book. Don’t confine book signings or selling to bookstores only. If your community has a First Friday or other regular event where businesses stay open later and/or offer special events to entice customers, ask about doing a signing there. If the book features a tea drinker, talk to a local tea shop. If the book features a musician, talk to music stores. Get creative. Readers don’t only shop at bookstores.
3. A Party. Throw a party and celebrate your accomplishment! This party can be big or small, real or online. Whatever kind of budget or resources you have, use them to invite everyone who has support you and encouraged you and gotten excited for you to help celebrate. I don’t know if the party I hosted was a big success as far as marketing and sales go, but the event was a boost for me, and a chance to celebrate with people I love while also introducing a few new readers to my book. And any opportunity that involves cupcakes and prizes has to fun for everyone.

What about you? Any book release and marketing successes? Any big plans for a debut release? 

Sarah Tipton is a writer of Christian Young Adult fiction. Her debut novel, Betrayal of the Band, released in August 2017. Visit sarahtiptonbooks.com to connect.

Guestopia - Ampersand Prize winner, Cally Black

Today, we've switched things up! Instead of our Guestopia Interview going live on the 26th, we've brought it forward - and for good reason!

First, let's meet today's very special guest... Australian author, CALLY BLACK!

Cally is a winner of Hardie Grant Egmont's Ampersand Prize, and her debut novel In the Dark Spaces will be published in 2017.

She has travelled throughout Asia, Europe and Africa and now lives in Melbourne with her family. When she's not writing YA sci-fi, she teaches TAFE, writes for the educational market, and works with gifted children.

Awesome! Now click here for a little info about the Hardie Grant Ampersand Prize, which closes this year on Friday, September 16th, to find out what a massive writing prize this is!

So, let's gooooooo!

Is this your first published book?

Yes, this is my very first trade novel. It's very exciting.

I've had short stories published for children in Educational Publishing and in SF magazines before but have been focussing on YA novels for the last couple of years.

What’s it called?

In the Dark Spaces, which has a double meaning, and, I feel, invokes a mood similar to one of my favourite stanzas from a Robert Frost poem, “Desert Places.”

Which genre?

Science Fiction Thriller

Which age group?

Young Adult

Is it a series or standalone?

This is standing alone, and if it does really well... who knows?

Are you an agented author?

No. Unagented.

Which publisher snapped up your book?

Hardie Grant Egmont selected it as their Ampersand Prize novel for 2016 from their annual competition. Very exciting for a first novel to hit the ground with an award behind it!

How involved have you been in the whole publishing process of your book?

I'm very hands-on. Marisa at HGE has a lot of advice and ideas for tweaks and I see it as my job to realise that potential, so it's a lot of hard and rewarding work. I don't think anyone else could do it for me. There's an unusual voice and it's set in an unusual world. I wouldn't want anyone else to do it for me!

Do you have another job?

I have two other jobs. I work for a private educational company that works with children during the day and I teach at TAFE at night. Fortunately, I get school holidays off both of those.

Did you receive many, if any, rejections prior?

Only about a gazillion! Actually the last couple of years I'd stopped sending work out (this stops rejections!) and turned inwards to focus on my writing to try to understand why it got attention but never an offer, and to try to improve. It was a process that involved reading a lot of essays and articles by writers and reading their novels and picking apart how they did the things I loved. I'm still in that process. I may always be in that process. There's so much to learn!

What created/what were you doing or watching when the first idea for this book sneaked up on you?

 I'd read Hunger Games and then I read 5^th Wave and I thought you know what? These authors are having fun and letting go and not censoring themselves. Gloves off! I'm going to go into a novel swinging and punching. What's the worst that can happen? I told myself I didn't have to show it to anyone. It was just for me. And there were a few new techniques that I wanted to try so it was all useful.

How long did you plot/plan until you started writing it?

I don't plot. I write to tell myself a story, to entertain myself. If I plotted, I will have told myself the story and the process of writing it would change. What I do is I write scene by scene, and when I get to the end of the story. I put it aside and write it again in a more orderly fashion from scratch, and try to fully realise the motivations and quirks of each character. So I write and then I plot, and then I write again. This second time, I guess is with a writer hat on, whereas the first time, I suppose I'm inhabiting the viewpoint character. This is a very slow way to do things, even if you can type 40wpm, but I think, if the writer is enjoying themselves and connected with their character, you can feel that in the words.

Once you started, did the story flow naturally or did you have to step in and wrestle it into submission?


I started it. It went in a weird direction after 20,000 words. I turned the page and started it again, and I've been wrestling it ever since!

How many drafts did you write before you let someone read it? Who was that someone?

 Well, you understand this was a novel just for me. I made about half a dozen passes over it. Put it aside, came back to it, and I still liked it far too much for the strange thing it was, the experimental thing I was never going to show anyone. So I showed the opening to an online writing group in the US, and they were really accepting of it. They didn't bag anything I thought they would. So then I showed the opening to Dee White who is a great friend and great writer and she liked it. So then the thing I didn't have to show anyone, became something I could actually show people.

Did you employ an editor/proofreader or did you have a critique partner/beta readers before you started querying?


Only the opening with Dee before querying. The Ampersand was a bit of a spur of the moment thing. Normally I would run the whole thing via friends, do a novel swap. I'm pretty good at editing, so it's the story that I need examined. Dee has read the whole novel since to help me with the HGE edits.

Roughly how many drafts did it take before you sent the manuscript off into the real world?

Probably around eight. I'm obsessive about getting things right. Not good at keeping track of numbers.

How many drafts until it was published?

Another four implementing big and minor changes with Marisa.

Has the book changed dramatically since the first draft?

The core main character has remained the same and the core story, but another character was added, and a lot of work expanding characters and their motivation has improved it significantly. It basically grew a heart.

Are there any parts you’d like to change even now?

Yes! Always! Marisa's just pried it from my hands! I'd keep working on it forever. If only there was more time, if only I could have another 10,000 words!

What part of writing do you find the easiest?

I find being the character and writing the openings the easiest. I love writing dialogue. Finding a voice. I love setting the character free to tell her story.

What part do you find hardest?

Endings are hard. Being bound by word counts and pacing is also hard. Not letting the dark parts of the stories overwhelm the light... as might be judged by a YA reader is difficult, because clearly I'm a dark person! My darkometer is a bit stuffed.

Do you push through writing barriers or walk away?

I'm diseased with writing. Did you see above where I said even though no one wanted to publish me, I wrote just for me for two years? I write to entertain myself. I write to learn more about writing. I write because it's a habit I just can't kick, but at least it won't damage my liver.

How many projects do you have on the go at the same time?

Erm... three lately but usually two.

Do you think you’re born with the talent to write or do you think it can be learned?

100% learned. I'm not “writer material” whatever that is. I wasn't read to or raised among bookshelves, we didn't own many books. School libraries were my only source of books. I was good at English but it wasn't my favourite subject. But I am from a family of storytellers. The things we did, became stories told at late night fires after hard day's work. The things we survived, were relegated to stories, told over and over to friends. My history is a collection of stories that have been garnished for entertainment value. There is the truth softened and made entertaining by the story. I am a collection of stories. Maybe we all are.

Early on in my daydream of learning to write, I read Dare to Be a Great Writer by Leonard Bishop. Bishop told me it didn't matter where your starting point was, as he was once a hobo who won a typewriter in a dice game, your voice can be as relevant as any other, more so, if it's honest and raw. It's taken me a long time to trust my voice.

How many future novels do you have planned?

 100s but how many get published is up to the readers, and whether they like this novel.

Do you write other things, such as short stories, articles, blogs, etc?

I don't have time to blog. Lately nothing on the short story front. But perhaps some more in the future.

What’s the highlight of being published so far?

The first meeting with Hardie Grant Egmont when a young woman from marketing came to meet me with Marisa and I asked what her role in the meeting was (feeling nervous I was being assessed for marketability) and she said, she adored the book so much she had to meet the person who wrote it! My first fan!

Give us one writing tip that works for you.

'Don't stage direct the senses.' Your main character is usually too busy seeing something to think about the fact that her eyes are doing the seeing or pointing in a particular direction. Just plunge on in with what's happening.

And one that doesn't.

'Start with action.' Don't start with action, start with some movement, but something that allows your reader an insight into your character. Don't expect a reader to care that an unknown character is under threat of death in the opening paragraph. This is my Ampersand Prize entry tip too.

Can you give us a clue or secret about the next book?

Erm... I haven't got that far along yet. If readers want a sequel, they'll have to let me know next year after they read In the Dark Spaces, but at the moment, I'm writing another YA set closer to home, in small town Victoria, which involves a lot of missing people and a bit of an invasion.

What question have you always wanted to be asked but never have? What would the answer be?

You realise I can say almost anything because as a new author, I've not been interviewed!

But maybe I can share what I was like when I was the age of my protagonist, with the question, “What were you like as a young adult?”

And the answer is: angry, stupid, a lanky goofy thing with no identity or sense of value with a deathwish ambition to be burnt out before 20 (told you I was stupid). And I'm so glad that was one of the many things I failed at.

And that's a wrap! Fantastic. I for one cannot wait to read In the Dark Spaces, it sounds awesome. Thank you so much for joining YAtopia today, Cally!

How to Succeed at a Writers Conference

This month I’m attending the ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) Conference. This will be my fifth time in six years—my ninth (or tenth?) conference overall—and I’m always excited. I’ll connect with writer friends I may have never met in person, meet writers I admire (if I get up the nerve to actually speak to them!), sit at the feet of my mentors, and soak up amazing writing lessons and advice.

But all the awesomeness comes with exhaustion, pressure, and stress. Pitching to editors (or agents), constantly being in social situations (and feeling like the friendless one at the cool kids party), and having to find a place to sit at every. Single. Meal.

Okay, maybe that last one doesn’t stress out anyone but me. I think camp when I was eleven scarred me for life. I dreaded every meal during that week out of fear that I’d accidentally put my elbows on the table and be sentenced to walking around the dining hall holding hands with a BOY! Terrifying. In my nightmares, I can still hear the little song that accompanied the punishment.

But I digress.

Writers conferences are great opportunities for learning and networking and connecting with people who get you and your imaginary friends. But they can also be overwhelming, even for seasoned, repeat-attenders. Here are my top three tips for successful survival:

1. Pick your top 2 or 3 workshops or sessions, and give yourself permission to skip any others. The conferences I’ve attended record the sessions, so if I want to “attend” a session that conflicts with another or that session doesn’t hit my top two or three and I really need some downtime because my brain is too overloaded to absorb anything else, I can buy the sessions and listen at my leisure. Because at some point, you will probably feel done in. Which leads me to . . .
2. Don’t feel guilty because you need an afternoon napping in your room or an escape to a cafe alone to read or reflect. I spent most of the last writers conference in my cabin working on edits. I attended my top workshops and the keynote speaker sessions, but mostly, I took advantage of being on a vacation from real life and in a place where someone else cooked my meals. That was the best use of my time at the conference, and my extensive rewrites were completed and turned in on time. At other conferences I’ve ended up sleeping an afternoon away because of a combination of jet lag, overstimulation, and too much people time. The first few conferences, I felt guilty for skipping class until I realized that guilt left me even more exhausted! Now I get more out of conferences because I plan for downtime.
3. Remember everyone you meet is just a person. Like you. And probably just as nervous and awkward about meeting strangers. That goes for the famous writers and teachers and for the editors and agents. They’re people, eating the same meals as you, staying in the same hotel as you, subjected to the same exhausting schedule. Don’t be afraid to gush admiration at a fellow author. Don’t be scared to say hi to an editor or agent. Don’t throw up before a pitching appointment. Just don’t do any of those things in the bathroom! Unless you can’t avoid that last one, then please, do that in the bathroom. But seriously, who doesn’t want to hear how awesome their books are? And the editors and agents don’t bite. Take a deep breath, put on a smile, and relax. I know, easier said than done. Just remember, everyone is as freaked out as you! And since they’re all busy freaking out, they won’t even notice that you are too.

At a writers conference, the schedule and the interaction wear me out, but by choosing two or three can’t miss sessions, giving myself permission—and not feeling guilty about!—skipping other events, and remembering to relax have helped me have a more enjoyable experience.

What are your favorite writers conference? Any tips you’ve found for getting more out of a conference?