This May SEEM Random…

…but it’s not.

Hopefully, readers have noticed the new design of the blog.  Well, a new post over on Kaleb Nation’s blog made me practically squeal with joy.  (Which would have been bad, since I was in the middle of a university library the week before exam week.)

1) That song is one of my favorites.  It’s definitely my favorite by Boys Like Girls.

2) It makes me think of one of the characters – Tria, AKA Thunder – from The TECH Project.

And, really, why not enjoy a song like Thunder?  I agree with Kaleb – it would make an excellent Summer Song of 2008.

Promotion Tips & Tricks

On promoting a book before it’s published:

For a little more than a week, I’ve been working on promoting The TECH Project in my city. Not that I live in a mammoth metropolis like Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York City. It’s a mid-sized town, with a decently-sixed University campus, a few libraries, and not such a high rate of reading test scores in the grade schools, junior highs, and high schools.

So far, I haven’t done any heavy-duty promotion yet. But one of the best articles about book promotion that I’ve come across so far is David Louis Edelman’s blog, which contains an article (and now a follow-up article, as well!) on promoting books.

There are plenty of great suggestions on the website of ways to promote books. Here are some of the ones I’ve tried:

• Designed a website (which hasn’t gone live yet, sorry guys)
• Started a blog before publishing of the novel (obviously)
• Created a MySpace profile (the link is on the sidebar; 29 friends and counting =])

Obviously, since Edelman has more than twenty promotion ideas in the original article, I’ve come nowhere near trying all of them out, not to mention the fact that I’ve only begun to lightly skim the possibilities of book promotion.

I have, however, started working on a new promo project that Edelman didn’t mention in his article: flyers.

Since I’m a student at my local university, I have access to free printers. For the past couple of days, my boyfriend and I have been printing them out: twenty pages at a time. (That’s the page printing limit in the computer lab we always use…) The two of us combined have given away about five or six flyers total, and I’ve given about ten or fifteen to two of my friends to pass out to people they know.

This particular attempt’s successfulness can be measured, since the page listed is the MySpace page for The TECH Project. If it’s successful, then I’ll definitely report it here and you’ll know for sure.

*Note: The TECH Project is a novel aimed towards teen and young adult readers. The MySpace page technique probably would not work for some audiences, such as that of children’s books.