Moving Day

[Continued from http://thetechprojectdiaries.blogspot.com]

Shuffled the blog from Blogger to WordPress today. Particularly to use the Categories. I like WordPress categories. They’re special.

Support

There’s a brand-new widget on the sidebar.

In case you guys haven’t noticed before, I’ve added a section about various sites that The TECH Project supports. That’s pretty much a fancy way of saying that most of these people have added The TECH Project on MySpace.com, so I’m promoting them back. With one exception. Allow me to introduce each member of the new sidebar widget.

• Fly Phoenix (MySpace Bands) – A band that my cousin, Brandon, is in. They list everything from Metallica to Timbaland to Eric Clapton in their influences. Only one song has been posted, but they sound great. (Before you ask: no, I have NO clue who is singing. It could be Brandon. But I’m not sure.)
• Kaleb Nation (blog) – Another teen writer who writes a blog over on WordPress. He has nice taste in music. Kaleb is a radio show host in several states and even overseas. Also a pretty nice guy. His first novel has an agent in NYC and currently searching for a publisher. (Yes, I’ll be linking the Amazon page once he’s published.)
• Phil Rizzo (MySpace Bands) – Another one of my cousins, Brandon’s older brother, who has a solo act in NYC. He has a nice, smooth sound.
• Riot Like Words (MySpace Bands) – An independently-produced rock band from Austin, Texas. I met the bassist, Craig, and their ex-drummer, Mike, while in the mall during this past summer. My sister, my boyfriend, and I all pitched in some money to buy their self-titled CD. The band is awesome.
• The Ryan Killers (MySpace Bands) – This is a local band that originated in my high school. It consists of four/five guys (they added a drummer) who generally act like idiots while making nice noises with instruments. The bassist, Bobby, is a guy I was really good friends with during freshman year, and mostly I’m doing this as a favor for him. (My ex-boyfriend, who hates my guts, is also part of the band.) But do check out their page. They have a demo up, and my boyfriend, who plays guitar, says it’s not bad. (I haven’t checked it out myself.)
• TheNewsCanWait (MySpace Bands) – A little on the screamo side, but I like these guys. Again, this is really more as a favor for the Mysterious Guy Who Is Always On The MySpace Page, as he asked me to help promote the band. I don’t have a CD. (I’m not exactly sure that they have one.) If I did have one, I’d probably be screamo-happy and telling you AAAAAAAAAALL about it.

If you want to be represented on the widget, add The TECH Project on MySpace and send a message requesting to be added. I’d be happy to have you!

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.