(Kathleen Kent guest blogged during the very first BBAW and we’re thrilled to welcome her back!)
I have to admit that I have been slow in appreciating and utilizing various social web networks as they relate to book promotion. I’m from the generation that grew up with black and white television sets. I watched all of the world’s unfolding events in varying shades of grey. We had radio, of course, and one telephone— for a while on a party line—which made me think for a brief period of time that I wanted to be a professional spy. Little did I know that the “party line” would be reinvented in a new, powerful way, giving access of books and authors to thousands of readers.
A good portion of my adult life was spent living and working in New York City in various commercial enterprises. But all the while I was working, I was thinking about writing full time. I had always written for my own pleasure, but it wasn’t until I was close to fifty that I chose to leave a career I’d spent twenty years building, move to my childhood home of Texas, and begin writing my first book.
My perception of promotion and marketing while I was completing the book was extremely limited. I was only aware of the traditional methods of book promo, such as author readings in bookstores and interviews in front of a live audience. If asked at the time to recall such an event, I would have described the author talks I had attended at the New York library, which was wonderfully intimate, but sometimes thinly attended.
Five years later my first novel, The Heretic’s Daughter, was published. The story is based on the history of my grandmother back nine generations, Martha Carrier, who was hanged as a witch in 1692. Soon after publication, I started receiving dozens of emails from readers who were also descendents of Martha, many of them contacting me through the wonderful website designed by my publisher. I joined Facebook and soon dozens more extended family contacted me. Through my book website, email, and an auxiliary website dedicated to postings from Martha’s descendents, I was able to gather over 250 Carrier descendents in Salem for the launch of my second novel, The Traitor’s Wife, which chronicles the life of Thomas Carrier, Martha’s husband, who was a soldier during the English Civil War; and who was rumored to be one of the executioners of King Charles I of England.
In the past few years I’ve come to greatly appreciate the power of the web in reaching a multitude of potential readers. The Heretic’s Daughter has been published in over a dozen countries and I receive email and Facebook postings from all over the world. Through my new blog site, and blog tours I hope to reach an even wider audience. I’m very exciting about the blogger format which brings vast numbers of geographically disconnected readers together in real time over the internet. It gives a far-reaching voice not only to the author, but to the readers as well, and offers a stimulating forum for the exchange of ideas, reviews, opinions and commentary.
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The book launch for The Traitor’s Wife must have been some party. I’m reading it now and loving it.