The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil (Penguin Portfolio); available on Amazon

When I started this book blog almost two years ago, in June 2005, I wrote about topics that writers and authors wrestle with:

• Tips for a first-time book author
• Choosing a book title with a matching URL
• Crafting a sub-title (this was hard and I still don't love the one I ended up with)

Ya gotta learn how to promote your book

But what I didn't do (and what most first-time authors don't do) was give enough thought to how I was going to promote and publicize my book.

It's a process that should start many months before a book's publication date (six to eight months in advance, at least). And there are dozens of things you need to know to promote a book properly.

Bella Stander's Book Promotion 101

Over the weekend I had the chance to attend Bella Stander's Book Promotion 101 workshop here in Washington DC. It's an informal, hands-on event that was stupendously useful.

And even though it's eight months since my book was published (August 2006), there are still many things I can do to keep the buzz going.

She forced us (there were just eight participants) through the tortuous exercise of crafting a 30-second elevator pitch explaining why a reporter/editor/producer - or anyone - should care about our book.

She also invited several publicists, two authors and a media trainer as guest speakers to the day-long workshop. They were terrific.  

I especially enjoyed meeting Kenneth Ackerman, author of Young J. Edgar, due out in a few weeks. He explained how he wrote his own jacket copy as well as the copy for Carroll & Graf's book catalogue.

His copy emphasized a key selling point of the book: his biography of the young J. Edgar Hoover is extremely topical, as it ties into 9/11 and the kinds of civil liberties issues we're facing today.

Book Promotion Resources

Be sure to check out Bella's Resources page for tips on Recommended reading, book blogs, etc. My favorite book on book publicity (first recommended to me by my agent, Elizabeth Wales), is Lissa Warren's The Savvy Author's Guide to Publicity.

If you're on the West Coast (and even if you're not), Bella's next workshop is in L.A. on June 16, 2007. 

Thanks to Raven Lu Li, who lives in China and works for Accenture China, for translating Chapter 1 of my book into Chinese. We're hoping to interest a Chinese publisher in the foreign rights to the book. Raven has some contacts at Tsinghua University Press. Anyone have other suggestions?

New! A Chinese edition of The Corporate Blogging Book

Update: Penguin Portfolio has sold the rights to mainland China publisher, Publishing House of Electronics Industry. The Chinese edition comes out in 2007!

Download Chapter 1 in Chinese.

Well that counts for something, doesn’t it? Maybe a lot. I’m one of those bookaholics who judges books by their covers and their heft and their layout and type. And TCBB, designed by the clever folks at Penguin Portfolio, has a nice look and feel to it. (I’d give credit to the art director but I don’t even know who it is. Portfolio keeps a lot of this stuff under wraps. Not sure why.) A few comments from early readers:

The Corporate Blogging Book is a very nice book — every page has something essential in it — just open it up and you’re good to go!

- Chris Abraham

and

“Congratulations on a beautiful product! I’m honored to have been a small part of it and appreciate your mentioning me [in the acknowledgments]. I love the size and weight of the book — it’s perfect.”

- email from Meryl K. Evans (researcher for the book)

It’s the softcover pre-publication version of my book - a collector’s item! Keep it on your shelf or sell it on eBay (kidding… well, who knows?).

I’ve got two copies left that I will sign and send to two lucky winners.

All you have to do is enter our 2nd Annual One-Minute Blogging & RSS Survey. It’s 10 quick questions.

Cool. Take me to the One-Minute Blogging Survey.

What more could a girl ask for in one day? Well, Adrienne Schultz, my wonderful editor at Penguin Portfolio, shipped me a sample of the book cover - hot off the press (see left). It looks great. Wow, it’s a real book!

And Zane Safrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited and a prolific blogger, sent me flowers (in the photo)! Zane is one of the CEO bloggers I profile in the book. My favorite quote from him:

“Blogging helps me articulate and refine ideas in a linear fashion… ideas I may be thinking about for our company. So blogging improves my ability to communicate with my employees.”

And a nice kudo from Kirkus Reports

Read today’s review of TCBB from Kirkus Reports - Business & Personal Finance.

“Smart, witty and accessible.“

Oooh, I love it. What can I say?!

Raced to the FedEx up the street on Saturday afternoon (Feb. 11, 2006) to make the 4 PM cut off. I had promised my ever patient editor, Adrienne Schultz, that I’d get the copyedited manuscript back to Penguin Portfolio’s lower Manhattan office first thing Monday AM.

A few wet flakes were beginning to fall in Washington DC. And we got a nice dump of snow by Sunday morning. But it wasn’t what I call a storm (the snow was wet and heavy; no winds; no thigh high drifts). Well, New York City’s record snowfall (the biggest since recordkeeping began in 1869) was the REAL thing. And FedEx failed to deliver the manuscript Monday morning.

I was just a wee bit worried… there’s, er, only one copy of the copyedited manuscript as far as I know. That is, the 250-plus pages covered with the copyeditor’s red pencil marks and my corresponding pencil scratches and inserts.

But just checked through the FedEx tracking link and it was delivered at 9:30 this morning to Penguin’s offices on Hudson Street. Phew…

I’ve gotten the copy-edited [does copy-edited have a hyphen?? that’s the kind of thing the copyeditor knows… and I don’t] manuscript back from Portfolio and am going through it page by page.

I feel like I’m back in sixth grade. It’s covered with red marks and scribbles in red pencil. I’ve been  instructed to respond to the copyeditor’s suggested edits in a different color pencil. Not pen, mind you.

Oh, and to harken back to pre-Internet days, the manuscript arrived as 250+ loose pages with a giant rubber band around them. Lots of details and stuff to pay attention to. But so far this isn’t as taxing as writing the damn thing.