Deborah Rix’s favourite position for reading a book is head almost hanging off the couch and feet up in the air with legs against the back of the couch. She’s been reading too much from Scientific American for research and ideas and needs to get back to some fiction. She has a long standing love of science fiction, some of her favourite authors include William Gibson, Philip K Dick, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Douglas Adams, Iain M Banks. A bit old school.
Deborah enjoyed a successful career in entertainment publicity, live music promotion and event management. Which means she slogged through muddy fields for music festivals, was crammed into concert halls with too many sweaty teenage boys and got to go to Tuktoyaktuk (that’s in the Arctic Circle) for a Metallica concert. She lives with her family in Toronto, Canada, where she is the proprietor of The Lucky Penny, a neighborhood joint in Trinity-Bellwoods.
External Forces is her first novel.
Visit her website at www.DeborahRix.com.
Welcome to Book Marketing Buzz, Deborah. Can we begin by having you tell us a little about your book?
External Forces is the first book in a trilogy about Jess and her friends and their adventures through a future where evolution is the new religion and deviations from the divine plan are not permitted. Jess and all of the characters are faced with tough decisions and must decide who they are and what they stand for.
What is the first thing you did to promote your book once your publisher accepted your manuscript?
Well, my publisher is me, so I gave myself a huge pat on the back and looked awful smug for several days. Then I got down to business and ran a giveaway on Goodreads and began soliciting honest reviews from Goodreads readers.
After that, what happened?
Then I branched out and started approaching book bloggers and some Amazon top rated reviewers. I also set up a free weekend on Amazon and informed various sites about my free book. It went okay, not gangbusters, but not a fail either. And now the super mega blog tour has begun. In the meantime I have garnered mostly rave reviews, 4 and 5 stars.
What did your publisher do to promote your book?
My publisher, Dime Store Books? Well, they just sat around and cashed the checks. Wait, I am Dime Store Books and there have been no checks. I think they entered my book in a bunch of competitions and submitted it for a few respected industry reviews.
What’s your opinion on blogging? Do you see that it is helping sell your book or is it not making much difference in terms of sales?
I don’t know yet. This is my first book and my first blog tour. But I wouldn’t be doing this unless I thought it had merit. It’s tricky because some blogs are better than others and it’s hard to sift through them all to find the gems. While democracy is great and all, the problem is that you have to let everyone vote J There’s a bit of a trap between wanting the popular vote and wanting the informed vote. They are not the same thing.
I understand using the social networks to promote your books is also an effective marketing tool. Do you find it is or isn’t?
It’s hard to say. I’ve posted on facebook about my free weekend on amazon and a few people responded, but I don’t know how many actually went and downloaded my book. When I sent out personal emails to friends that may or may not be connected to me on facebook, I had a good response rate with people saying “I just downloaded it.” So I think some social networks can be impersonal and easy to ignore, while an email sent right to that person seems to have a bigger impact and a better response to the call to action.
Besides blogging and using the social networks to promote your books, what other ways are you promoting your book?
I’ve been establishing one on one relationships with some of the people that like my book. Selling it one person at a time.
If you had to pick just one book marketing tool that you’ve used to promote your book, which would you say has been the most effective?
Goodreads
What are your experiences with offline promotions such as booksignings?
None yet.
Thank you for this interview, Deborah. We wish you much success!
