Our Mission Statement
The Romance Writers University is owned and operated by Black Velvet Seductions. This site, which is a sister site to our main site, has been designed to provide new authors with the tools to assist them in their journey toward publication and to provide experienced authors the tools to enhance their writing careers after publication. Please show your support of this site by visiting the main site.
INSTRUCTOR: Laurie Sanders Editor, Black Velvet Seductions
CLASS VENUE: Workshop will be conducted using Yahoo Groups dedicated to the specific workshop. Workshop participants will be invited to the workshop by email. Please add LaurieSanders@blackvelvetseductions to your address book so you will not miss your invite to the workshop.
CLASS FORMAT: The format of the class will include instructional segments, time for questions and answers, and a lengthy hands on component where participants will work on their own marketing plans for their own published or contracted books.
DATE: Workshop will begin January 5, 2009 and run throughout the month of January.
DEADLINE FOR SIGNING UP: Participants must sign up by December 28, 2008 for the January workshop which begin January 5, 2009
Although much of a writer’s life seems to be dedicated to attaining that first milestone of professionalism, publication, the writer’s journey doesn’t end at publication. A writer’s success is largely determined by the writer’s ability to promote the book they have written.
With hundreds of new romance books hitting the shelves each month the idea that you can write it and readers will flock in to buy it doesn’t hold much water. Readers simply won’t show up in droves to buy a book they have never heard of, by an author they have never heard of.
The goal of marketing then, is to make sure large numbers of people have heard of you and your book and that they have a compelling reason to buy it.
We will approach promotion from the vantage point that it is not just about selling this particular book. Rather the goal is longer term than that, it is a series of steps designed to introduce the author as a new brand, which delivers a specific kind of product. We will address ways of initiating contact, and ways of maintaining that contact so that once the author has made contact with a prospective reader the contact is not lost, but is maintained, through a professional relationship that keeps the reader aware of the author and what the author is doing next.
We will address promotion through a variety of lenses including:
-Branding – the author as a brand
-Branding – the publisher as a brand
-Promoting the author and publisher brands together
-Permission based marketing – what it is – why it is perhaps the most important technique available today – and how to use it effectively.
-Building the opt in mailing list
-Delivering information
-How permission based marketing helps you build relationships with readers
-Viral marketing
We will take promotion apart, addressing a broad range of promotional activities (which you will have undoubtedly heard of before) and looking at their worth in terms of:
-Their ability to garner an immediate book sale
-Their ability to build the author brand
-Their ability to maintain a connection or build a relationship with the reader
-Their ability to spur readers to recommend you to other readers, creating a viral effect.
The goal of the workshop will be to show participants how to take the normal run of the mill promotional activities that all authors do and charge them up so that they are more powerful in terms of branding the author, building a connection and a relationship with the reader, which leads to additional sales and recommendations.
This workshop is required of all Black Velvet Seductions authors contracted after 9-1-2008