COMING UP IN NOVEMBER
Our November meeting will be held on Saturday, November 14. After the 9:00 A.M. business meeting, our speaker will be Kilby Blades, giving her workshop on The Book Marketing Audit.
Marketing feels like an albatross, doesn’t it? Always heavy around your neck, the sharp tip of its curved beak impossible to ignore as it digs into your skin. For most authors, it’s a burden. Even marketing geeks—people who actually like this stuff—struggle to find the time to write, as well as market, their books.
This workshop distills my insights from fifteen years spent as a digital marketing executive and five years spent as a multi-award winning author to offer customizable, action-oriented advice. It will show you why your current marketing isn't working and teach you to stop copying tactics that can't work for your library. It will teach you to focus on smart opportunities specific to your own brand.
The auditing mindset is what separates amateur marketers from professionals. Auditing exposes costly flaws and dangerous risks. It cares less about helping you fly faster down the track you’re already on and more about making sure you’re on the right track. It will improve your decision-making, place you in control, and salvage your sanity, your money, and your time.
Bio: Kilby Blades is a USA Today Bestselling author of Romance and Women's Fiction. Her debut novel, Snapdragon, was a HOLT Medallion finalist, a Publisher's Weekly BookLife Prize Semi-Finalist, and an IPPY Award medalist. Kilby was honored with an RSJ Emma Award for Best Debut Author in 2018. When she’s not writing fiction, Kilby helps authors overcome marketing barriers by exposing harmful myths and teaching them how to think like professionals. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and managed more than $40 million in ad spend in VP and C-level digital marketing roles. She has written for Writer’s Digest, Publisher’s Weekly and wrote monthly column on marketing for the RWA Romance Writer's Report for two years. She is the author of The Book Marketing Audit, The Book Reviews Boosterand Marketing Steamy Romance.
kilbyblades.com
If you are a CTRWA member, the Zoom link will be posted to the RWA forums. If you are not a member, you are allowed 2 free meetings a year. Please email connecticutrwa@gmail.com for the Zoom link.
For CTRWA members only!
A Special Marketing Focus on CTRWA's Groups.io forum.
A week long event with a different focus each day!
CTRWA members will get an e-mail invitation to the Groups.io forum.
Just accept the invitation to join and get access to the workshop.
October 26 - October 30
10/26--Isabel Morin on Facebook Takeovers
10/27--Jamie Beck on Working with Promotional Representatives
10/28--Stephanie Giancola on Facebook Ads and promoting your newsletter
10/29--Jamie Schmidt on Building Your Newsletter
10/30--Q&A Day.
Bios:
Jamie Beck: These days I dream up stories about love, family, self-discovery, and redemption. I’ve been honored to hit the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-seller’s lists, and to earn a spot on the Romance Writers of America’s Honor Roll. I’m so grateful to each and every reader who has given wings to this new chapter in my life.
When I’m not writing, you can find me dancing around my kitchen while cooking, and hitting the slopes in Vermont and Utah. https://jamiebeck.com/about-jamie/
Stephanie Giancola: Now a USA Today bestselling author of romance, Stephanie has published more than forty novels and novellas. She teaches a class in novel writing and also speaks at libraries, conferences and workshops on writing and publishing. stephaniequeen.com
Isabel Morin: Isabel began reading romances when she was thirteen years old. That's the year her grandmother came to visit, bringing with her a shopping bag filled with (very tame) Harlequin and Silhouette romance novels. Isabel was immediately and forever hooked.
She earned her MFA in poetry, but after she met her husband she was too happy to write melancholy poems. She was ready to try her hand at the kinds of stories she’d been gobbling up for years. Now she writes about people discovering themselves as they navigate their way to great sex and true love. https://www.isabelmorin.com/about
Jamie K. Schmidt:USA Today bestselling author, Jamie K. Schmidt is known for her erotically charged romances, Jamie’s books have been called, “hot and sexy, with just the right amount of emotional punch,” and “turbo-paced, gritty, highly sexual thrill rides.” As a #1 Amazon best seller and a 2018 Romance Writers of America Rita® finalist in erotica, Jamie writes daily, drinks lots of tea, and sneaks away to play World of Warcraft whenever she makes her deadlines. Along with her husband who lets her stick magnetic signs on his car about her books and her twelve-year-old son who wants to be her cover model, Jamie lives in Connecticut with her rescue pup Romeo, who is cool with her writing schedule as long as he can be cuddled up in a blanket next to her. You can find Jamie on Twitter at @jamiekswriter and on Facebook at jamie.k.schmidt.1, where she’ll be chatting about her latest book and wishing desperately for a kitten to be her new writing buddy and some carbs—not necessarily in that order. http://jamiekschmidt.weebly.com/
Meetings:
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