Monday, August 18, 2008

Serendipity at a Bookstore!

Part of being an author is to market your books. And, the best way to "get your name out there" is to make your books available to readers. This also creates an opportunity for the author to hold booksignings which creates publicity for the book. It's a win-win situation.

Well, one day as I visited a local bookstore here in Raleigh called Quail Ridge Books, I had just made arrangements for the store to carry my books and was about to leave the store until I noticed an announcement on the cash register, "Meeting Saturday Night - Learn about Podcasting, by Write to Publish Group."

I considered myself familiar with podcasting already because I was just interviewed by Yvonne Perry's podcast "Writers in the Sky". However, Tim and I decided to attend the meeting anyway.

Well, I found the meeting to be very interesting. Turns out that the talk was about converting your book into a podiobook. One of the speakers was particularly helpful and very knowledgeable about this new concept. His name is Stacey Cochran and he directed me to his website: http://www.howtopublishabook.org/ . After reading his website, I decided to learn more about this type of publishing. Sure enough, another meeting was scheduled!

It was a smaller group that had several professional people in attendance, including Nancy Stolfo-Corti. She is a professional voice over talent as well as PSA announcer for breast cancer research. Needless to say, the wheels in my brain began turning and I gave her a copy of "Living To Tell About It, A Pursuit of Normalcy" and asked if she would read my book so that it could be downloaded into a mp3 format. She read it almost immediately, and called me the next day to eagerly accept my request! She is arranging for music and professional narration for the book! Needless to say, I was thrilled.

So, I'm feeling very blessed these days! Nancy has also posted my book video on her own website and encourages others to read my book. As we speak, she is almost complete recording my book. I am so anxious to hear the finished product as I know it will be great!

When I wrote my book, it wasn't my intention to do it to make alot of money. I wanted to get my message out there to people. That's why I am going to make my book available by downloads on my blog and other sites as well. Who knows? maybe by making the book available, it will shape somone's future pursuits or interests.

One good turn deserves another, so please, check out my new friiend's book: Stacey Cochran, "The Colorado Sequence". It's also available for a free download on podiobooks.

Stay Tuned for more news!

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