Elrena Evans is a White Rose author for The Wild Rose Press. Together with Literary Mama Senior Editor Caroline Grant, she is co-editor of Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008).

So you’ve written the book. You’ve gotten an offer, you’ve signed the contract, you’ve edited yourself cross-eyed. Now all you have to do is wait for publication day.

While you’re waiting, this is the perfect time to start thinking about publicity—the bridge that will span the gap between you and your readers, the tool that will bring your book to your buyers. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Create a website for your book, whether you buy a new domain specifically for the book, or simply make a dedicated page on your author website. (What? You don’t have an author website? Stop reading this, and go make one. Now!)

The website can be as simple or elaborate as your web skills allow. Make sure not to forget the basics: your book title, purchasing information, and your events schedule. Post the cover image of your book, a photo of yourself, and consider posting an excerpt from the book (check with your publisher about how much you can post online), the table of contents, early reviews, etc. Decide whether you want to maintain a blog about the book, with regular updates about how you wrote the book and how you’re marketing it, or whether the site will be more static. Once you’ve created the website, spread the word! Comment on writers’ websites and related blogs, send the URL to your local newspapers’ book reviewers, radio shows, and of course, tell all your colleagues, friends and relations.

2. Consider making marketing schwag – postcards, bookmarks, magnets and the like—to distribute to friends, neighbors, the UPS woman, the school crossing guard. If you already have a cover image, ask your publisher for permission to use that (be sure to credit the cover designer!) If you don’t have an image yet, you can still make some splashy giveaways plastered with your book title and the URL of your book’s website (see #1). It’s easy to set up a CaféPress store to sell these items, or make postcards and magnets at your local copy store.

3. Consider making a book trailer that you can splash up on YouTube, your book’s website, your author website, and all the social networking sites (see below). Some publishers will even put trailers on their webpages, and Amazon allows you to post videos as well.

Making a book trailer isn’t necessarily the daunting task it sounds like—it can be as simple (or as elaborate!) as you like. If you Google “book trailer” you’ll get about 1,040,000 hits, enough to give you some inspiration to get started. As with the website, think about your target audience: what do you want to tell them about your book? What mood do you want to evoke? Will you do that primarily with pictures, text, video, or some combination? Don’t be afraid to experiment—nobody needs to see anything until you have a finished product.

4. Network: online. Create a page for yourself and/or your book on Facebook, Red Room, Twitter, and BookTour. All of these sites make it easy for you to post your events schedule, images, and videos. You can cross-link from one to the other (so you don’t have to create original material for each), but make sure to keep each one updated, as you’ll find different readers at each site.

5. Network: in person. Go to your local bookstore(s) and libraries and introduce yourself. Say you’d be interested in coming in to do a reading, signing, or other event, and see what they say. If you write in a specific genre, ask if the store has a book club devoted to that genre—could you come in as a featured speaker? Could your book be on the reading list? Consider going to book club meetings to get to know the people who attend.

6. Once you’ve set up a reading or other in-person event, get ready to publicize your event. Announce it on your website, your book’s website, all the social networking sites you joined, and any author chat groups or listservs you belong to. Hang flyers in your local libraries, coffee shops, etc. Most bookstores will do their own publicity, but it never hurts to ask what you can do, both in-store and beyond, as well. Prepare all your schwag—postcards, magnets, bookmarks, buttons. Practice your reading ahead of time, and don’t forget to smile.

7. Don’t get discouraged. Bookstore and library events aren’t always well-attended. Between the two of us, one has done a reading where the bookstore forgot she was coming, and the other a reading where the only person in attendance was her mother-in-law. Keep smiling (aren’t you glad you practiced?). Thank the bookstore or library for having you in, regardless of the turnout, and ask if there might be another time you could come back. They’re likely to say yes.

8. Budget. Publicity can be both expensive and exhausting, and you need to decide at what point enough is enough. Are you reaching your readers? Do you feel like the benefits are outweighing the cost? If you were lucky enough to get an advance on your book, is there any of it left? Most importantly: are you enjoying yourself, are you having fun? Do you have enough time left to live your life and/or write your next book?

9. Write your next book.

~

About Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life:

This is the book we needed when we entered graduate school and the academic job market. We wanted to know that blending family life with life in the ivory tower might be possible; we needed to know that others were attempting this tricky balancing act.

Balance, as every working mother knows, is not a static state, perfectly still like an old-fashioned scale. The dancer in arabesque or the yogi in vrksasana are both perfectly balanced, every muscle aware and engaged. Their bodies are vibrantly alive as they continually assess and shift their poses, working and changing to hold a position that gives the illusion of stillness. This version of balance, this constant, alert, focused negotiation, is the lifelong process of mothers in the academy, and everywhere—working

out as we go along how to be whole people.

Excerpt from the introduction to Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life . For more information, visit www.mamaphd.com.