Reviews

I want to thank my friend Stephanie Barmann for getting me hip to the following stuff.

On of the more important facets of your promotion campaign will be reviews. Lots of people read them and but the books or films based on what their favorite reviewer says. However, if you are like me, you won't get a response from the reviewer at the Los Angeles Times.  (Seriously, I didn't even get a Snoopy letter - you know, thanks for your submission and thanks for not submitting again)  So how does a self published author or a small press publisher or small indy film maker get reviews?

Internet to the rescue!  There are a ton of new reviewers out there who want to review your book or film. And the good news is they are all in one centralized location, or rather, several centralized locations.

Bloggers are the new reviewers.
Tomoson.com -http://www.tomoson.com/ and  Bloggerdise.com - https://www.bloggerdise.com/account/frm_modify.cfm are two sites that allow you to give away your product to reviewers - in your case, electronic copies of your books or screeners of your film. You can reach thousands of people all at once. It's easy to set up, you should open an account as a promoter, not a blogger for these purposes.

And having a blog isn't a bad idea either. You should do everything you can to get your name out there. Blogs, both reading and comment and having one yourself are great ways to let people know the real you and to promote you books. Just be sure you aren't comments simply to push your book. Try instead making a comment on the blog itself, add a salient reference and then sign with your website or tie it to your book or film.

There is also a site you can use to see how well you are being heard on the internet, it's called Klout.com. It is an invaluable tool. It tells you how much you influence and how good your network is. Sign up today. You need to make that number as high as possible.

Finally. I want to mention virtual book tours.  I am sure these can be used for films as well. You can have your director or screenwriter do the tour and you never have to leave home. This is wonderful for authors. These are often set up by companies. You can pay hundreds of dollars for on month tours and it is probably with it, they can get you in some pretty big papers, but there are also some really good free sites like http://nurtureyourbooks.com/vbtblog/?p=2682. I haven't done much research on this and would be interested in feed back. I'm going to try them myself. :D

Explore these websites and good marketing!