Congratulations! You’ve got a book deal. Now here’s the bad news: your publicist (your third) has left the company, your editor had a nervous breakdown, and everyone’s lost faith in your little book that could. You could sit at home and wallow over your stacks of autographed books or you could power on the laptop and be a guerilla. This week on Writers Revealed, learn from four authors who have successfully marketed themselves online. From MySpace to Virtual Book Tours to videos, learn how you can be your own marketing & publicity machine.

EXCITED? Then chat live with Kevin Smokler, David Wellington, Andi Buchanan and Josh Kilmer-Purcell, this Sunday 7PM EST/4PM PST. We also have three copies of David Wellington’s book to give away to our lucky readers/listeners! So leave a question here or feel free to phone in on Sunday and you might just score a free copy of Thirteen Bullets! More about the books and authors after the jump.

About Bookmark Now: An anthology of original essays from our most intriguing young writers, Bookmark Now boldly addresses the significance of the production of literature in the twenty-first century. Or simply, “How do we talk about writing and reading in an age where they both seem almost quaint?”

The book features authors in their twenties and thirties - those raised when TV, video games, and then the Internet supplanted books as dominant cultural mediums ˜ and their intent is to examine: (1) how this generation came to writing as a calling, (2) what they see as literature’s relevance when media consumption and competition have reached unprecedented levels, and (3) how writing and reading fit in with the rest of our rapid,
multitasking world.

Building the Buzz Online, How? Chief Evangelist of BookTour.com, Kevin did Virtual Touring way back when (2003) and for Bookmark Now, and he’s been blogging since 2001. Kevin consults clients in the publishing world (Little, Brown, HarperCollins, Hyperion and Barnes & Noble) on technology issues.

Author Bio: Kevin Smokler is the editor of Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times (Basic Books) which was a San Francisco Chronicle Noteable Book of 2005. His writing has appeared in the LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Fast Company and on National Public Radio. He lives in San Francisco where he’s the Chief Evangelist of BookTour.com.

About Thirteen Bullets: They said the vampires were extinct. The evidence proves otherwise: at a routine traffic stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, State Trooper Laura Caxton discovers there are three new vampires at large. As bodies pile up she is joined by a grizzled old US Marshal: Jameson Arkeley, the last living vampire hunter. She’ll need to learn everything he knows in a hurry—especially when the vampires take a personal interest in destroying her body and soul.

Building the Buzz Online, How? Thirteen Bullets was originally serialized free online. A short chapter was published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It remains available free and online in its entirety at www.thirteenbullets.com Wellington and his business manager Alex Lencicki promoted the site through links by prominent bloggers, by creating a page on Myspace, and the inception of Wellington’s online forum. After publication in May, they upped the ante by releasing a promotional video on YouTube: not just a book trailer but a short film in its own right. Click here to view the film.

Author Bio: David Wellington is the author of Monster Island and Monster Nation (both with Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006) and now Thirteen Bullets (Three Rivers Press, May 2007). He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Penn State and currently resides in New York City with his wife Elisabeth and their dog Mary. In 2004 he began serializing his horror fiction online, posting short chapters of a novel as they were researched, plotted and composed in real-time. By word of mouth readers learned of the project and returned three times a week to watch the story evolve. The finished project became his debut novel, which has been featured in Rue Morgue, Fangoria, and the New York Times. For more information please visit www.davidwellington.net.

About Mother Shock: Mother Shock is a look at the culture shock of new motherhood; It’s a Boy and It’s a Girl are collections of essays on the peculiarities of raising sons and daughters; and Literary Mama is an anthology featuring the best fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from the online literary magazine LiteraryMama.com.

Building the Buzz Online, How? I pioneered the parenting blog blog-tour, as I was the first author to organize a virtual book tour by tapping into the power of smart, literate, savvy mothers writing online. (Crazy, I know, but it’s true! People were very dismissive of the “narcissistic” “mommy-bloggers” at the time, and no one seemed to realize the value of this community or take them seriously.) This experience, combined with the experience of the national literary salon series I started with another author, was what sparked MotherTalk, Inc.

Author Bio: Andrea J. Buchanan is a writer living in Philadelphia. She is the author of Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It and the editor of three anthologies: It’s a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons; Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined; and It’s a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters. She is also a founding editor of the magazine Literary Mama and a co-founder of MotherTalk, Inc., a media agency connecting books with women who love to read them.

Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s debut memoir - the New York Times Bestseller I Am Not Myself These Days, (2006 Harper Perennial) - tells the story of his first year in New York City living as an advertising art director by day and a nightclub drag queen by night. It details his tragic-comic relationship with an S&M male escort, “Jack”, and their life together in his penthouse surrounded by a cast of Jack’s clients, drag queens, and other members of New York City’s fringes.  Armistead Maupin calls it “Heartbreaking and hilarious and heartwarming.” Entertainment Weekly called it “jawdropping.” Kilmer-Purcell and his partner divide their time between New York City and a farm in upstate New York. His next book, a novel entitled “Candy Everybody Wants” will be released by Harper Perennial in May 2008.

Building the Buzz Online, How? Josh could talk for hours about myspace and the memoirists collective and he will!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 5:50 am and is filed under Win Free Books!, Non Fiction, Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.