Round and Round On the Promotion Merry-Go-Round

It's been slightly over a month since I learned the release date of Treasuring Theresa—January 3, if you haven't been paying attention :-). At the time, I was in the middle of November Novel Writing Month and didn't have too much time to think about making plans to promote it. Since December came along, however, it seems I have been doing little else but promoting Treasuring Theresa.

I keep thinking to myself that tomorrow I will have time to work on my next novella and finish the NANO novel. But then there's always something else I realize that needs done—like this morning, when I got a notice that I'm due to upload an MVRWA blog for Friday…after I thought I had finished all of my blog commitments!

Oh well, blog writing is writing, after all, and I like it much better than trying to figure out how to apply layers in Photoshop. Ugh!

Here's what I've done in the past three weeks or so:

• created a promotional post card and printed 1,000 of them. Let me know if you would like a dozen or so! :-)
• wrote blogs and answered interview questions for what seems like an infinite number of review web sites (including two other blog posts for this one).
• signed up for Carrie Ann's New Year's Blog Tour, although I'm not exactly sure how a blog tour works yet.
• bought ads on The Romance Reader, Fallen Angel Reviews, and Long and Short Reviews and ordered a card in the Ellora's Cave card deck—I get twenty of them and my cover is in everyone else's too!
• created a box ad and a banner ad (have I mentioned that Photoshop drives me crazy?)
• created author pages on Goodreads, The Romance Reader, and Night Owl Reviews, and a few others I can't recall right now.
• took a Savvy Authors course on Building an Author Platform with instructor Debra Riley-Magnus. Excellent course! I highly recommend the course and her book Finding Author Success. She has another course coming up soon—Marketing Time Management. I am definitely signing up for that one!
• redesigned my web site (http://www.susanaellis.com) according to Riley-Magnus's guidelines. Check it out!
• created accounts for Twitter, Pinterest, Linked In, and beefed up Goodreads. (Warning: these things can become addictive!)
• created a new blog for the purpose of hosting guest authors of all sub-genres of romance, Susana's Morning Room.
• registered for the Romantic Times convention, made plans to order a Regency-era gown from a costume designer in England (to wear for the book signing et al), bought some Regency shoes to wear with it.
• set up Rafflecopter contests on my web site for each week of January (raffles to be held January 9, 16, 23, 31).
• arranged both a virtual release party for Treasuring Theresa and a physical release party at Panera's on January 3, 2013 from 9-12. Let me know if you'd like to attend.
• had professional photos taken with my new ringlet hairpiece :-)
• wrote bonus reads for Treasuring Theresa—in-depth character sketches of Lady Theresa (in next week's MVRWA blog) and Lord Clinton, plus an extra scene not included in the story. Available now on http://www.susanaellis.com! I'm also planning another one…whenever I get around to writing again.

For what it's worth, I have to say it's been a lot of fun doing these things. Well, perhaps not the technical struggles—like working with Photoshop—but oh my, how wonderful it feels when you finally see the results! Not to mention all that I've learned in a short time, like using widgets on Wordpress, and Website Builder on Godaddy. Some of my new author friends (from Ellora's Cave and the Entangled/Savvy Authors Smackdown) and I have joined together to jointly promote each other's work. Making new connections is lots of fun!

Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that never, ever, gets completely finished. So the question I keep asking myself—and the reason I need to take Riley-Magnus's next course on time management—is when do I say, “Enough! Time to start writing again!”

If you have figured this out already, please, please share your advice here…and I'll owe you big-time!

Hope to see you all on January 3, 2013 at Panera's to celebrate 

Release Day for Treasuring Theresa!