Most writers are shy of promotion. And yet, they need and want readers.

Our favorite fantasy is that we’re “discovered”. Someone else does all the work, and we just get to sit and write…

I love this interview, Kindle Author: Kindle Author Interview: Consuelo Saah Baehr, because the writer “gets” promotion:

“CONSUELO SAAH BAEHR: I began a blog and diligently post every two or three days. I also comment on sites like The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast and invariably I get views to my blog and my books. I am a frequent participant on the Kindleboards and find the camaraderie very inspiring. I do guest blogging and interviews every chance I get and have also taken out two small ads on the Kindleboards. I did a Goodreads giveaway and attracted almost 900 participants. I send review copies to reputable reviewers and hope they’ll take the time to look at the book. I just keep doing what I can. I’m not very savvy technically but I cobble things together. I spend a part of every day doing some sort of marketing.”

What promotion will you do, today, tomorrow, this week?

I encourage you to learn advertising and branding. Learning how to do it is key. Once you know how, you may cringe initially, but then you’ll find that you enjoy it, and accept that promoting is a part of your writing life.

What will you promote today?

A tip: promotion starts while you’re writing your book. Start a blog, get known. Take baby steps.

This article, Why Book Trailers Are Now Essential to the Publishing Industry, suggests:

“Book trailers are relatively recent additions to the literary world. Most of the authors I know detest the very idea of them.”

You may well hate the idea of having to create a book trailer once you’ve written your novel.

However, if you’re in the planning stages of writing, consider writing a script for your planned novel. Much like a blurb, your trainer will get you thinking about your voice and tone, situations, scenes, narrative… in fact, everything you need to be thinking about, in visual form.

In other words, scripting a trailer can kick-start your imagination.

I’m planning novel which will have more than a touch of humor. Thinking visually has helped me to understand what I think is funny, and what scenes would be fun to include.

I suggested the “script a trailer for your book” to one of my students who’s stuck in the “dreaded middle” of her novel. It gave her some excellent ideas for scenes, and a new climax, all within 20 minutes.

She said: “When I thought about the trailer, it helped me to see a couple of my characters in a completely new and fresh way. I suddenly knew what they’d do next. They feel like real people to me now.”

Angela Booth’s writing guides have been created to help you to make money from your writing every day. Join the thousands of writers who are making great money with their writing skills.

I’m running a poll on my writing blog (please vote) asking writers about their greatest writing challenge.

To date, 40 per cent have chosen “completing projects I start”.

My theory is that it’s hard for writers to complete projects (especially long projects like books) because it’s hard to manage all their material. Their research, notes, ideas and multiple drafts, can lead to confusion. And this confusion leads to procrastination. I give you a wonderful writing process to follow in my Easy-Write Process, which eliminates procrastination because you always know what you should be doing next.

But how do you manage all the bits and pieces you need for even the smallest writing project?

My solution, and that of many other writers, is Scrivener.

There’s an excellent case study on managing lots of drafts and information here. This article, Literature and Latte – Scrivener Case Studies, describes novelist Monica McCarty’s process. She keep’s her series’ Bible in a separate Scrivener file:

“McCarty’s Series Bible is divided into three folders: ideas, proposals and books one through to 12. ‘When I transferred the information from Word it consisted of about four different folders containing some thirty plus documents from all over the place,’ she says. ‘Now, if I suddenly have an idea for book 8 I can go straight in to the right place and add it rather than having to scroll down an entire document and look around all night for it.”

If you don’t want to splash out for Scrivener, I suggest you keep a project journal.

John Steinbeck’s journal for East of Eden, kept as a series of letters, has been published: Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters, of course.

Your aim in writing your book’s journal shouldn’t be to have it published; it’s to keep you “in” the book as you’re writing it, and to keep track of all your materials.

Before Scrivener, I kept all my project journals in MS Word documents. If I misplaced a piece of research, a simple search helped me to locate the section of the document in which I linked to the research on my computer, or on the Web. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it proved effective.

Big tip: do keep all your thinking about the book in Scrivener, or in your book journal too. Get all your complaints and angst out of your head, and onto your computer screen. (Don’t delete these.) Making your thought processes conscious in this way keeps you writing: your negative thoughts don’t get a chance to fester.

Writing a book is a long project. You’ll complete your book if you stay organized.

Amanda Hocking has just signed a four-book $2 million deal with St.Martin’s, for the world English language rights.

This article, Amanda Hocking Sells Book Series to St. Martin’s Press – NYTimes.com, reports:

“‘I’ve done as much with self-publishing as any person can do,’ Ms. Hocking said in an interview on Thursday. ‘People have bad things to say about publishers, but I think they still have services, and I want to see what they are. And if they end up not being any good, I don’t have to keep using them. But I do think they have something to offer.’”

Let’s see… she earned $2 million from her ebooks, and then St. Martin’s paid $2 million for the rights… that’s $4 million in around a year. And her books are still earning, AND she’s being launched by a major publisher…

Very nice.

There are many lessons you can take from this, the primary one being that the gatekeepers are gone, and that you can publish what you like, when you like.

Huge congratulations to Amanda, who’s still very young. I can’t wait to see where she goes from here; she has an amazing future.

What’s your candidate for the best book title in the world?

Mine’s William Manchester’s A World Lit Only By Fire… I can’t think of a more evocative title for a book about the Middle Ages.

OK, over to you — what’s your candidate for the best book title in the world? Send me a message on Twitter.

If you’re in the process of writing a book, chances are that you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about a great title. Relax. You’ll have plenty of time to change it before publication, and your editor will weigh in on the title too.