Three Months Out

Tip of the Day: Back-to-School shopping is exciting (or maybe that's just me) but if you can hold off until after school starts, everything goes on sale a week or two in. (Exp. Target usually has all their backpacks, lunchboxes etc. 50% after labor day.)

I'm three months out now until the release of my first book. Eeeeeee! So I've been trying to figure out what I should be doing at this point to prepare. Here's what I've got:

Meet with publicist. Now is about the time when authors hook up with their publicist and talk about things like interviews, booksignings, events, media (if you're lucky!) etc. I have my first call with my publicist today.

Reviewers. I've also been getting a lot of requests from online bloggers to review my book. I've forwarded these to my publicist as I have no more advance copies to pass out.

Promotional Stuff. It's also time to get some promo items. I'm still deciding what I really want and what I really need. I like the business cards with the book cover on one side and the info on the other that I picked up a couple of weeks ago and I've been handing them out to people when they ask me about my book. I think I'll get more of these because they're so convenient and fit in my wallet. And I've ordered bookmarks (I'll do a separate post on these when they come in. And I might get postcards made. I hear it's a good idea to send post cards to independent bookstores to let them know you have a book coming out.

Think about launch. Do I want to do a signing? A party? An online contest? I need to start thinking about this stuff now.

Start filling out interviews. I'm part of a 40+ person blog tour with the 2009 debs and I've been getting interview requests from bloggers so I really need to get going with answering all these questions.

Web site. Alright, this one is all up to the hubby. He's been working on it though and I'm hoping it'll be cute!

Facebook Fanpage. My publisher set me up with a cute facebook fanpage and it has a great What Coffee Drink are You Quiz that I love. I'm so happy they thought to do this!

And...that's where I'm at. There might be more that I should be doing right now but I'm also working on that new book I mentioned last week (yes, I got back into gear!)

Any suggestions from you professional authors out there? Should I be doing something else at the three month pre-pub mark?

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut