Monday's Musings

We had a great time listening to Vicki Lewis Thompson speak at our OCC chapter meeting on Saturday. She spoke about "branding" or "trademarking" yourself as a writer, so that your name might be synonymous with something you do rather well. For her, of course, she's known as the writer of the NERD books. Everyone knows that and her tale of how that first book got on the bestseller list is truly remarkable. Luck and timing have a lot to do with it, but you have to write a great book that's marketable first. Nerd in Shining Armor was Kelly Ripa's last Book of the Month pick and she was invited on the Regis and Kelly Show. She also spoke about writing a Beta hero and how that worked to her advantage. One of the most profound things she offered, was reciting the stats on advertising and how only 6% of readers buy a book based on that. Most use author name recognition or decide by title and back cover blurb. And we learned that a reader takes about 3 seconds in deciding whether to buy a book or not. Interesting facts, and I came away from her talk with many new ideas.