King Arthur Movie Tristan

Driven by a passion for his adopted country, Robert Hart became the “godfather of China’s modernism,” inspector general of China’s Customs Service, and the builder of China’s railroads, postal and telegraph systems, and schools, but his first real love is Ayaou, a young concubine.

Lloyd Lofthouse, the author of My Splendid Concubine, has stopped by my blog today for a guest post! Mr. Lofthouse is on a virtual book tour. He says: 'A virtual book tour like the one I’m on now is like going on a discovery journey and finding a world you didn’t know existed.'

Read what else he has to say about virtual book tours and promoting books....









Learning the Art of Promotion One Day at a Time


Hello, I’m Lloyd Lofthouse, the author for My Splendid Concubine. Every time my wife and I walk into a bookstore we think, “So many books and not enough time.” That’s the reason why most authors cannot expect anyone else to promote their work. It can be expensive and time consuming and most publishers do not have the money or the people—budgets don’t allow it. Take into account the current economy, and the prospect of having a publisher pay for a promotion is less than grim. There were more than a hundred thousand new titles published last year. There are several million books in print. Imagine how much it would cost to promote all of those books with a traditional book tour.


For most publishers, a book written by an unknown is a gamble like taking a baby, or in this case a book, and tossing it in the ocean to see if it sinks or swims. Except for authors like Steven King or Amy Tan, along with a few well known others, most authors receive little or no support from publishers.


It’s expensive enough to print, store and possibly buy back the books that do not sell. If you are an author, have you sat down and figured out what it costs to fly to a dozen cities scattered across America in a two week whirlwind tour. Don’t forget the cost of hotels, food and a taxi to drive you from bookstore to bookstore. It can cost thousands.


Also, a book tour doesn’t start the day you get on the airplane. It starts months in advance as someone, either the author or a publicist, calls bookstores and the media in each city to schedule author events and interviews if possible. Take into account that publicists do not work for free. Publicists that arrange traditional book tours can cost thousands of dollars. Sounds depressing doesn’t it.


Stop! Don’t give up yet. There’s hope in sight. There is a growing community of blogs and websites that support authors and writing. Authors have been turning to the Internet for a new kind of book tour. Instead of bouncing from city to city in airplanes and eating bad food for weeks, authors may stay at home and go on virtual book tours. Authors may use Google to help find the blogs and websites to visit or they can turn to a publicist like I did when I signed a contract with Pump Up Your Book Promotions. For the price of one or two round trip tickets to cross the country, a tour was arranged for December and January.


Although My Splendid Concubine hasn’t hit the best seller lists on this tour, a few copies sold and more people were exposed to my novel. That means the number of people aware that My Splendid Concubine exists and has had good reviews is growing. The best advertising in the world is word-of-mouth. Authors can’t buy it. However, they do have to get out there so people notice. It will be difficult to get word of mouth going if no one knows sees or hears about the book you wrote except family and a few friends.


It took most of my life to gain the writing skills and another nine years to research and write My Splendid Concubine. I plan to spend as much time promoting my novel and getting the word out as I did writing the novel. I’ve got eight years to go. The first year I focused on getting reviews. I also mailed hundreds of post cards to book stores; been a guest on talk radio coast to coast; had successful author events at book stores close to home, and ran a quarter page ad in a local magazine.


A virtual book tour like the one I’m on now is like going on a discovery journey and finding a world you didn’t know existed. I’ve read that fifty percent of what an author does to promote his work won’t pay off. That means the other fifty percent will. You won’t know what works until you try it. Meanwhile, have a good time and enjoy yourself. I am. If you are curious about some of the blogs and websites I’ve been a guest on during the virtual tour, I’ve added links to most on my Website.


Visit www.mysplendidconcubine.com to see. There are links to a few of the radio talk shows too. Click on the menu and go to the Press Kit page to find those links and listen into the Dr. Pat Show on KKNW-AM from Seattle or to the Smith and Riley show on WFLF-AM, Orlando. If that doesn’t interest you, maybe you would enjoy an hour with After Midnight With Rick Barber on KOA-AM 850, a 50,000 watt station known as the Blow Torch of the West, out of Denver Colorado. As you can see, I’ve been having fun.






ABOUT THE AUTHOR:






As a field radio operator, Lloyd Lofthouse was a walking target in Vietnam in 1966. He has skied in blizzards at forty below zero and climbed mountains in hip deep snow.



Lloyd earned a BA in journalism after fighting in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine. Later, while working days as an English teacher at a high school in California, he earned an MFA in writing. He enjoyed a job as a maitre d’ in a multimillion-dollar nightclub and tried his hand successfully at counting cards in Las Vegas for a few years. He now lives near San Francisco with his wife, with a second home in Shanghai, China. Lloyd says that snapshots of his life appear like multicolored ribbons flowing through many of his poems.



This link takes you to Lloyd's 'Vietnam Experience' page filled with photos. He took many of them. Since Lloyd still has to edit the photos so they load faster, this page may load slow for older computers.



This link will take you to a media piece from a Southern California newspaper that Lloyd copied and posted on his Website that will give you an idea about his teaching years.



If you are interesting in learning more about Lloyd's teaching experience, you are welcome to read about it at AuthorsDen. 'Word Dancer' is a memoir of the 1994-1995 school year. He kept a daily journal that year. He is using that journal to write 'Word Dancer'. Everyday, when he arrived home, Lloyd wrote an entry in that journal. It sat on a shelf in his garage for fourteen years gathering dust. Spiders moved into the binder and built a nest. After all those years, Lloyd forgot he'd written it. When he was cleaning the garage, he found it again. Lloyd started reading, remembering and writing. Everything he writes in 'Word Dancer' happened. He's using a primary source as his guide. Memory may be faulty, but a daily journal written the day an event took place is as accurate as it can get from the author's point-of-view.



Accomplishments: Lloyd's short story "A Night at the Well of Purity" was named a finalist for the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards.


As a teacher, Lloyd found satisfaction in the number of students that published nationally and internationally while attending his English and journalism classes.


You can visit his website at www.mysplendidconcubine.com/


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Thank you for stopping by Mr. Lofthouse! Best of luck. My Splendid Concubine sounds like a wonderful read.



Special thanks to Dorothy over at
http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/ for making this possible!