Today’s picture is another one from the treasure trove of Yellowstone National Park. For those of you who are not yet signed up for my newsletter, I encourage you to sign up. You can just leave a comment or click in the left frame to be taken to a sign-up form. In each newsletter, which I’ll now do quarterly, there is an original recipe and an artistic rendition of a photo, plus news.
Yesterday I spoke with a marketing consultant who encouraged me to keep doing the newsletter, though she said it was okay to drop back to quarterly. I don’t have a lot of new releases because it takes me a while to write a book. Right now my average is two books a year, and since I write in two different genres, that’s one book per year, per genre. To my relief, the marketing consultant did not consider this production rate a huge problem. But in-between, the newsletter is a place to connect with you and give you some behind-the-scenes things, maybe some writing excerpts from my work in progress, and, like I said, most importantly, an original recipe! And a pretty picture. I know you get them here, but I try to provide something even more special in the newsletter.
Why, with so much information available on the Internet, did I hire a marketing consultant for half an hour? Well, there’s a lot of advice out there, and I found myself overwhelmed. I was concerned that I was wasting time and money, and that there were more effective places to concentrate both of these precious resources. I was correct about their being higher-leveraged ways to concentrate my resources, but I was also validated in what I’m doing from a social media standpoint. This validation encourages me to keep up the work.
A half-hour consultation with a marketing expert was remarkably effective. I could not believe how much I was able to pack in. She took a look at my website, my blog, my Facebook page, and my Goodreads account while we were talking. She also answered about 40 questions. The consultant, Rebecca Berus, not only is a trained marketing specialist, she has a background in the publishing industry, at a publisher and an agency. I provide this name as a help; I’m not getting anything from Rebecca. I just thought this post begged the question, Who was the consultant?
Okay, here is today’s photo. I call it Red Biscuit, but I don’t know why. It’s actually yellow. I think it was an effect of my sunglasses. I guess I’ll call it Yellow Biscuit, now that I’m home wearing computer glasses. (The photo was taken in Biscuit Basin.)
Nicci Carrera 