This week I wanted to share some more tools and strategies I've already been working with -- on the heels of last week's self-promotion and collaboration post. The cover of my book was finished (what seemed like) pretty early in the process -- we finalized everything last December. I was lucky to have been able to talk directly to the designer, Randi Hazan, as she was starting the process in September. She and the art director at the Berrett-Koehler came up with a number of designs that we then put to my community to vote on, and we ended up with the gorgeous cover you see here. From there, I knew that I would start hitting meetings and conferences this winter where I wanted to share something tangible with friends and colleagues when they asked how the book was coming along, as well as the obvious foisting of material onto strangers I met. So, in January, I asked for my postcards to be printed by the time I was leaving for the SXSW conference in March. They arrived at the end of February. I can't tell you enough how helpful having the postcards this early has been -- since the cover is so visually striking, it's a great piece to hand to people. Even if they toss it later, it's still associated in their memory bank of me, and I'm hoping that it'll jog their memory when I talk to them in the future about the book. In the land of digital strategy, I'm working with the digital community builder at B-K to suss out some ideas that will be strategically useful and sort of different/interesting from traditional efforts. What I've learned so far is that it's incredibly difficult to market your own material--no wonder people hire consultants and publicists. Since I kept hitting roadblocks in my own brain, I finally asked a couple of friends if they'd be willing to give Bonnie an hour of their time on my behalf. Luckily, my friends are kind, and they've been cooking up some interesting things--I should have more info next week. Moral of the story: ask friends for help. No woman is an island. Last, I also want to stress that documenting your process publicly (through blogging, sharing on social networks, or both) while working on your book can be incredibly useful on a number of fronts. First, it's cathartic. I used Twitter for both research and therapy when I was writing, and I found my community to be insightful and great cheerleaders. Second, it helps build interest for the book. I was surprised to learn that people enjoy partaking in the process of others' creativity... At the beginning, it felt like I was being really self-absorbed (even for a Leo!), but people seemed to like seeing where I was with things. Especially posting pictures to Flickr (and sharing on Twitter & Facebook) of different stages helped me mark milestones, and provided my community with insight into what I was working on. The day may come when I get tired of people asking, "How's the book coming along?" But for now, it's pretty fabulous to have people passively aware of its existence, and that takes a huge burden away from the tremendous marketing demands every book faces.