Polar Bears is a super random category and I love it. Please explain during the episode why is there. As horror/dark fantasy author most of my research involves things that get you on the FBI watch list :-) google searches include, but are not restricted to: "best corrosive agent for human bones", "difference between human and animal blood stains" and other fun stuff. I don’t have any questions for you guys, but I’ll be watching :-)

Evan, 

I mostly deal in sci-fi, so alas, I don’t think most of the research I need done is in any of your wheelhouses.
But I do have a story on the back burner of my brain that involves a synthetic contagion of some kind that sterilizes the entire human population, Children of Men-style. That could fall under the disease control/outbreak umbrella. If you can come up with anything about how such a plague might be created, how it might effectively spread across the entire world, or how it could be combated, that’d be of interest to me. :)

Hi All!

The next episode of Drinkshares: Last Call (airing July 25th) is all about research, and we’d love to get some audience participation happening.

Let us know if you have any writing research questions (for something you’re writing now or may write in the future) about the following:

Anthropology
App development trends
Art
Automation
Cars
Disease Control
Feminism
Herbalism
History
Human Labor
Mythology
Outbreaks/Outbreak Prevention
Polar Bears
Sociology
Tarot Symbolism

Let us know before Monday night and we’ll mention your name ^_^

During my pre-order phase, I didn’t think any bookstore or library would order a book that "might get published" so I spent no time in that effort.

I approached these outlets in person with my book in hand as soon as it was printed and "orderable".

I came prepared with a short pitch on "why their customers will like the book." I told them it was orderable in their system at the standard industry discount.

If I got any positive reaction at all, I also pitched setting up a book signing at the same time. I never mentioned "crowdfunding" because at this point, it looks just like any book from an author who has a publisher. Talking about crowfunding after your book is out will only confuse people and take away from the central message you want to convey which is "I have a great book from a reputable publisher that your customers want because . . . "

I left a copy of the book with them along with my business card.

This approach worked out pretty well. I have made author appearances at three different Barnes & Noble locations so far and am working on booking more. I’m also in several local Indie stores.

Approaching store managers in person worked better for me than writing or emailing. They get way too much correspondence from self-published authors and don’t spend much time (if any) reading these correspondences because they aren’t interested. They don’t really want to deal directly with authors, mostly just with distributors, their salespeople and sometimes publishers.

Don’t go to bookstores or libraries on the weekend or near the end of a workday. Try and catch these managers when their location isn’t very busy.  Around 10 am or 2 pm are good times. Don’t try and catch them just before or after lunch.

Even if you catch them when they have a little free time, they will evaluate your pitch in about 30 seconds and make up their mind very quickly whether they want to spend any more time than that on you or your book.

So be ready to impress them with your pitch right off the bat. "I have a great book from a reputable publisher - your customers want it because . . . . AND it is orderable in your system at the standard industry discount". Smile and hand them your book with your business card sticking out of it. Be ready to answer any questions they may have, but keep your answers short. Smile a lot. Tell the manager you like her shoes or something:-)

I’ve been working through my pre-order campaign in a series of stages. For my final month, I wanted to start reaching out to area bookstores and libraries to see if I can get any of them interested in picking up pre-orders of Tantalus Depths. It occurs to me that plenty of people have probably tried doing this in their campaigns, but I haven’t actually seen anyone talk about it yet.
So I’m throwing this question out to everyone: have you tried getting bookstores or libraries to invest in your pre-order campaigns? If so have you had much luck with it? Any tips or tricks would be helpful. I’ve gotten pretty good at the targeted advertising when it comes to personal acquaintances and persons in the community, but I have to imagine there are different tactics involved in targeted advertising to organizations, even small ones.

Thank you for the help, I posted an excerpt and would love any feedback.

I’m a habitual lurker over on Reddit. Sometimes I’ll post, but unless I know for a fact I can add to the growing conversations on the site I keep to myself. The only time I step outside of these practices are to promote the works of others.

Reddit is heralded as the frontpage of the internet, and with the many different subreddits on the site you can tailor your experience to suit your needs. Due to the huge influx of individuals they have on a daily basis many people created subreddits devoted entirely to promotions, where people can post about their work or that of their loved ones, favorite authors, musicians, etc. Suffice it to say, it is a wonderful place to freely advertise yourself.

When I decided to post my novel, The Weaver Chronicles: Graft, here on Inkshares I knew I’d have to promote myself to get the book funded. It was up to me to bring in those potential buyers if I wanted to be successful. It’s really a required element to the process.

The first place I went to was reddit.com/r/kickstarter, which has over 33,000 people subscribed to it. Original intended to allow people to promote either their kickstarter campaigns, or those that they felt were interesting and deserved a wider audience, it steadily grew to include Indiegogo and other crowdfunding sites. Personally, I’ve posted a number of campaigns there, and have seen a decent influx of sales for the many projects I have supported after having done so. More importantly they have received a huge increase in traffic, which I desperately want for Graft. I want people to see, to tell their friends about it, because I have faith in it.

After doing a quick search I discovered that no one has ever posted an Inkshares project to that subreddit. This put me into a very interesting situation, as there was no precedent set I couldn’t be impetuous and just post my own, at least not without the possibility of getting banned and losing that resource for future projects. I did the only logical thing, I messaged the moderators, and I’m still waiting for a response (I’ll probably message the Mod again this week to see if I can get an update). I’m sure you all can understand how this would us all, and I hope we get a favorable response.

The next subreddit I proceeded to check was reddit.com/r/inkshares. Honestly, this should have been the first place I looked, but I wasn’t really certain Inkshares would have it’s own subreddit based on the lack of mentions of Reddit these forums. I was surprised to find one, and that are 2 posts there, and a whopping 8 subscribers.

Reddit is a fantastic resource, especially for authors, and developing an Inkshares subreddit could drastically increase the amount of traffic to our respective projects. This would help not only in regards to follows, but also by word of mouth. If people love your work, they’ll promote it for you, and it’s remarkably easy to do on Reddit where in many cases all they need to do is copy and paste a url. There is an additional benefit, we will be able to create the type of community we want for ourselves, rather than being forced to endure what already exists.

Some places on Reddit lack a certain bedside manner, people can be confrontational and downright rude, but we have the ability to ensure that does not happen. Honestly, it’s going to take effort, and I know that Reddit is daunting for many people, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

Now, when posting in the r/inkshares subreddit you can also crosspost to other ones. This means that after posting to r/inkshares your post could simultaneously show up in r/crowdfunding (2,900 subscribers), r/wroteabook (3,000 subscribers if your project is funded or nearly there) and r/fantasy (over 97,000 subscribers here, but I wouldn’t necessarily self-promote there unless you use the specific thread for it or your book is on sale, it’s just an example) without much effort. Now, it becomes incredibly easy to do the same thing for our friends and fellow Inkshare authors, without the stigma that many subreddits have towards self-promotion.

I could probably go on forever about this, but I implore you to sign up for Reddit. Start checking out the other subreddits, make sure to become a part of the community before promoting yourself (stick to the rules of the subreddit, but the same thing applies for Goodreads if you haven’t already used that site), but subscribe to ours. We want people to go there, and in order for that to happen we need to cultivate a presence. People are lazy, and they can receive an astounding amount of information on Reddit very easily, we should be using it to our advantage.

If people want I can list off some subreddits where you can get started, most of which will be genre specific. If you have any questions I’ll do my best to try and answer them. It’s possible, also, for me to start helping you promote your work there, but I need you to start participating there as well.