New professional website for my new "Do Ask, Do Tell III" book; what is my marketing strategy?

The “official website” for my new book (“Do Ask, Do Tell: Speech Is a Fundamental Right, Being Listened to Is a Privilege”, the 3^rd in the series) is available now, called “Doaskdotell3book”, link here.   The site was created by XLibris and includes some material from the press release questions.

The site is heavily scripted, and is maintained for one year according to the agreement.  It will not affect my publication on all my other sites, which don’t require much fancy programming. 

I’ve also received posters, business cards and book stubs.

  

The most important task in my court right now is to review all the fiction content (book manuscripts) I had developed in the 1980s and 1990s, many of them in hardcopy only.  I do want to get a fiction manuscript (now called “Angel’s Brothers”) professionally edited and submitted somehow by this summer. So I want to see what I was doing all these years.  It’s a little disturbing to see how much of it I had forgotten.  The first of these manuscripts, “The Proles” (1969) is discussed on a companion site here (link ).  The first “Fiction” story in the DADT III book is essentially Chapter 4 of “The Proles”, based on my experience in Basic Combat Training in the US Army after being drafted, at Fort Jackson, SC in 1968.

How will I sell the book?  Well, it’s a mixture of activity.  Finishing the rest of my content is really the top priority, and only I can do that right now.  There is some travel that I need to do, to locations important from episodes earlier in my life, or because of simply honoring others associated with an issue.  (I’d like to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama, even though I am a white male (gay).)

I do think that volunteering can help sell books.  That sounds like serving with the expectation with something, at least intangible, in return.  I don’t see anything wrong with that.  Service should always be thought through carefully.  Yet I see both sides even of that statement.

What about book fairs?  Maybe (there are LGBT fairs, especially in NYC), but I think that this book will be more likely mostly sold online, though Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the like. 

  

Amazon’s link for all my books is here.  This includes iUniverse POD's of the earlier books in the series. 

The Barnes and Noble link is here. I don’t see the 1998 booklet “Our Fundamental Rights” there.  I would have to hustle to find my own inventory somewhere.  It is dated. 

I’ve had entries on other retailer’s websites, including Powell’s and Books-a-Million.  Maybe I sound “disloyal”, but the media business has changed so much with the Internet that I haven’t really kept track of the bricks and mortar business lately  (I actually applied for a retail job at a Barnes and Noble store in 2004, never heard anything).  My earlier DADT books used to live at the Lambda Rising, but the Washington DC store near Dupont Circle closed a few years ago out of competition problems.  The closest thing to it now is Kramerbooks and Afterword Cafe  (book store and restaurant, link ), in the next block.  I should pay that store a visit.   Another similar business is Busboys and Poets (link ), one store actually at Shirlington in Arlington.  Food and Friends has sponsored some “night outs” with this group.

But, I have to finish my real “homework” first.

See also the earlier posting on this matter Feb. 27.