Promotional Investments and Returns

Promoting one's book is sometimes a matter of investment without really knowing what the return will be. For example, I've invested my time and effort recently into two articles for the on-line magazine, the Catholic Exchange. I receive no payment from them but hope that they drive traffic to this blog and to my publisher's website. Perhaps a few readers will order a copy of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. The first article was on the HHS Mandate/Henry VIII connections noted by various pundits and the second on Blessed John Henry Newman's famous clarication on conscience ("Conscience has rights because it has duties.") in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.

I've also submitted and had appear a three part series on the celebration of the Catholic Mass in England during the sixteenth century on this blog. One of the blogmasters has asked me to become a regular contributor there, periodically/monthly submitting a post for publication. (Perhaps a sequel with information on the seventeenth century, with notes about the embassy chapels in London?) Here is the first part, here the second, and here the third on Pray the Mass: Teaching the Beauty of the Catholic Mass.

While I'm working on my second book, I am still trying to find markets and connections for the first book, and for me, on-line blogs and print magazines (like OSV's The Catholic Answer) are the venues most readily available. As I spoke last year at the Catholic Writers Guild Live Conference, each author--particularly a part-time author--has to decide what she can and can't do to promote her book or her message. As I attempt to promote my book and at the same time increase knowledge of the history of the English Reformation and the Catholic Martyrs, that's what I'm doing.