1587: Book Marketing on a Budget After Loss with Robin Beamer Dalton

Robert Plank 00:04 We're here to talk about the book Threads of Obsession by Robin Beamer Dalton, who is a retired teacher from West Virginia, and she taught grades pre through K and 12th grade for 33 years, and in different subject areas like physical education, keyboarding, reading. She was an adjunct instructor for Marshall University, former reading specialist, whose hobbies include exercising, listening to music, reading, writing, and traveling. And now she's taken that next step. Now she's worked on her legacy to create this amazing book that has romantic qualities, it has thriller qualities. It's a lot of fun. It's action-packed. It's called Threads of Obsession, and she will tell us all about why we should run, not walk, to Amazon to go get it, and how much we'll enjoy it, and why she wrote it, and so much more. So, Miss Robin, how are you? I'm fine.

Robin Beamer Dalton 00:57 I'm fine. How are you? Thank you for having me.

Robert Plank 00:59 I'm fabulous. I had nice weekends. I was rested and restored, but sometimes you say, 'Hey, I took a break, and it takes a while to get back up to speed. But sometimes when we're resting or taking a break, sometimes we say, 'Hey, well, let me check out the library, let me check out Amazon, let me see what I can read to escape and excite the mind, because what's the alternative? You lay around, you watch TV, that doesn't make you feel better. What makes you feel better is jumping into some kind of obsession. And so you tell me about what are you up to, as far as the writing, the authoring, the publishing? What are you creating these days?

Robin Beamer Dalton 01:34 Well, right, I have, I did a 5000 word short story that I submitted to Reedsy, I think it was due may 31 but I submitted about two or three weeks ago, and I wrote it based on my husband's family history. He was raised in a coal camp about 15 miles from here, and I lost him 14 months ago, and so I got in his family Bible and found a typewritten family tree. I knew this was here, and I had looked at it millions and millions of times, and his mother was one of 10 children, and they were all born and raised in this cold camp, and I decided I would turn the tables and right where she actually would have been the first one never to leave the coal camp, but unfortunately, after her father, after her husband got injured, they were forced to leave the coal camp, so I wrote it as she left on her own and went and pursued an education and came back to help her brother, and her brother lived in the coal camp, was injured, got killed in a car accident right before his 18th birthday. So the main characters of that short story were my husband's mother and his uncle, and I'm thinking if his mother would have been off, she wouldn't have liked that at all. It's not nice to say that, but because she was that she would have said I would have never left my family, but in the story she was single, you know, she didn't have a husband and children's home. I've done that, wrote a short book of poetry, very simple poetry that I used when I was teaching middle school, and then I wrote several others to finish the book about the loss of my husband and how it's affected me, and so those are the two writing things I've been doing. Other than that, I've been promoting and marketing my book like crazy. I spent hours on my phone on social media doing videos, I found and discovered threads, which has been a blessing, because you have the author threads, you have the book threads, and people on there are so encouraging, and so that's one place I go and promote my book a lot more than I do on TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram, because they have a book and author community, so.

Robert Plank 03:58 Very good, and you've already dispensed a few varied lessons to us already. You say that as far as where the ideas and the inspiration come from. Sometimes you think about the family tree, you look at what's based in reality, and then you look at those so-called characters, right, the family members, and you say, well, what other adventures might they have gone up to, and then it's hard to like think of like characters out of thin air, and then what they do if you say, "Hey, there's this person I know or in the family, and I'll just base it off that, and then you're off to the races, and then you just go wild with what kind of scrapes and adventures that they get up to, and then you are also telling us about how maybe you can use writing as a psychological tool, right? You process your grief, you kind of turn a bad into somewhat of a good, and you say, well, I could sit and wallow around, or I could, like, you know, go to my hobby and turn this into something constructive that other people will enjoy, and then. Lesson number three, so far you say that it's, it's an ongoing process to promote your writing, right? So many people, they write the book, they think, okay, cool, I'm done, and I'll just let it sit, but you have to like always be.

Robin Beamer Dalton 05:13 Oh my goodness, you have no idea. I will say this, I lost my husband in March, and I did wallow, I stayed in my house. I basically stayed in my bedroom. I might get up and eat some days, some days I didn't, because for 27 years we were together, but especially the last five, he was very ill. I was his caregiver, I was with him 24/7 and once he, I lost him, and I was going through this morning period. I thought I can't continue to do this. So, in September, I thought, well, I know on my bucket list Hawaii's number one, but I will never be able to afford that. So, I thought, and what am I going to do when it starts getting dark at 4o'clock which is something I do not enjoy, I do not like fall. I know I heard the pumpkin spice latte people when I say that, but summer and spring are my time, especially summer. So, as September neared, I thought, what am I going to do, or I'm going to go crazy? I really am literally going to go crazy. So, I got my computer out, I prayed over it, and just started writing, and I worked about 10 hours a day on it for about five months, and of course to finish the first rough draft. Since then, it's been revised and revised and revised and revised, and I knew that I could not go mainstream publishing because I couldn't afford it, but that little did I know, self-publishing is also very expensive, so, but I did write something I'm very proud of. It is based loosely on people that I know, and the experiences that happen to them are some of the experiences in the book really happen to these people in real life, and I just, my initial thought was I was going to write an autobiography, but Who in their right mind would want to read a biography, autobiography about a 65 year old woman who taught 33 years? I know there's a market for that, but that's not my interest in writing it either. I wouldn't want to read it, so I decided to go this other way. And my book, I will say, has lots of plot twists. And someone said to me, 'Did you plan it that way? Well, no, I didn't know what I was going to write till I was writing. I didn't have an outline on paper or in my head or anything, and I would reach a point where I would say, well, let's say she's going to do this, and I think, no, this is a perfect place to throw a kink in the story, so it's full of plot twists, even up until about three chapters from the end of the book, so.

Robert Plank 07:56 That sounds like funny, it sounds like you write yourself into a quarter sometimes, and then wonder how they'll get out of that, and so that's, that's so much work, right? You say five months, so that's what, 150 days or so, and 10 hours a day, so we're talking about 1500 hours, that's like a whole, like, you know, a full-time job almost crammed into a few months, they're writing this book, and, and you just kind of wrote start to finish, right? You said you didn't like, there's editing afterwards, but the outline just kind of went to see where things went, and so, like, is there a way to encapsulate the plot? Like, if someone said, "Okay, like, what's this about? What happens? Is there an introduction to that?

Robin Beamer Dalton 08:37 Yes. Well, it starts out as a young girl, innocent, naive, and has lived at home until she's 26 years old, and decides it's time to move out and live the life of an adult, and her parents, of course, are not happy about it. Why do you want to leave? You haven't made here, but she's ready to have an adult relationship, but when she steps out the house, she realizes people just aren't going to drop, come knocking on her door and wanting to take her places, and so she finds out for a friend she can go on the internet and video chat with people and meet people that way, she meets someone falls for him because she's 26 years old, and when the talk gets to be a little more adult content than she wants, and he starts making insinuations and asks for her real name and location, she tells him no, he storms off, slams the computer, and she thinks that's the end of it, but it's not.

Robert Plank 09:46 Oh, interesting. And then that's only the beginning, and

Robin Beamer Dalton 09:48 Only beginning.

Robert Plank 09:50 and then the many twists and turns happen one after another, very cool.

Robin Beamer Dalton 09:54 Yes, and you will not believe, and someone called and left me a message to you, they someone, a publisher. From British Columbia, they left me a voicemail and said, "Oh my gosh, when you were writing this, did you know you were going to do this and this and this? And it was, I was laughing because I thought this guy really has read the book, there's only things that people know who had read the book, and I thought, "Well, I'd love to talk to him, but you know, already have gone with someone else, and, but no, I didn't know those twists were going to happen, and you'll be surprised if you read it, you will. There's so many different things that happen that you never, ever, ever expect, but if I will say that this man, who she met, meets in the beginning. She is not rid of him until near the end.

Robert Plank 10:47 Okay, so he's quite a mysterious, dangerous figure who is hard to get rid of.

Robin Beamer Dalton 10:53 Yes, he's the predator, she's the prey, or is she? yeah.

Robert Plank 10:58 Oh, you have to read it to find out,

Robin Beamer Dalton 11:00 You have to read it to find out, exactly.

Robert Plank 11:03 And whenever I speak with authors about what they write, it seems like it's universal that they all undergo some kind of a transformation, right? Like, even even you said there was like the all the sad events that pushed you into writing, but even just like the process of these many months of writing itself, like you discover some things about yourself, so were there any surprises about your own psychology that came to the surface as you, as a real result of you writing this?

Robin Beamer Dalton 11:31 Yes, because I thought, you know, I was just going to write a 60,000 word, because I was told for it to be considered novel length, it has to be 60,000 words, 60,000 words were over like that, and I realized that I had the ability, and the thoughts of, I mean, I'm a voracious reader, I've done it all of my life, since I was a very young child, I read before I went to school, sorry.

Robert Plank 11:58 Another publisher calling, telling them how much of a fan they are.

Robin Beamer Dalton 12:01 I am so.. it's probably your loan has been approved, because I get a lot of those. I was surprised that I was able to come up with so many different plot twists and put something out there that I contacted one lady that I worked with in high school, and she was an English teacher, and I said, 'Would you be one of my beta readers and tell me whether I should pursue this? And then the other was one of my best friends, who resides in North Carolina, and the one that I taught with told me I started sobbing my eyes out when I finished, because the story is so tremendous. I had no idea you had this much, you had this type of talent, and I thought this book should be out there for the masses, but unfortunately, the masses aren't running to it right now, so.

Robert Plank 12:55 Yeah, so you have to create your own luck, you have to do your own marketing for that sort of thing, and that's great that you have the support system, there was the threads groups you mentioned, but there's also the beta readers, people who are just surprised at your talent, and so you say you're such a reader, do you think are there like inspirations, or if you were to describe this book, would you say, like, hey, if you like a, you'll like this, or it's similar to B. Is there like a similar universe?

Robin Beamer Dalton 13:26 If you're a James Patterson fan, it follows closely to like, because he throws it's not, he doesn't put a lot of plot twist in, but the, that eeriness, and the some I want to say, some of the creepiness, and I'm going back to maybe, maybe his second or third book, Kiss the Girls, that has two pages that creep me out to no end, and I'm thinking mine is not creepy like that, but I still think how he surprised people when he did this, this series of books in the beginning, how the main character antagonist was, he never could get rid of him, and so he, he followed him through several books. My antagonist, I don't know, I think I could do a trilogy with this book. I don't have the money to do it, unless I would be fortunate enough to be picked up by mainstream publisher, but I don't know that my same antagonist would follow through with all the books, maybe someone in relation to him somehow, or I've already thought about book number two, and I really haven't considered him being in it yet, so I don't know.

Robert Plank 14:37 Oh, and that's fun, how it things take shape that way, don't they, and it's like you have somewhat of a plan, but then it takes on a life of its own, and even now you say, well, you know, it's it hasn't quite been fully formed yet, but we'll just have to wait and see, right, if you have the money or the time or the resources to create these other books, but as far as making sure that this book is a six. S like what are you doing, you say that there's like the threads groups, but what else are you doing to get the word out?

Robin Beamer Dalton 15:05 Okay, I am. I try to go on TikTok every day and make a video, and then I share it to Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, and I might like what, for example, I read the back cover of the book in the beginning, I started this about three or four months ago, because the book was released April 15, and then I might have read snippets of chapters on there, and then I've also done book signings, author talks, doing a book signing at our local mall this Thursday, yeah, Thursday. Now we only have about six or seven stores, but when I called, I said, if you can set me up near Chick-fil-A, I know people, people will be there, people will be in the food court. So, and books a millionaire was going to go there, and they said they'd love to have me, but corporate doesn't allow them to do that any longer, so it's just going to be me with my table and I've had a poster made of my book cover and I have a t shirt with my book cover and I've had bookmarks made and I made my own business cards and a couple of other freebies that if people buy my book I'll autograph it and give them a couple freebies to go along with it I did a book talk in a neighboring town, last Thursday, I think it was. No, it was last Tuesday. Last Tuesday, I lose track of time, especially since we've had.. because I'm thinking it's Monday all day. Um, so I'm going to be doing Mercer Mall on Thursday, and Saturday I'm going to be somewhere, either at our local farmers market, which is less than a mile from my house, or at a pharmacy two blocks from my house, which is the business business in Princeton, so.

Robert Plank 16:49 Very cool. And how do you set those up? Is it just like cold calling, or how do you get all these events booked?

Robin Beamer Dalton 16:54 I visit them, or I call them, and with them all, I just called them. I did visit the library in Bluefield, which, like I said, is about 10 miles from here. We have a small business, locally owned bookstore on our main street, and I'm doing an author signing there on june 13, which is our Summerfest Day. So they closed down the entire street, and they have activities, and it's really fun to see people you haven't seen forever. And I took my granddaughter a few summers ago, and she had a blast because she got to see old teachers and got to see old friends and everything. So I'm doing a book sign there the following Saturday is West Virginia Day, so I'm doing a book signing at the Railroad Museum, and but I'm also trying to work in other places, and also working around cataract surgery, unfortunately.

Robert Plank 17:52 Okay.

Robin Beamer Dalton 17:53 So I've got, I'm scheduled for several places, and then I've got a list of people to call. I'm going to venture out of my area and go toward our state capital and I know they have small own bookstores there and I'm also going to venture into Virginia near Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg is a community, Christiansburg community, Radford is a community close by and they also have a university, so I want to check to see if I can't do some book signings there, and just hope that somehow, someway, the right person picks it up, reads it, and says, hey, this needs, you know, to go somewhere else, and it is being sent to the World Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany, in October, so.

Robert Plank 18:38 Oh, nice, very exciting. So, you're doing so much to get the word out, to get the book in circulation, get noticed by why whoever you need to, right? And in the hopes of getting picked up by a major publisher, and that's great, because you hear about retirement being a transition, and some people choose retirement, they'll just kind of sit in their loungers, sit on the couch, and hey, that it's a free country, you're allowed to do that, but I think it's even way cooler when people look at retirement as like a new career, or the like, the maybe the job that they wish they had, but they had to pay those dang bills, right? And now that you got to the finish line, you're like, hey, what is my lifelong dream? Well, it would have been great to be an author your whole life, but you had to teach those kids, you had to be an educator, and now you say, well, I'm not just going to sit around, you did all this work writing, and now you're doing all these different tours, all these events, it's so cool to hear about. I'm glad that you're staying busy and having fun and meeting people, and as you said, there's the added benefits, there's the reconnecting with those in your community, and so it's been great to hear about just everything you have going on, Miss Robin, but you're the star of the show here. So, in these final minutes of our conversation, I want to make sure we focus on what is important to you. So, do you might think that in this conversation, could there be a missing question that I should be asking you? Just don't know to ask you?

Robin Beamer Dalton 20:04 No, not just trying to think what, what. Well, I've already told you, I think I do have two books, more two other books in me as sequels to this one, um, I nothing really, except I would love anybody who sees this to message me on Amazon, or even go to my website. I think my email address is on there, and hopefully they'll let me give the information from it, but I would like to have people send me marketing ideas that aren't going to cost me an arm and a leg. That's one thing I've found on threads people are saying you need this, you need this, you need this, and all these things, but also tell them they don't know how much money I put out to produce this product. Initially, it wasn't going to be that much, but you get the carrot dangled in front of you. If you did this interview on Global Book Network. You're going to reach all these people. Well, according to YouTube, I reached 2.2 1000 people. I've sold more books myself walking the streets of Princeton, which is a 6000 population town that have been sold on Amazon.

Robert Plank 21:18 Oh, nice. So you've, you have enough experience to run the numbers, and you say, "Well, hey, there's these different opportunities in front of me, and there's only so much I can do, but this one produces more, so I'll spend more of my time there and less there. They call it 8020 optimization, don't they? Let's say the average person kind of spends 80% of their time and resources moving the needle 20%, and you say, well, I'd rather focus on the 20% that moves the 80% as far as selling those books and putting in the time, because life is short, right? As you know, the future is not guaranteed, and you never know how much time you have left to write the books, or to market those books, so you are smart about your decision making, and so you say to find out about you, there, there is a website, Robin Beamer dalton.com and I can find a contact form there, but not an email address.

Robin Beamer Dalton 22:10 Yeah, okay, let me give you my email address, and I have no problem with anybody, it's robinbdalton@gmail.com. Do not forget to be, or it won't come to me, is what I tell people. I just put the entire name in there to give my parents some credit. Yeah, that's why my name on my book is Robin Beamer Dalton, because I was a Beamer before I was a Dalton. But anybody who wants to email me, Robin Beamer, robinbdalton@gmail.com, and I welcome anybody's emails suggestions. Just remember that my budget is spent. If you can, I even put it on Facebook, I mean on thread, Israel. Someone who is a Mac expert helped me with iMovie, because I have a great book trailer. I would like to already have the idea for it, I just don't know how to use it, because I'm, I have my iPhone, and I tried it on there, but I can't get my aspect ratio changed on my pictures, and so people were reaching out, but they're, but they want money, and some I had paid a couple of people, and one was, I said, "Goodness gracious, I, my grand, my four year old niece could have done better with you. So I am not spending any more money to anyone, unless if I can do it myself, it's not going to be done. Okay, hopefully my publisher, you know, they're supposed to do cinematic book trailer, and because I, you know, they dangled that carrot in front of me, it would look good with your book in Germany, and they sent it to me last week, and I saw it, and the ones that they had sent me, they had done for other books, I got chill bumps, they were so good, nobody, whoever created this cinematic book trailer, has not read my book, because everything they showed did not happen, not one thing they showed in that trailer happened.

Robert Plank 24:09 Oh no.

Robin Beamer Dalton 24:10 Yeah, and.

Robert Plank 24:10 Well, then you need to go in and fix that. You hear that, publisher?

Robin Beamer Dalton 24:13 Yeah, and I hate to be like this, but they know, because I wrote a letter to them, and I read it to them, and still wasn't getting results. So I made reports to different people, and now they're trying to help me a little bit more. But my Kindle version from the beginning has been corrupted. From April 15, my friend purchased it in North Carolina, who was one of my beta readers, and she starts, she, I hate to do this to you, but there are a lot of errors in the Kindle version, and she said, like, for example, go to chapter 20 in page blah blah, and she said, read something to me, I said, that's not how it's written at. I said that's not even in chapter 20 in the book, and so I'm having to, you know, push them. Come on, you got to fix your Kindle version, especially for my, the last school where I taught, is the smallest community in our county. It's the poorest community in our county, and most of my students, they want to read it, but they can afford 99 cents for a Kindle, but they can't afford $20 for a book, and I understand that, and I have no problems with that, but they're still waiting for a book that they're, you know, on the Kindle that they can read.

Robert Plank 25:33 Right, well, we're hoping that you get those problems solved, but in the meantime, you check out the paperback, the hardcover, and hopefully very soon that Kindle version will be fixed, that way you can read it on Kindle as well by going and searching Robin Beamer Dalton on Amazon, and find this new and amazing book, Threads of Obsession. And we said that, that email address you want to email Robin directly is robinbdalton@gmail.com. So we've heard from Robin about what the journey has been like for her and what this book is. So, if you like to get entertained, if you want something new and different, go and check it out. But before I let you go, Miss Robin, it's that scary part of the show where I try to stump you, I try to put you on the spot, where by asking you about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you. So, what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson?

Robin Beamer Dalton 26:24 I use this quote in the end of every one of my emails, and it's from my favorite book that I've ever read, Gone With Wind. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Robert Plank 26:35 Yes, that is true.

Robin Beamer Dalton 26:37 Now, if I can want to say something fun about me, do I don't know. I just.. I really don't know. I mean, I think of things that are fun, but I don't know if other people think of fun. You will see my interest, my really, really biggest interest in my life if you read this book, and it is related to music. I can't sing, I cannot play an instrument, but I have an Alexa who will play anything I want. And then I have probably 1500 songs on my phone, so I just play my Bluetooth and listen to the music I want to listen to, but that's one of my passions, and a certain generation of music, and a certain genre of music, and it is goes all the way throughout the book.

Robert Plank 27:30 Oh, very nice. So, if you want that added bonus, you have one, a glimpse into Robin's soul through music, and get this book, Threads of Obsession, and we've been speaking with Miss Robin Beamer Dalton about so many amazing topics, so check out this psychological thriller slash romance slash action. If you like James Patterson, you'll love this. It's called Threads of Obsession. Go get it right now. And thanks, Miss Robin, for showing up, stopping by, and being an amazing conversationalist. I'm here for you. Thank you for being here.

Robin Beamer Dalton 27:59 I appreciate that. Thank you so much.