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Using Tech for Book Marketing

Kate Gingold from Sprocket WebsitesKate has been building websites with her husband Don since 1996 for all sorts of clients, including authors.

Kate regularly writes about online marketing for Sprocket Websites and provides tips and techniques for entrepreneurs and small-business owners. Since being an author today is not really different from being an entrepreneur with a small business, most of those tips are just as useful to authors.

Kate is an author herself. She writes books on local history, including the award-winning "Ruth by Lake and Prairie," a fictionalized account of the true story of Great Lake pioneering to the shores of Chicago and beyond to found Naperville, Illinois. 

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Ruth By Lake and Prairie

Author Tips and Tales

1874 DuPage Atlas – J.J. Hunt

Kate Gingold Host 0 520 Article rating: No rating

Throughout this year, we’ll take a look at some of the homes and businesses featured in the 1874 Atlas Map of DuPage County. First up is the hardware emporium of James. J. Hunt which was located on the northwest corner of Washington and Van Buren, where the restaurant Catch 35 is now.  

Hunt was born in Pennsylvania and learned there to be a blacksmith. He came to Naperville with his young family in 1844 and started by working in another man’s plow shop. Within a couple of years, however, Hunt opened his own blacksmith shop and also ran a livery business.

 

Hunt spent part of the Civil War serving as a captain and then a major in Illinois and in Pennsylvania, but at the same time, he also launched a small scale hardware business, presumably operated by his wife and pre-teen sons who remained in Naperville. After the war, all his efforts went into that business, making Hunt & Son Hardware a downtown staple until his retirement in 1893. 


During his years in Naperville, Hunt served the community as sheriff, fire marshal, justice of the peace, and treasurer. Hunt was also dedicated to Euclid Lodge, the local Masonic organization, holding meetings above his shop and serving as Master of the Lodge eight times. 

 

A story was recorded about how Hunt was able to cool down a clash between some Naperville residents and their more recently-arrived German neighbors during his tenure as a police magistrate. Apparently, while the town was celebrating Independence Day, a dispute arose which “had been bottled up and escaped from such confinements down the throats and thence into the brains of a few otherwise ‘real good fellows.’” 

 

Hunt held positions as a village trustee and village president during the 1860s and 1870s. Then in late 1889, Naperville’s citizens began the process of incorporating from a Village to a City. The vote passed in March of 1890 and Hunt was elected the first mayor of the City of Naperville in April. 

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Researching Ends (Boo!) and the Editing Begins (Yay and also Boo)

Starting the new year by finishing a manuscript!

Kate Gingold Host 0 654 Article rating: 3.0

I just finished the manuscript I have been working on for several years. As I move on to the next stage, I keep hearing “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” in my head. While I’m super excited and proud of myself for having completed this project, the research has been so much fun that I’m going to miss it very much. 

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Full disclosure:  Writing for Sprocket Websites is my day job, so if you have questions about digital marketing, I'm happy to help!

 

Marketing Author Interview

Following a presentation for In Print Professional Writers Group, Kate's husband (and publisher!) Don was interviewed by author Louise Brass for WBOM Radio. During the conversation, Don shared many of the marketing tips from his presentation. You can listen to it online here.

The Sprocket Report

The Sprocket Report is published every other week with Internet marketing tips, tools and techniques. The archive features articles from 2011 up to the present. You are welcome to read how business owners are using technology to market themselves and apply those tips to your author business.


 

 

Get a Book Siging Checklist and our Sprocket Report

Kate will be happy to send you her brief Book Signing Checklist. Treat your book promotion like a business - because it is!

AND, since much of your efforts will be online, she'll also enroll you in her Sprocket Report, an email newsletter sent every other Tuesday, that includes 2 Internet Marketing tips and a post from a guest blogger on related business.

No worries! She won't use your email address for anything else, and you can unsubscribe from the newsletter anytime, but the checklist is yours to keep.

Any questions of Kate? Leave them in the message field and she'll get back to you ASAP.

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