Thank You! And a teary goodbye...

Hi Everyone,

It's been a bit crazy around the grill lately. People walking off with the ketchup packets. Soda spills and mustard stains on just about every patron. Even weiners under the table! (Who does that?) It hasn't been easy raising everyone's cholesterol levels and weight.

So it is with heavy and clogged-artery hearts that we must bid goodbye.

We want to thank each and every person who has dropped by the Book Roast. I can't emphasize enough how enjoyable it has been getting to know authors and writers from around the world. Look at our sidebar! We've been able to meet and hob-nob with truly wonderful people! And everyone who has participated in the roasts and has kept the energy level positive and upbeat--many special thanks to all of you! Without you, an interactive blog such as this would have fizzled out quickly.

The reasons for our having to say goodbye are primarily economic ones. We're all working longer and harder hours at real-life jobs than we did when we opened the blog. Plus, did I mention the table manners? :-)

But there are a couple of marketing reasons as well. The traffic on this blog fluctuates month by month. It has been a valuable learning experience seeing which months are better for marketing via blogs (February and March), and which months are the worst (July, August, November, December). Of course this is highly unscientific, but interesting to take note nonetheless.

We'd like to leave the comments open for discussion about online marketing for books. If you have an experience or information you'd like to share, please leave a comment! I think with all of our combined knowledge, we could help each other in this facet of the publishing industry.

Before we leave you, we'd like to give you two parting gifts!

The first one is a behind-the-scenes video (we've posted before) about the Grill. Enjoy.

The second is an invitation to go visit Ms. Spitfire at Nathan's blog! We were so lucky and happy to pull her into our venture, and we'd like to give her a very special thank you for all of her letters. It wasn't easy for her to do this on a weekly basis given everything that has been happening in the publishing industry, so we'd really like to acknowledge her and her efforts (Though she's still anonymous. Only we know who she is... Let's say she got out just in time. I saw her drinking ketchup from the bottle last week.)

Go visit Nathan and Ms. Spitfire today!!!! Her post will be up sometime mid-morning, New York time. (Or early morning, California time.)

And be sure to leave your thoughts about online marketing in the comments section.

THANK YOU!!!