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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

Kate Gingold Host
/ Categories: Brief History

Notable Naperville Women - Hannah Ditzler




History books record plenty of men’s names because of the traditions of our society, but of course there have been many women who made distinctive contributions to our city. This year we’ll take a look at a few of Naperville’s notable women.

Hannah Ditzler lived from 1848-1938, spending most of that time in Naperville. She was born in town, but her parents arrived here in 1844 from family homes in Pennsylvania. (“Pennsylvania Dutch” is really “Pennsylvania Deutsch,” which is German for “German.”)

In addition to being a typical daughter and housewife of the time, Hannah also served as a teacher at the Naper Academy and as a librarian at Nichols Library, but her main contribution to Naperville is her extensive diary.

Throughout the years, Hannah took notes on the goings-on in her community. She talked about the weddings and the funerals she attended. She wrote down juicy little gossip tidbits and personal family stories. She also included newspaper clippings, sketches and fabric swatches from clothes she made.

It was Hannah who encouraged her sister Libbie to record her arduous wagon train journey to California as a new bride in 1854.

During the Civil War, Hannah kept track of the sons of local families who were serving. She copied into her diary letters sent home by her own “soldier boy.” As it turned out, Hannah was unlucky in love. The “soldier boy” married another and Hannah herself didn’t marry until 1903 when she was 55 years old. The man she married, John Alspaugh, was a widower with children and also her first cousin, which wasn’t legal in Illinois, so they married out of state.

Hannah’s scrapbooks and diaries are part of the Naper Settlement collection and serve as an indispensable touchpoint for our history during the the nineteenth century.

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Get started now without blowing the budget at the SprocketStore.

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.


 

 

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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.

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