As an author, you’ve poured your heart into your book. Now, it’s time to get it into the hands of readers.
Guess what? Being a guest on podcasts is a fantastic way to spread the word and boost your book’s visibility. It’s like having a friendly chat about your book that magically reaches people far and wide. But keep in mind that podcast appearances aren’t just about the interview itself — they also introduce you to a whole new group of people. This includes the podcast host, other guests, and of course, the listeners.
In book publishing, authors are constantly in search of ways to elevate their exposure and connect with readers. As the “Oprah moment” has now become a cultural phenomenon representing the ideal of catapulting a book into the limelight, authors and publicists alike are striving to create and leverage such moments to achieve success in the competitive book market. The essence of aspirational moments Aspirational moments are those instances when an author connects with their audience in a way that leads to significant sales spikes and heightened visibility. Like Oprah moments when an author’s book captures the spotlight, these moments can take various forms — through a heartfelt interview, a viral social media post, a powerful book launch event, and others. They allow readers to relate with the author in a way that captures their imagination and encourages them to seek out the author’s work.
As an author in the digital age, your website may be the first point of contact with your audience. A successful author site is one that helps you connect with potential readers, showcasing core elements of your voice and style. Beyond being an online shopping place for your books, your author site should reflect your personal brand and demonstrate your expertise.
The hard part of building an author site is conveying all this information without creating a clunky experience for visitors. Instead, you want to aim for a clean layout that’s easy to navigate. Follow this simple guide and learn how to build an author site that will solidify your online presence, promote your work, and help further your career.
In today’s literary landscape, effective book publicity isn’t just about promoting a book; it’s about establishing an author’s brand and positioning them as a thought leader in their field.
With the increasing prevalence of digital platforms and AI technologies like ChatGPT, the importance of strategic publicity grows. Book publicity in this new era can enhance authors’ branding, elevate them as thought leaders, and ensure that their work, ideas, and businesses are easily discoverable on AI platforms.
Like an expectant parent, you anticipate the arrival of your newly printed book with eagerness and excitement. But the work isn’t over yet. It’s time to go into publicity mode.
Your next move is to hire a PR agency that specializes in book marketing. You want a firm with experience, a great reputation, and a proven track record to get your book off and running.
You and the firm will create a digital marketing strategy — building a brand, creating (or refining) a website and social media channels, establishing an engaging tone for your messaging, and adding appropriate, appealing images, videos, interviews, and other relevant content. Together, you and your publicity team will establish timelines for fresh material to keep your online presence fresh and relevant. If you’re incorporating digital advertising, additional appropriate content will be created for that, including images, videos, cinemagraphics, and copy.
Targeted online article placements are an author’s ticket to success — the quickest, easiest, and best way to boost a book publicity campaign. Especially en masse, they help build awareness, momentum, and social media traffic better than any other strategy.
These are difficult times in America. The coronavirus has given way to a series of historic, cascading crises: a lethal once-in-a-century pandemic, Depression-era levels of joblessness and economic despair, and glaring racial disparities and health inequities afflicting communities of color, only to be exacerbated by the continued killing of Black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police. It’s no wonder that people of all stripes are living with unthinkable angst and uncertainty.
In a crowded, hypercompetitive, and oh-so-noisy marketplace, book publicity isn’t getting any easier. To succeed, especially at the highest levels, it’s important to know why a book matters.
I’m not talking about peppy platitudes, gross generalities, or heaven forbid, shameless self-promotion. I’m talking about current, concrete relevance — in the here and now, in the real world — preferably communicated in a sentence or two.
I call this “the so-what.” And in respect to every media decision maker — whether in print, broadcast, or digital — it answers an all-important question: Why should I care?
By any measure, content marketing is the new and ever-expanding ‘it’ in business and branding circles everywhere. Regardless of type — consumer or B2B, digital or traditional — marketing campaigns now run on content. Today, even Coca-Cola spends more money creating its own content than it does on television advertising.
For authors, book publicity and promotion is no exception: Content is king — if you never run out of ideas. For articles, blogs, podcasts, videos, social sharing, media interviews, and more, you need a constant pipeline. Or as one content marketing expert put it, “you need to keep feeding the beast.”
But how can you keep the ideas coming? Here are seven surefire ways to ensure you never run out of content.
As a leading book publicist for over 25 years, I have booked my clients on literally thousands of radio interviews. Today, I know one thing for sure: radio sells books. First, however, an author must be ready and able to maximize the opportunity. Whether a “phoner” or in-studio interview, I ask my clients to use these 27 foolproof tips.
Congratulations: your nonfiction book is coming out. You’re ready to hire a PR agency that specializes in book marketing — a firm with a great reputation, experience and a strong track record. You’re looking forward to getting off and running.
You and the firm will forge a digital marketing strategy, building a brand, creating (or refining) a website and social media channels, establishing a tone and continuity for your messaging, and adding appropriate, appealing images, videos, interviews, and other relevant content. There will be a timeline established, with targets, and all the material will have to be maintained so nothing goes stale. The website will have to be updated; the blog refreshed regularly with resourceful and informative content; social media properties vibrant with daily posts, engagement responses, and updates. If you’re incorporating digital advertising, additional appropriate content will be created for that, including images, videos, cinemagraphics, and copy.
Ads on Facebook are creating amazing successes for many different types of products and services. As a way for an author to connect with the desired audience, these ads are a great tool and well worth considering. The social network has been deeply mining data for years — on what people like, find amusing and interesting, along with users personal information and demographics — and the result is a gold mine for hyper-targeted advertising. Costs are flexible, options are infinitely customizable, and the results generate powerful data in real time that’s easy to track and work with.
Q & A with Julia Schopick, Amazon.com bestselling author of HONEST MEDICINE: Effective, Time-Tested, Inexpensive Treatments for Life-Threatening Diseases.
Is TV a better platform than radio for selling books? Many of my authors ask me. So I asked Julia Schopick, bestselling author of the book HONEST MEDICINE, to talk about WHY she feels RADIO is the best way to promote and sell books. I think you’ll find her answers fascinating.
Digital marketers seek every opportunity to connect their clients with the desired audience in the best and most engaging way. The social media landscape is much different than it was just last year, and it is certainly a full-time endeavor to remain current in tactics when marketing online.
Any Author Can Learn Social Media Marketing!
If you’re an author, YOU are the one who has to have the overview of what the social media marketing capabilities are for your brand. That brand is YOU, and everything you do.
With effective book promotion, your great ideas will fly.
Authors who’ve just finished their book often experience a rude awakening. After spending a year or more writing their book, and several more months shepherding it through the production phases of editing, proofreading, and design, they wonder, “How do I get the word out?” Assuming you, the author, have figured out the bookstore distribution piece of the puzzle, and have your book up on Amazon and the other online sellers, it’s now time to put your energies into the next stage: book promotion.
Targeting the Three Pillars of Book PR
Book promotion can be a full-time job–as much work as writing the book itself–depending on how much time and energy an author wants to devote to it. That’s why it’s often a good idea to hire a book publicist to help you. Here are three elements of effective book promotion that you and/or your publicist will target.
Speaking engagements are ideal venues for book PR.
You worked long and hard to write your non-fiction book, and you were driven by passion. Now you have a very expensive business card—your book!—that can open all kinds of doors for you. We’ve talked in the past about how to get good media placements to help you promote your book. Now let’s look at how to use speaking engagements to promote you, your business, and your brand—and sell books in the process.
In Part I of this three-part series on search engine optimization (SEO) for non-fiction author websites, I explained the importance of understanding how the Google algorithm indexes your website—determining whether your site will appear on the first page of a Google search or the tenth.
Here, Part II features 13 insider tips and strategies that will help you get your author website to show up near the top of Google searches. This translates into more visitors to your site, more publicity for you and your book, and hopefully more book sales, speaking gigs, new client acquisitions, and fresh publishing opportunities.
Follow these tips to make Google SEO work for you.
Some Basic Google Recommendations for Your Book Author Website
For good basic SEO for your website, follow this logical concept. Google has to totally understand what your website is all about, determine the focus of the site as well as what each page is about, and evaluate the content as credible and resourceful information that is appropriate to show people searching for exactly what you are offering. That sounds like a relatively simple thing—but you’d be surprised how many websites do NOT do that!
Here are a dozen tips for your SEO that will help focus your website better:
