Marketing & Publicity for Authors: Part 3

Note: In the past week I’ve discovered the Pinterest site. Like Glogster, you create your own poster boards, but with a cleaner look, and you can pull things from around the internet. I see this as a fun way to create visual “likes” and connect with readers and other authors. I'm thinking of ways to create boards for each of my novels - pictures of places, foods, etc. 


Now on to today’s post.

To continue with my series on marketing and promotion, I asked a few of my colleagues to share their own tips. Here they are in no particular order:

From Judith Graves (UNDER MY SKIN, SECOND SKIN):

When promoting with social media in particular, it's difficult to find a balance between blatant self-promotion and genuine interactions with followers. I try to keep the following three E's in mind: 

·      Encourage - be a cheerleader for others. For each self-promo or "product" update, promote three other authors, aspiring writers, bloggers, or friends of literacy.

·      Educate - share your knowledge with others. And don't be afraid to share your mistakes along road to publication - so your followers can avoid similar pitfalls.

·      Engage - invite your followers to share their knowledge, opinions, tips, tricks and concerns about the industry. Allow discussion, but insist on respect for opposing viewpoints.

If you base your social media usage around the E's you'll ENSURE your posts are relevant, informative and gracious. This kind of profile will EARN loyal followers and build solid connections with your intended audience. It's as EASY as E, E, E! ;)

From Holly Cupala (TELL ME A SECRET, DON'T BREATHE A WORD):

·      Put a Google Alert on your name, your book name, your name + book name (spelling variations, etc., since if you are like me you will run into a fair number of misspellings). Watch for bloggers waiting for your book—you can always politely contact them about interviews, guests posts, etc.

·      You can’t always send review copies (and most of the time publishers don’t give you that many), but you can respond to requests and see if they’d like to do an interview or guest post. As a side note, setting up blog tours can be very time-consuming, but there are a couple of blog sites out there that may want to organize one for you.

·      If you have an ARC to spare, check out some ARC tour blogs—they usually sign up ~10 bloggers who will mail one galley among themselves and review.

·      If you can get to a major conference (BEA, ALA, etc.), it’s great for exposure—see if your publisher can sponsor you and/or schedule you for a signing.

·      And…pace yourself, because marketing can be consuming and exhausting! You can always do more, but I think it’s good to do what you can do well and what is fun for you.

From Linda Oatman High (TENTH AVENUE COWBOY, PLANET PREGNANCY):

My tip would be that I multi-task:  if I’m going somewhere for journalism, teaching, etc., I try to incorporate book marketing with whatever else I’m doing.  (I’d like to add that this is one tip I need to incorporate more. Take advantage of those expensive trips by visiting bookstores!)

From Joy Preble (DREAMING ANASTASIA, HAUNTED):

Don't forget to mine organizations you belong to. When DREAMING ANASTASIA released in '09, I reached out to the alum groups of my college sorority. Not only did they come out to support my Chicago area signings, but I reconnected to people I hadn't seen in a while and ultimately it has led to speaking engagements here in Houston with various alum chapters and also some nice support from colleagues.

My question for readers this week:

Do you think blog tours work? If you’ve arranged your own tour, how did you get started? How did it go?

In two weeks I’ll be back with some out-of-the-box thoughts.