Selling Books » Sandra Beckwith

6 Surefire Ways to Promote Your Novel

Sandra Beckwith — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:28:43 +0000

The biggest mistake most novelists make when promoting their books is believing that it’s all about book reviews. Wrong. Book reviews are valuable and securing them should be on any author or publisher’s book promotion to-do list, but your novel deserves more widespread, long-term, and ongoing exposure than it can get through reviews alone. It deserves to be talked about month after month – as long as the book is available for purchase.

Here are six tips for helping you see the publicity and promotion value in your fiction so that you generate the ongoing buzz your book deserves:

1. Find the nonfiction nuggets in your manuscript and use them to create newsworthy material for relevant media outlets. Is your heroine a jilted wife starting over in the workforce as – let’s say – an account executive at a high-flying packaging design firm who finds love with her client at a consumer products company? You’ve got publicity opportunities with the packaging and marketing trade magazines. Is she a radio jock? The female morning drive time personalities would love to interview you by phone.

What about locations, products, or services in your novel? A story set in a national park or a convenience store gives you news pegs for exposure in the relevant trade magazines. A character’s obsession with a little known beverage brand could get your book into that company’s employee newsletter. If you’re writing your novel now, work in some nonfiction nuggets you can capitalize on later.

2. Use your content to identify promotion allies. Is your protagonist an athlete in a wheelchair? Connect with groups such as the National Wheelchair Basketball Association or the National Wheelchair Softball Association. What about the professions of the people in your book? Does it feature a secretary? Contact the Association of Executive and Administrative Professionals. There’s an association for just about every profession.

But don’t just send them a note that says, “I’ve written a book your members will love.” Send a copy of the book with a letter outlining promotional possibilities and what’s in it for them. You might offer to speak at their national meeting, do a Q&A for their member publication, or offer a discount to members.

3. Leverage what you uncovered while writing your book. Did you learn about a period in history or a specific region? Use this knowledge as a springboard for publicity. The author of an historical romance novel set in New York’s Hudson River Valley, for example, can write and distribute a news release announcing the top romantic and historical attractions in that region or pitch a local newspaper or regional magazine on an article about the area’s most romantic date destinations. Your goal is to be quoted as an expert source because this would require using your book title as one of your credentials.

4. Support your book with a good Web site designed by a professional. Your Web site has to be as good as your writing. It also has to contain information that convinces us that your books are worth buying and reading. It doesn’t have to be slick, but it does need to be very well-written, attractive, useful, and enticing. We will assess your ability to tell a good story by your ability to communicate on your Web site, so the writing is crucial.

5. Get social. Focus on one or two social networking sites – Facebook now has more users than MySpace – and master the most effective and appropriate ways to use them to promote your book before spreading yourself too thin on several sites. Once you understand how the process works, expand to others and use new technology tools and resources such as those at TweetDeck and Ping.fm to streamline your information sharing across your networks.

6. Share the love. Help us connect with you by blogging about your writing process and experiences. Get excerpts up on your Web site and read portions to us via podcasts so we can get a feel for your writing and decide if the story is appealing. Give us enough online – on your Web site, blog, and through podcast download sites such as iTunes – to convince us we’d like your book.

There’s no question that promoting fiction is harder than promoting nonfiction – but because of that, it’s also more rewarding.

Sandra Beckwith, the author of two publicity books, teaches the online “Build Book Buzz” publicity course for authors. Sign up for her free book publicity e-zine at http://www.buildbookbuzz.com

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5 Tips for Writing a Book Announcement News Release That Will Get Used by the Press

Sandra Beckwith — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:27:19 +0000

A book announcement press release helps us tell the world our new book is available for purchase. It’s often sent to the media with a copy of the book or a note asking if the journalist would like to receive a complimentary review copy. It’s also included in the book’s press kit. It’s not the only media relations tool you’ll want to use to generate book buzz, but it’s an essential resource when your goal is to tell the media outlets read, watched, or listened to by your book’s target audience that there’s a new book they’ll want to know about.

An effective a book announcement press release is written in a journalistic format that mimics how a magazine or newspaper would write about your new book. It uses the traditional news release format that journalists are accustomed to receiving.

Because this is such an important tool – and because there is a trend among inexperienced publicists to turn the announcement into an advertisement that journalists will reject, not embrace – it’s important to understand how to write a release that will get read and used.

Here are tips designed to help you avoid common and costly errors with your important announcement release.

1. Use the traditional news release format. This includes your contact information, a headline, and your announcement written in a journalistic style. Study the press releases at www.prweb.com and www.prnewswire.com for examples. Don’t use graphics, multiple columns, or different fonts, sizes, and colors.

2. Remember that you are not the news. Your book is the news. Unless your name is recognizable, don’t put it in the headline. “New book details secret World War II plot” is more compelling than, “John Brown’s first book is about World War II.”

3. Avoid using superlatives. A news release announces news in a factual way, so limit your descriptive text to the facts. This isn’t a book review expressing an opinion – it’s an announcement that a journalist would like to copy and paste into a publication. That’s why you want to avoid language – “fabulous,” “best-ever,” “fascinating” – that you won’t see in a news story.

4. Distribute your announcement release in text format, not as a PDF file. It is easy to copy and paste text from an e-mail or from a Web site; it is hard to copy text from a PDF file. The more you make somebody work to use your information, the less likely they are to do so.

5. Tell us where to buy the book. This is the key chunk of information most often omitted in the homework assignments submitted by students in my book publicity e-course. Remember to include the title, publisher name, publication date, price, and information about where it can be purchased.

In addition to distributing your release to your targeted media outlets – including online options such as blogs – post the release on your Web site so it can be found by search engine users. Your goal is to get your news in front of the people who are most likely to buy your book.

Sign up for Sandra Beckwith’s free book promotion e-zine, “Build Book Buzz,” at http://www.buildbookbuzz.com.

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12 Ways to Keep Your Nonfiction Book in the News

Sandra Beckwith — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:54:10 +0000

Publishers are willing to publicize nonfiction books when they’re released, but they rarely do much after the launch to keep books in the news, even though most deserve ongoing media exposure. Here are some easy things you can do to generate continuing publicity for your title. Use a mix of these ideas to develop a 12-month publicity plan that will provide the support your book needs.

1. Turn the advice in your chapters into a series of monthly tip sheets. A tip sheet is a press release that offers tips or advice in a bulleted or numbered format. Start your tip sheet with an introductory paragraph that explains why the tips you’re offering are important, list your bulleted advice, then tie it all together at the end with a concluding paragraph. Send it to appropriate media outlets; the distribution list will depend on your topic.

2. Contact the press immediately when your topic is making headlines to offer your expert perspective. This is a sure thing with most local media outlets when it’s a national news story because you’re giving them a local angle. Fax or e-mail (no attachments) your bio and a cover letter explaining your position on the breaking news to the appropriate media contact. If you’ve done enough interviews to prepare for the big time, pitch the national news outlets, too.

3. Add the media to your newsletter distribution list. The same useful advice or information you offer subscribers in your print or electronic newsletter could be of interest to reporters covering that topic, too. I got a book contract several years ago from the publicity that resulted from adding the media to the distribution list of a newsletter I publish.

4. Repackage your book content into by-lined trade magazine articles. Depending on the terms of your publishing contract, you might need to do some rewriting so it’s “new” material. Make sure the author credit at the end of the article includes your book title.

5. Capitalize on holidays and special months, weeks and days by distributing a press release with useful, newsworthy information related to the topic, or by contacting the press to offer yourself as an expert information source. For example, many daily newspapers run articles in December about how the holidays are especially difficult for people who are grieving the recent loss of a loved one or facing the anniversary of a loss. This presents many coast-to-coast interview opportunities for the author of a book on grief and loss — but only if the author reaches out to the press. And November 15 is “National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day” — surely there’s an ASJA member who can capitalize on that occasion!

6. Contact the public relations department of your industry’s trade association to offer yourself for media interviews. Association public relations people are often contacted by writers like us looking for members with a particular expertise to interview. Make sure your association knows about your qualifications and the topics you can comment on, and you’ll get referral calls.

7. Conduct a newsworthy and relevant survey on your topic and announce the interesting results in a press release. The author of a cookbook designed to make cooking simple and easy can survey people about why they don’t cook more, and release the findings in a press release sent to newspaper food editors and cooking magazines. The release should include information about your book’s connection to the survey topic.

8. Sponsor an attention-getting contest and announce the results in a press release. To promote my humor book about men, I conducted a “Worst Gift from a Man Contest.” The resulting press release led to nationwide media attention, including a holiday appearance on a national cable TV talk show.

9. Push your publisher’s publicist to monitor ProfNet for reporter queries related to your topic all year. Alternatively, subscribe to ProfNet via its PR Leads reseller and respond to appropriate queries. A $99 per month subscription via www.prleads.com is more affordable than a ProfNet subscription.

10. Monitor writer forums for source requests. Members frequently post requests on the magazines and newspapers forum for interview sources.

11. Tell the media when you’re visiting their market. Reporters love to interview experts who aren’t local, so if you’re in another city for any reason, contact the appropriate media people two weeks before your trip to offer ideas for articles they can write based on an in-person interview with you. If you’re in town to speak, send an announcement press release several weeks in advance and offer to do a pre-event telephone interview.

12. Repurpose your best tips into a free booklet. Write and distribute a press release that describes the booklet and how people can get a free copy; make sure both the booklet and the release include information about your book, too.

Generating ongoing publicity is work, but it’s not rocket science. Invest the time so you boost sales while contributing to your author platform. You’ll see the rewards at the end of the year.

Sandra Beckwith may be contacted at sb@buildbookbuzz.com

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