A well-planned launch promotion effort benefits every book and author, and yours is no exception. Book marketing experts have long advised self-published authors to consider their target readers and promotional needs in advance. You’ll undoubtedly make adjustments to your PR program once it’s underway and you see what works best. But that’s no excuse to begin the process randomly when experience shows being prepared helps. The trick is to reach your target readers where they’re watching and reading. When you do, you’ll be helping them discover your book and buy copies.
There’s also a growing trend to publish books for business promotion value apart from selling copies of downloads. For example, if you’re a landscape architect and publish a book on yard and garden design, you can expect it will bring you, new clients. It works the same regardless of your field or profession, and the PR value is immense. People have instant respect for authors, and someone who has read your book arrives as a client more ready to buy your product or services. Self-help gurus have long understood this, and nearly all of them write a book – and many times multiple books over time.
Authors today also need online platforms to support media outreach in their book marketing campaigns. Specifically, it means launching a website and maintaining active and well-followed social media accounts. All of those are underway before you publish your book, and you can use them to promote its availability gently. Novelists and other fiction authors work slightly differently but must be visible online. For them, it’s about generating fan interest in their stories, characters, and fascinating plots more than the value of their content. They are in entertainment, more like TV and film.
Preparing to meet the media, large audiences, and individual readers is also part of planning a book marketing campaign. You need exciting ideas to discuss that people will find helpful because you can’t give a hard-sell pitch about reading your book. Authors are given a good bit of leeway and regarded as experts because people understand what it takes to write a book. You need to be yourself, but your persona needs to support the broader assumptions about books and their writers. Media training is an option if you feel anxious about talking to journalists or being in front of audiences giving presentations.
