This week’s guest post comes from Marketing Maven Carol White, and it covers great insights for getting and leveraging media attention in the months and weeks leading up to your book’s publication date. Enjoy!
I was out for my walk this morning enjoying NPR’s “Fresh Air” – a podcast of Terry Gross’s very popular show, this edition about Global Climate Change — and it dawned on me at the end of the podcast that this was a perfect example of pre-pub publicity done right.
The guest has an upcoming book this spring on climate change, which he plugged, but what was more interesting was how he got on NPR (a dream for all of us, right?). He did what I tell clients to do all the time – write articles about your SUBJECT, not your book, your subject, and get them into circulation well before your book comes out.
In this case, he wrote an article about global climate change that was picked up, in of all things, Rolling Stone magazine. Huh? Well, I guess they do articles on things other than pop culture and music. Terry Gross saw the article and invited him to her show. Now, of course, we can’t all get written up in Rolling Stone or on NPR, but we surely can get written up in journals, magazines, blogs, and web sites that relate to our content on some level.
So here is the progression of the pre-pub publicity that will undoubtedly sell many books for him due to this wonderful media coverage:
- Author writes book and sets pub date many months out.
- Author writes articles RELATED to the book’s content — hopefully several.
- Author gets articles published, either online or in print — this takes time too
- People see article and look for more information creating interest.
- Maybe even someone with a TV show, radio show, podcast, or film studio sees the article.
- Author gets invited to participate in TV, Radio, film — or maybe another print interview or article — or maybe several.
- Author gets to talk about his subject, and, oh by the way, his upcoming BOOK.
- The interview gets turned into additional content — podcasts, YouTube, video trailers, that more people see.
This is the power of pre-publication publicity that gets your book off to a great start and the buzz started before it is available. All of these same tactics are worthy and available post-pub too, but they have special buzz-creating properties when utilized before the book is available.
About the Author: Reprinted with Permission. Carol White is an author, speaker, writer, and book marketing coach. In addition to co-authoring the best selling, award-winning book, Live Your Road Trip Dream (www.roadtripdream.com). She is also a published writer for a variety of magazines and websites, and has spoken about publishing to groups including IBPA’s Publishing University, the Northwest Association of Book Publishers and the Bay Area Independent Publisher’s Assn. She has an active book marketing consulting practice that includes both domestic and international clients. www.carolwhitemarketing.com