Promoting Your Book or Event, or Building Your Audience?

Reposted from the Literary Marketing Newsletter.

Jane Friedman shared a great guest article this week called "Author Promotion Versus Book Promotion: Why You Need Both." Feel free to go read it, but here's my take on it (I 100% agree) and what it means for you — and there's application for both authors and literary organizers here.

The big idea is that it's hard to market a book or promote an event if no one knows who you are.

In this industry, there are certain time-bound events that require marketing campaigns: a new book release, a big event like a festival, or even a smaller event like a panel you put together. But starting your marketing from scratch when that event is on the horizon is going to be a lot harder if you haven't already built an audience who knows and follows you.

Of course, the Publisher's Marketplace announcement is often the starting point of many authors' marketing journey — ohhh, I need to build an audience fast! — which can be more frantic when they find out that their publisher isn't providing them any marketing support. Ultimately, it's easier to promote your book to an already-built audience of a few hundred or thousand people, rather than scrape together a following and only be able to promote your book to a few dozen — many who many not be your audience.

But the hard reality from the article is this: "From my experience as a managing editor at a small press, we receive a steady stream of submissions—some of them genuinely well-written—from authors whose platform consists solely of writing classes, contest wins, or a stated love of writing. But with no website, no social media presence, no previously published work, and no indication of an effort to be known as an author, it becomes incredibly difficult for us to justify taking the financial risk."

The adage goes: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second best time is today." If you haven't started building your audience yet, start today.

What if I've been trying to build my audience, but I still don't have a lot of people?

I see authors and literary organizations who have had an online presence for a while, but still don't have a following or an audience. Why? Because, I believe, they haven't gotten set on their strategy. They haven't thought through who their target audience is and what they want to hear. They haven't narrowed down the two or three specific topics that they're experts in that their audience will follow them for. Instead, they throw a bunch of content out there hoping people will follow. This is why you need a content strategy to focus your efforts (which is what I help with!).

But what if I'm just writing a book now and don't have anything being published yet?

Start now, even if you're still working on your book. Starting now means that when your book is ready to come out, you'll have an audience who is paying attention. Many authors think they won't have any content to share pre-publication, but if you're writing a book, you have a ton to share about how you came up with your story, characters, or plot, the research you're doing, elements of writing craft, the books you love that are influencing your writing, and lots of other things. Or you can build an audience in other ways — I've built an audience through Literary Boston who is already following me, so when the time comes...