If you think publicity, promotion and marketing for book stops three months after it comes out, your wrong. These jobs continue forever…at least if you want to continue seeing sales. And you can’t expect your traditional publisher to do this work for you. If you’re an indie publisher, of course, this job falls solely to you as well.
Today, my guest blogger, Shel Horowitz, award-winning author of Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, tells us something about how to get media coverage for books long after that release day–as in years afterward. Accomplishing this feat offers a sure-fire way to extend the life of your book.
Never Stop Chasing Coverage
By Shel Horowitz
Big publishers spout a lot of malarkey about the brief, tiny window for news coverage on a new book–measured in months.
This is absolute garbage, and they should know better. After all, they’ve invested many thousands of dollars in each book. It’s in their interest to succeed, although sometimes it seems they don’t realize this. Even if you’re a big-publisher author, you can continue to breathe life into it long after the publisher’s publicity department has given up.
Several of my books have gotten significant coverage long after publication. In one case, a book I published in 1995 was mentioned in both Reader’s Digest and the MSN home page in one month–eight years after publication and after the book was already out of print and converted to an e-book! Sixteen years after publication that book still gets me print, radio, blog, and other coverage. I do get a kick when radio hosts introduce me as “author of the new book” (and yes, I correct them, quickly and gently: “the book’s actually been out for some time”–I don’t want to mislead people).
In another case, Bottom Line (an extremely popular newsletter) did an extended three-page feature on my marketing methods, featuring the marketing book I had published with Simon & Schuster six years earlier. No help from S&S’s publicity department on that one, but I just follow the methods I discuss in Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers.
And I don’t have some kind of magic secret sauce; I’ve heard from many other authors who routinely get publicity for books that are five, ten, even fifteen years old. Of course, if your book is something like “How to Survive the Coming Y2K Crisis,” you’re out of luck. But for most of the rest of us, there will always be topical angles, fresh pitches, perennial tie-ins, and plenty of publicity if we just reach out for it.
About the Author
Which would you rather read? “Electronic Privacy Expert Releases New Book” (snore!) or “It’s 10 O’Clock—Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is?” Press releases, book jackets, sellsheets, web pages from Shel Horowitz, award-winning author of Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers (and seven other books) tell “the story behind the story.”
Say goodbye to boring copy! Shel will write material so compelling that people thank you for letting them read it. Visit Shel at www.frugalmarketing.com.
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