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I asked what writing/publishing advice could help people right now, so I& #39;m going to tackle this (BOTH PARTS!) today! First up: book publicity/marketing. I am not only an author, but I have a marketing degree and have worked in marketing (mainly theatrical film) for 15+ years! https://twitter.com/malindalo/status/1246212474334044162">https://twitter.com/malindalo...
There are so many parts to book publicity and marketing, so first of all I want to say what I am NOT tackling and what I am NOT the best at knowing about: schools, libraries, book bloggers/& #39;stagrammers/etc., i.e. trade/b2b/etc. Your publisher is likely a genius about this stuff!
Everything I& #39;m going to talk about in this thread is about marketing/publicizing your book to the general public. If you follow book bloggers, if you are a heavy Goodreads user, if you are using Libby to grab those 7-day new releases, I am NOT talking about you. Here we go!
The reason I focus as many efforts for book marketing and publicity only after the book is released is simple: people like to buy a book as soon as they hear about it. Again, NOT YOU! You load up your preorders, your OverDrive recs, etc. But many readers don& #39;t want to wait!
If the average reader hears about your incredible thriller but realizes it& #39;s not out for a month, they likely won& #39;t preorder - they will get a different thriller instead. They wanna read now! So if I have ANY control over when something hits, I prefer it week of release or later.
I am hardly saying no one will preorder. People will! If an opportunity is only available before your book comes out, take it! But if you can synch an appearance/article/etc. when the book is available, you increase ordering potential.
Also, at this point, schools/libraries/bloggers/etc. have been (HOPEFULLY) hearing about your book for awhile from your publisher, maybe also at ALA or NCTE or another trade event. So THEN when you get this post-release publicity burst, it does a double duty of reminding them!
In short, if you get a choice, give people the instant gratification of hearing about your book/immediately being able to purchase your book. (This gets a little weird to say the least in the age of COVID19 but I still think people prefer clicking "buy" to "preorder".)
Another exception is if you are a very famous author, you don& #39;t need to worry about this as much. The new Hunger Games book can do a huge preorder campaign and it& #39;ll work because even if people don& #39;t preorder, when it comes out they& #39;ll be hearing about it!
Attention spans are so short now. There& #39;s a reason a lot of film marketing plans (ha ha remember when people saw movies in theatres!) start the week the film opens. If you can& #39;t buy tix yet, we don& #39;t always want to spare any impressions!
NONE of this is absolute, by the way. I am but a midlist author with mainly movie experience in marketing. This is what& #39;s worked best for me! Mutuals, feel free to DM me for more; I could talk marketing/publicity ALL DAY LONG (I mean I...do, for part of my living.)
