So You’ve Written a Book? Yay You!
Before you do anything else, you’ll need to get PR READY™ (and we have the guidance to help you get there)
One of the few positive things that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic is how many people finally sat down to write a book. With all that time at home, the creative juices got flowing and that unfinished murder mystery manuscript, self-help manual, sweet children’s book or cookbook of cherished family recipes finally found a home on paper.
If you’re reading this and it sounds like you, congratulations!
Now what?
Over the last week, we’ve met and consulted with 5 new authors who were all interested in retaining a book publicist.
- One author had a finished proposal
- One author had a fully edited manuscript but no publisher
- One author was wondering whether to self-publish or hire an agent
- Two had book deals but wanted a publicist to augment the publicity that the publisher would be doing
Before writing or submitting a proposal, finding an agent, hiring a publicist, what they all had in common: none of these authors were “PR-Ready™”.
Time to Be PR-Ready™
You need to be prepared for promoting your book. We’re book publishing PR experts and we want to share 5 things you can work on right now:
1. Free guidance at your fingertips
Read our blog post on writing a book proposal because it has a lot of useful information.
2. It’s All About You!
Work on your public + social profile. Start building your image on all social media channels including LinkedIn (not just for job seekers!). Make sure that your book and brand are consistent across all channels and do all you can to beef up your social media follower/friend numbers (on the appropriate social channels).
3. You.com
If you don’t already have one, create a website with easily accessible content and assets that make media pros happy. We strongly suggest you use your name as the URL so people can easily find you. There are many turnkey website design platforms around these days (Wix, Weebly, WordPress, etc). But if you want it to look polished, hire a web design pro. Having all of your book information, your bio, headshots, book and cover images, content and contact information all in one place will be incredibly important when you are ready to launch.
4. Content is Key
Start by crafting story hooks and pitches related to your book. So many authors never even think about this until after they launch their book. But for a publicist or social media marketer to help you get coverage, you will need to have a few of these queued up and ready to go. Yes, your publicist can and will do much this for you, but if you have some pitches and hooks at the ready, it will help them come out of the gate running and move their pitching efforts along faster. Think of seasonal hooks too. Media outlets are always looking for story ideas based on holidays and seasonal events (i.e. Tax Tips from January-April, Workout and diet tips in January for New Year, New You, Holiday Gift Guide lists in November and December, etc.)
And while you are at it, start putting together a cache of useful content that makes for good publicity opportunities. Having a plethora of easily accessible 500-1000 word posts and listicles stored in an organized fashion (in a Google folder, ideally) will make your publicist’s job a lot easier. They can quickly offer these posts to media outlets in their day-to-day pitching efforts.
5. Don’t be afraid to hire an expert to help you through the above.
You can pay many PR pros by the hour to get you all primed and ready to go at a very reasonable fee and take out all the guesswork, leaving you to do what you do best.
Contact us at andrea@andreaburnett.comand take advantage of our free 30-minute consultation. We’d be happy to help you get PR READY™.
Comments are closed for this article!