Fifteen Ways to Promote Your New Book

Most book authors have a love-hate relationship with book promotion. They know they should be doing it, but many prefer the writing part of the publishing process.

With an estimated 4 million books published in 2021, you owe it to yourself and your book to make sure it gets the attention it needs and deserves. If no one knows it exists, no one’s going to buy it. 
 
The difference between a book that does minimally well and a book that grows an author’s fan base is usually whether or not a book is promoted. That promotion should start even before the book is published, to give reviewers and bloggers time to review it and begin writing about it. Once your book is published, you need to continue promoting it for months, and even years, after the book’s official release date.

The fifteen tips that follow are based on my professional and personal experiences as the author of more than fifty fiction and nonfiction books, publisher of Hannacroix Creek Books, Inc., and my book publicity experiences working at Grove Press and as a publicity consultant for several indie presses. Hopefully, they will inspire you to put the time and effort into book promotion that you and your book merit. 

All books need a book promotion strategy regardless of who published it. If you have a commercial or independent publisher with a publicity department, they should be developing such a plan. Six to nine months before your book’s official publication date, set up a Zoom or in-person meeting with them to discuss your book’s promotion strategy.

In my new book, How to Promote Your Book, I devote an entire chapter to developing a timeline for your book’s promotion. You may have to develop a publicity plan on your own if your publisher does not have a publicity department or if they cannot actively promote your book.

The key point is that from a year to at least six to nine months before your official publication or release date, you need to shift from your writer “hat” to your marketing one. That is what first-time romance writer Julie Navickas did, and it is paying off. Her debut romance novel, I Loved You Yesterday, is launching on August 23 with Inkspell Publishing, but her publishing efforts started many months ago. Her number one piece of advice: “You have to spend the time. You have to build a plan.” Here’s what Julie includes in her publicity plan: sending out review copies, using Instagram’s Bookstagrammers, generating word of mouth, planning a launch party, scheduling library and bookstore events, putting together a blog tour, and setting up advertising on social media.

If you have a publicity department you can work with and they will actually promote you and your new title, that’s great. But if you don’t, you need to decide if you will do it all yourself, if you will hire a part-time or full-time assistant to help you, or if you will sign up with a book publicist.

If you have the budget to hire a book publicist, how do you find one? Start by asking your romance novelist colleagues for referrals. Search LinkedIn. Follow up on articles or blog posts written by book publicists. One such book publicist is Mickey Mikkelson, owner of Canadian-based Creative Edge Publicity. Seven of his one hundred author clients are romance novelists, including the four best-selling authors (Melinda Curtis, Anna J. Stewart, Kayla Perrin, and Cari Lyn Webb). Mickey asks his clients to agree to a one-year contract, but the amount that is invoiced monthly varies, depending on actual bookings, and is never more than $300 a month. His approach: “My belief is strategizing and leveraging smaller and medium opportunities in all areas including print media, radio, podcasts, TV, then ultimately reaching for larger media opportunities while building that all-important media resume and focusing on the author’s brand. Not the books directly, but the authors themselves, is how I truly believe loyalty is created both from a reader and media sense.”

 

As soon as you have a final draft of your book, send it out for five or ten advance blurbs or endorsements. If you or your publisher create an ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of your new book, you can send that out by mail or digitally as a password-protected PDF. If you already have a published book that you’re promoting, you can still send it out for blurbs. These blurbs help to show the world (and the media) that someone besides you (or your publisher) thinks your book is worth reading.

Every book needs a media kit. Your media kit should consist of an all-important press release, your author headshot, a picture of the front cover of your book, a sell sheet that includes the basic information or metadata about your book (such as ISBN, retail list price, formats, and availability), suggested sample questions for an interviewer, and advance blurb or excerpted reviews. You might also want to pull out and reprint a favorite selection from your novel if that writing is especially strong.

A print or digital ARC should be sent to the five key trade publications – Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Foreword Reviews. Commercial or independent presses should be doing this for you. It’s hard to get a review in any of those journals, but if you do, and especially if it’s a positive one, it can open lots of sales and media doors. It goes without saying that it will be even more difficult for a self-published book to land such a review, but you might still want to try.

 Are you on Twitter? Tweet about your book, not just when it is published, but along the way, getting your Twitter contacts to feel as if they are part of the process. What about Facebook? You may have a personal page for family and friends on Facebook, but you can also create a separate author page for you and your books. Here are a few sample Facebook author pages:
Instagram? YouTube? TikTok? Consider recording short interviews with yourself or enthusiastic fans about your new book that you can post.

Posting to social media, and responding to the posts of others, is time consuming, but it is free and can help grow your fan base as well as generate media inquiries.

When is the best time to start promoting on social media? According to Philadelphia-based Social media strategist Amanda O’Connor said, “Four to six months out from your book’s release date is ideal. When an author calls me six months out, I’m happy. If they call me after the book is out, it makes my job much harder, but it’s still doable.”

O’Connor agrees that sharing on social media with your followers is key, especially for romance novelists: “Community is huge with romance readers. They are very loyal, and they want to be a part of the author’s journey.”

She’s found that the best social platform for romance authors is Instagram. She also has romance authors who are generating more fans and followers on TikTok, which is leading to more sales.

Hopefully, you have been developing a media list that you can use for your pitching, or your publisher’s publicity department or book publicist you hire has one.

Another way to find media is through Cision’s free HARO (Help a Reporter Out) (https://www.helpareporter.com ). It is sent to subscribers three times a day. All sorts of print, social, online, and broadcast media post what they’re looking for. If you seem like a good fit, answer the query. Don’t push your book on the media unless they ask. If selected, the publicity you receive will be helping to grow your brand and your fan base. 

Author websites are still an excellent way of having lots of information about you and your book in one place.

Make sure the media can easily find you by having clear contact information at your website.  Alternatively, create a profile in the free professional database LinkedIn and include your email in your contact info. 

Try to have some practice sessions so that first TV appearance, radio, or podcast interview is not your first experience with broadcast media. Most media trainers, like Steve Dunlop of New York-based Dunlop Media, have extensive firsthand experience with the media. Dunlop was a correspondent for CBS News for fourteen years, among other media jobs.

Also, be aware that a media opportunity begins when you answer your phone or pitch or respond online. I vividly recall an author sharing that he missed out on being featured by a major talk show because he blurted out self-deprecating statements to the producer who called for a preinterview. He could tell his insecurity scared her off from considering him further.

Besides being an RWA member, consider joining a local chapter, if you have one. Also, think about joining a committee so you can interact more with fellow novelists, a wonderful source of media referrals or shared author events. Apply to speak on a panel at an upcoming conference. Media often mine those conference speaker listings for authors to interview, review, or feature.  
Join other associations or private Facebook groups that you have to apply to join, such as 20Booksto50K®, with more than 47,000 members, or Romantic Escape Books, a public group with close to 700 members. These associations or groups can help you to grow your contacts or fans and even to expand your knowledge about book promotion.

Keep building your reader fan base through author events at libraries, bookstores, and Book Clubs. Your local library or independent or chain bookstores are a great place to start because they usually champion their local authors. An additional benefit is that they will usually have a list of local media that they contact on your behalf. 

If you’re open to travel, you can work on events in other locations. Or you can try to arrange out of town events via Zoom since libraries and bookstores who started doing online events because of the pandemic are continuing that approach.

Have an in-person or Zoom launch party. Use it as a chance to invite and connect with fans, the media, booksellers, librarians, fellow romance novelists, and of course enough family and friends so you have a core of attendees. If possible, take the time to go around the “room” if it is an online event with everyone providing a brief self-introduction. If it is an in-person party, how about name tags? Have books available at your launch so you can sign the books that you decide to either sell or give away. You can still do this online. Just get the address of where to send it. 

Reader reviews make an impression on the media as well as on potential buyers. Especially at the Amazon site for your book, you want to see at least twenty-five to fifty reviews as soon as possible. Just one of the many ways to legitimately encourage reader reviews is when readers contact you to say they love your book, suggest they share that feedback as an Amazon Reader Review whether anonymously or by name. 

Every time you send or answer an email, consider including your contact information, as well as publication details about your book, underneath your name.

Unless you are already a best-selling author writing full time or you do not have to work another job, your book promotion efforts will have to be done around your day job. But you can do it! New novelist Julie Navickas has been making the time to promote her first of three novels around her job teaching at Illinois State University.

As Illinois-based Marilyn Brandt, author of 18 romance novels, puts it: “The ultimate goal of promotion is to help the right book find the right reader. Even if promotion is not my favorite part of the writing and publishing process, I love being introduced to new readers, and publicity is the way to make that happen.”


Jan Yager, PhD, is the award-winning author of 50+ books including four novels and numerous nonfiction titles. Her publishing career began with working at Macmillan and Grove Press followed by her founding Hannacroix Creek Books, Inc. 26 years ago. She is currently completing her first romance novel, developed from a screenplay co-authored with her husband. https://www.drjanyager.com