Book promotion is essentially reaching your target market with your message. With so many book marketing and publicity strategies, the question is, which ones to choose?
Below we go over some of the strategies that I feel work the best for your overall book publicity efforts.
What is the best way to launch a book promotion strategy nationally?
In my experience with working with hundreds or more authors, getting booked on talk radio interviews is the first step. The radio talk shows are conducted over the telephone making it easy to sweep the nation with your message. There are no travel expenses and basically you just need a high quality land line so the interview quality is top notch and of course, a great conversation lined up.
When getting booked on talk radio shows for book promotion, you’ll want to get booked on the biggest shows possible in the major markets or cities across the country. Why? Because they offer the most exposure and opportunity to reach thousands of people with your message in one phone call. Most interviews are about 8 – 10 minutes in length and this is plenty of time for authors to showcase their ideas, thoughts and commentary on various topics related to their book’s content.
The idea is to share your message nationally by appearing on the biggest shows possible. Each city generally has a 5,000 – 50,000 watt radio show that broadcasts to the heart of the market. These are the shows that have the most listeners. However, they are the hardest to get booked on as a guest. These shows are fast moving, content rich shows that usually have conversations that are meaningful to the profile of their audience. The key is to create your conversation around, what we call in the publicity world, socially relevant issues that match the profile of the show.
Radio experience can set the stage for TV appearances as well. Another benefit of being a guest on lots of radio shows is the experience you develop transfers nicely to TV. Since radio talk show interviews are phoners, you get the opportunity to focus on your messaging and build up a rich history of being a media guest. TV shows look for experienced guests who understand how to have a high quality conversation in a short period of time. Radio certainly gets you ready to be a great TV guest.
The more people who hear your message, the stronger your book promotion and book marketing becomes.
Another great aspect of appearing on radio and TV shows is that you reach people immediately and this gives you your best shot at selling books. The audience gets to experience you “up close and personal” and this give you an advantage in your overall publicity strategy. And radio shows are very friendly in allowing you to mention your book in the interview and can use your book in your intro especially if your book is related to the topic under discussion as it positions you as an expert.
To summarize, begin your book promotion strategy with radio talk show interviews, move to book marketing on TV shows and then you can move on to getting media placements on major online media outlets as well as in print including national print.
All book promotion roads should lead to actually reaching your audience. At our firm, Annie Jennings PR, we refer to this as active publicity – that is, reaching your target market directly. Passive publicity is when you send out a press release blast through a service and in our experience it’s possible nothing could really happen for you. So, keep this in mind, anytime you can appear directly in front of your audience, the better.
Be sure to visit Annie Jennings PR for lots more strategy.
