What if “Book Promotion” Really just Means “Be Yourself”?

If the word “book promotion” make you shudder inside, you’re not alone.

If you’re like me, you have complete faith in your story, but also a bone-deep terror that wakes you up in the middle of the night, thinking: But what if no one knows my book exists?

If only a publisher (or fairy godmother?) would wave a magic wand and get ten million eyeballs on our books! But the reality is that nobody is a better ambassador for your story than you.

In the other side of my creative life, I offer music-and-storytelling events around the country. The first time I gave a 4-hour retreat for women, I sent 10 copies of my novel ahead and crossed my fingers that whatever I didn’t sell would fit in my suitcase going home.

All ten books sold in fifteen minutes.

In retrospect, I realized that these women had just spent four hours with me. They now knew something intimate, authentic, and vulnerable about me. The stories that have shaped my life had moved them. And so they knew they could trust me to tell another story that would enrich their lives.

Start small and personal

My husband, a 30-year veteran of media relations and marketing, constantly emphasizes that even though all of us are most worried about global exposure, everything starts with our inner circle.

That does not mean asking your mom and your great-aunt Bessie to review your book. It does mean sending personal, small-batch emails to people you have known and loved over the years—friends, family, colleagues—to ask them to support you when you release a new book.

We also need to ask, person to person, if they have a book club—if they can request your book from their local library—if they will share your posts. This is uncomfortable. But come on. We’re writers. We are capable of crafting a vulnerable, humble, authentic note that acknowledges our need for help without being smarmy or guilt-tripping people.

One perk of this personal approach is that you get to catch up with people you might not have seen since they moved away ten or fifteen years ago. In this age of communications that skip like stones over the surface of the internet, such touchpoints are no small thing. And remember the lesson of the women on the retreat: people who know you, who know your heart, the quality of your eye for seeing the world, and your gift for spinning an interesting story? Those people are far more likely to buy your book than a random stranger who sees one ad among dozens in their Instagram feed.

Stage two: the middle ring

The next circle is your professional network. It’s important to be a good citizen of author world, which I sometimes refer to as “paying it forward in advance.” When you connect with other writers online, you’ll see their posts about their families, their volunteer work, and the struggles they’re facing—the things that drive their passions. Slowly, these people move from distant professional acquaintances to something between “colleague” and “honest-to-goodness friend.” If you support them, both personally and professionally, in their time of need, they’ll do the same when it’s your turn.

In other words, you must build this network long before you want to draw on it. You pay in for a long, long time before you start withdrawing, and once you do start withdrawing, you need to be even more cognizant of replenishing what you pull out.

Put into words on a page, it looks pretty self-serving. But the thing is, if you go out into the world as your authentic self, the connections you make will not be shallow or insincere; they’ll be authentic, too. We writers are a generous bunch. We know how hard this industry is, and we want the best for all those around us as well as ourselves. We all open books with anticipation, thinking, “Will this be the next book I can’t stop recommending to everyone? Oh, I hope so!”

The Outer Circle

As for wide promotion, the rule of thumb now is that it takes 13-20 touch points before a person engages. So find ways to put the book in front of them that aren’t just “buy my book.” Use the cover as a sticker at the bottom of a video about the inspiration for the book, or the tropes it contains (in the case of my upcoming release: nature, found family, Down syndrome). Pull review quotes and make a carousel or a reel. If it’s Halloween, have your kid read them in a spooky voice. Put the link in a simple “Preorder now!” with a short tagline for the book. Find as many different ways to get the book out there as you can, and be like the Energizer bunny: just keep going and going… (#datingmyself)

I doubt anything will ever fully banish the panic of trying to get people to know your book exists. But our job is to put ourselves out there with authenticity and make connections, and then see where the ride takes us.

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TRUST FALLS

A failed stage actress. A beleaguered pop star. Two cousins with nowhere else to go. And an unscrupulous developer, poised to bulldoze their rural sanctuary.

Charley Dupree’s family Christmas tree farm is everything to her: a place of beauty, a refuge from a world that has offered nothing but betrayal, and home to her mother Penny, her oldest friend Julian, and his cousin Mark, a former baseball star who might just be Charley’s soul mate, if she can learn to trust again. But with foreclosure looming, Charley is short on time and options—until a stroke of luck and an act of kindness bring acclaimed singer-songwriter Maya Santoro to her doorstep, seeking a secluded place to finish her overdue album.

But the more Charley tries to balance Maya’s demand for privacy with her fight to keep the farm afloat, the more her relationships suffer. And when a scheme that should be the farm’s ultimate saving grace goes catastrophically wrong, Charley must decide what matters most: her home, or those she shares it with.

Emotionally resonant and brimming with hope, Trust Falls is a story of friendship, found family, and claiming one’s place in the world.

Kathleen M. Basi writes character-driven fiction that highlights the beauty found in life’s hardest moments. Her work has been called “lyrical” and “a panoramic view of human frailty and resilience.” Her new book, Trust Falls, releases Nov. 17th.

Category: On Book Marketing