Now that we have covered all the various pieces of the branding process—traditional media, online media, social media, events, and additional marketing opportunities—you’ll need to map out a plan to string them all together. You have the tools necessary to play an active role in the branding process and successfully market you and your book. But like a contractor, your tools are useless without a concrete plan.
While you’ve done some of this as you read—coming up with a branding strategy, a media list, etc.—it’s important to take a step back and get a clear sense of what your overarching campaign will look like, and what results you expect to yield. I recommend creating a publicity file that will hold the following:
These should all be compiled well in advance of publication. Once you’ve created these materials, look over everything and ask yourself the following questions:
If you’ve followed the guidelines in the previous chapters, the answers to the first three questions should be yes. The last one will depend on your work schedule and writing demands. You may not have the budget to hire a whole PR firm, but there are virtual assistants, social media consultants, and other people who can alleviate the workload without draining your budget. Identifying whether or not you’ll need help up front will prevent you from taking on too much and frantically trying to find help at the eleventh hour.
I’ve always been a visual learner, and I understand concepts best when I can see examples. With that in mind, I’m including examples of each document you should compile prior to beginning your outreach campaign:
Depending on how busy you are, you may want to map out specific days or weeks to execute each of the tasks on hand. Otherwise, this can simply serve as a checklist of items that need to be executed by the end of each month. If you want something more sophisticated than a Word doc, I recommend using task managers like Todoist and Toodledo, which will allow you to create projects, tasks, and due dates.
These are all long-lead outlets. On your spreadsheet, you should have tabs for short-lead media, bloggers, and any guest articles you plan to pitch. Ideally, the media will be separated by the time you plan to pitch them. As you can see here, there are a few daily newspapers and online outlets, but these are critics who need a longer lead time, and therefore, will be pitched to sooner.
The contacts are omitted to protect the organizers’ privacy, but this is where you’d include the names and emails of the people you’re planning on contacting.
We deliver online presence evaluations for all our authors. We go through all of their online platforms and provide suggestions on how to improve, what type of content they should be posting, and how they should network. The following is part of an evaluation for an author who writes police procedurals set in Oakland:
The following materials are from an actual campaign we worked on a couple years back. By seeing the full range of the campaign, media secured, events planned, and social media platforms utilized, you will be able to outline your marketing plans for your own book.
Through all of this, the key point to remember is: know your audience. If a PR initiative doesn’t reach your target audience, then it’s not worth doing.
Publication Date: December, 2013
Description: a debut YA sci-fi about genetic mutants, written by a practicing physician and mother of three
Target audience: teens and parents of teens
Tagline: Michael Crichton for teens
RT Book Reviews (review publication featuring genre fiction) – review
VOYA (teen publication) – review
Omaha Magazine (local monthly magazine) – local author profile
Mom Talk Radio (syndicated radio show) – interview
KCMN with Tron Simpson (local radio) – interview
KAHI with Scott Costa (local radio) – interview
Omaha World Herald (local daily newspaper) – book feature
Writer’s Digest (monthly magazine for writers) – debut author feature
The Morning Blend (local TV) – interview
Huffington Post – Book Roundup
BuzzFeed – guest article
Went viral on social media, has received over 100,000 views to date
Mentioned on Creative Indie
Sunshine Reviews – review
Rally the Readers – review
Sirens of Suspense – interview
Addicted Readers – review
Late Nights with Good Books – review
Presenting Lenore – review
Sf Signal – review
Icey Books – review
Teen Writers Bloc – interview
The Reading Date – interview/review
Falling For YA – interview
Fiction Freak – review
Omaha.com – review
Good Books and Good Wine – review
Bookworm Bookshop, hometown launch event
Anderson’s Bookshop, joint signing with Rachel Caine
St. Charles Public Library, YA author panel
Hazelwood Writers Week, talk and signing
Oak Creek High School, school presentation
Oak Creek Public Library, talk and signing
King Lab Middle School, school presentation
Chute Middle School, school presentation
826 Chicago, writing workshop
Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2), panel and signing
Philadelphia Science Festival, talk and signing
RT Booklovers Convention, panelist and YA day participant
Overall, I viewed this as a successful campaign. We were able to establish her brand as an author, physician, and mother, and build a readership for the series. We secured coverage in a variety of mediums, all of which reached her target audience. The book may not have been reviewed in Seventeen or featured on TODAY as a top teen read, but getting a lot of coverage in smaller outlets can be just as effective as landing one big hit.
As you begin to secure media coverage for your own book, it’s imperative that you keep a summary similar to this one. It will help you track your success and identify key areas that are going well or that may be missing. You also want to have a record of coverage so that when you’re ready to promote book two you know which outlets to target first.
In addition to recording media placements, you should also keep a record of which outlets passed, or asked for more information but never covered it. That way, you’ll know who to leave off your list and who to contact with a reminder that they had expressed interest in your previous book. As I outlined earlier, the more detailed your record keeping, the easier it is to build relationships with media contacts. And the more data you have, the easier it is to gauge your success.