PUBLICITY KNOWHOW Checklists
Our KnowHow series on publicity with Children's and YA author, Gill Stewart, comes to an end this week. To round things off, Gill and her publisher, Sweet Cherry Publishing, share some publicity advice.
Publisher’s Checklist
Gathering reviews
Early reviews are an excellent way to create pre-publication buzz, whether they are formal reviews in newspapers, via a blog tour or building up your Amazon listing. As an author, if you know of any local publications or bloggers you’re keen to work with, you should mention these to your publicist.
Entering prizes
Make a note of any prizes the book would be ideal for. These can range from traditional prizes, to library and school organisations. Local prizes can also be great and new prizes are being created all the time.
POS - AKA point of sale
This means extras such as bookmarks, postcards, badges, pens, bunting, anything! These can be lots of fun because they really bring the visual aspect of your book to life and help readers remember your book. Make sure you give them out at events!
Author’s Checklist
Social media
Yes, you do need to be “out there” on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as a minimum. And yes, you do need to keep mentioning your book. But don’t relentlessly plug the same message. Rather than saying ‘I got another 5 star review…’ you could talk about inspiration for your story, the setting, quotes from an interview or magazine article. Mixing things up is crucial.
Competitions
These are a great way to gain attention, create a buzz and to engage with new readers. You can offer a chance to win a signed and dedicated copy of the book (or an early proof) in exchange for a retweet, sharing or tagging a friend. To keep costs down it’s best to be clear about the countries you are prepared to post to, e.g. UK only.
Feature image: Lubos Houska from Pixabay
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
Jess Stenson is the Sales and Publicity Executive at Sweet Cherry Publishing. She is also a blogger and Booktuber, Read By Jess and was longlisted for Champion Vlogger at the UKYABA 2018 Awards. Her favourite children's book is Vicky Angel by Jacqueline Wilson. You can follow her and her book reviews on Twitter.
______________________________________________________________________________
Eleanor Pender is Knowhow Editor. If there's something you'd like to know how to do, send your suggestions to knowhow@britishscbwi.org
No comments:
We love comments and really appreciate the time it takes to leave one.
Interesting and pithy reactions to a post are brilliant but we also LOVE it when people just say they've read and enjoyed.
We've made it easy to comment by losing the 'are you human?' test, which means we get a lot of spam. Fortunately, Blogger recognises these, so most, if not all, anonymous comments are deleted without reading.