Shining the Spotlight on You by Promoting Your Own Book

I’m living in a bit of a whirlwind right now. As I write this post, my head is swirling with packing checklists, getting kids ready for school, and, oh yes, preparing for a book tour to promote my second patient advocacy book.

While professionally I’ve worked in public relations for over 20 years, since the birth of my second child I have discovered a new passion – patient advocacy. To be honest I didn’t seek this out. Rather I stumbled across it by accident – as a mother who endured two high-risk pregnancies and a baby in NICU (neonatal intensive care unit).

Here’s the thing. I jumped fully into patient advocacy out of necessity. I needed to be my baby’s, and now, my child’s voice.

So what does this have to do with public relations? I’ve also taken on the roll of promoting my own book – which is way more work than writing the book.

To be fair, my publishing company has hired a publicist to help with the book launch. But, like any consultant, there are limits to her contract. While she focuses on her set list of media to pitch to, I’m setting up podcast interviews, speaking engagements, arranging book signings, pitching to my own media list and doing interviews. And this is after I created a website specifically for the book.

It has been, and continues to be, a lot of work.

As I’ve been developing my key messages, drafting my press release, preparing my media pitches and conducting media interviews, I’ve found myself constantly going back to the templates and resources on How to Communications.

You see, these templates and bundles really do work. I don’t say this to toot my own horn (okay, maybe a little bit).

I’ve designed all the templates to be downloadable and easy to use. And that’s just what I’ve been doing – using them to promote my book to the media.

I’m telling you this so all of you published or aspiring writers know the tools are all they for you to promote your own book. I promise. You just need to learn them in bite size pieces.

I’ve approached promoting my own book as I would any public relations project by asking:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are my three key messages?
• What is the human interest story I’m trying to tell?
• Why should anyone care?
• Which reporters and/or media would be most interested AND have an audience that overlaps with mine?
• What is the best way to share my story with them?

Once I had done this, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. And guess what? I’ve had great success in promoting my book, in the pre-sale phase.

Even if you have no interest in promoting your own book, I share this story with you because it’s important you know HOW to promote your book (or any other project). If you are in the dark, your publicist will have a much harder time creating a pitch that will resonate with the media. And if you do get media interest, do you have the skills to conduct an on-message and interesting media interview?

Sure, it will cost you money to download the templates and bundles. But it will cost you a lot more money to hire someone to do your promotions for you (potentially missing the mark) if you don’t understand how to tell a story that resonates with the media.

If you’ve already promoted your own book, what worked for you? What challenges did you encounter?

Share your thoughts below or send me an email.

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