This YouTube video has been circulating around our office recently. It’s an author on the phone with his publicist… well, you can watch the rest. I thought it was especially amusing because we’ve been struggling through the same growing pains here. Now more than ever, authors are responsible for their own publicity, with less and less support from the publishing house. And let me tell you, it’s hard on both sides of this equation.
While no one wants a book to succeed more than the publisher, we’ve seen resources cut and workloads increased, so that it’s next to impossible to give each book the sendout it deserves. Unfortunately, more and more of the workload falls to the author. Fortunately, no one knows the book as well as the author, and each author is uniquely positioned to get the word about their book out there. Plus, there are so many more channels for finding the book’s audience than there were even ten years ago.
One of my favorite publicity efforts by an author (Ryan Mecum) was the creation of this video to support the book Zombie Haiku. And it worked! The video was featured on YouTube’s front page and currently has had over 200,000 views. Hopefully some of those views turned into book sales. Take a look:
What are some unique ways you’ve promoted your own book, or promotions that you’ve seen recently? While we’ve seen some amazing publicity efforts from some very creative authors (I’ll post more in the future), we’re always looking for great new ideas.
Farmers & Writers 