When it comes to book publicity, KNOW YOUR NICHE, MAKE YOUR PITCH!

In the book publicity world in which we book publicists “play”, trying to generate media exposure for clients is often a difficult challenge.  There is no shortage of experts and authors who are competing for the same space, be it in print, television, radio or online.  We have no doubt, if given the opportunity, that most our authors can do a tremendous job of impressing the media with their insight and knowledge, but in order to get them there, we need to be on point with our pitches.  In acting as their mouthpiece, and trying to open the media gates, it is essential for our authors to help us help them.

Find your Focus

When discussing this with our authors, especially those who are looking to use their book and the media coverage it might yield as a means to broaden their brand and platform, we try to get them as focused as possible.  To do this, we ask a few questions:

1. Who do you want to be known as?
2. Why should be people consider you as the right expert source?
3. What is your value proposition?
4. What are your “bold statements”?

For many, the answers seems simple, yet as the conversation develops and we start peeling away the layers, they (and we) often realize that they are entering crowded waters because the answer is too broad.  These questions should be answered in a few sentences at most, not paragraphs.

Know your niche

It is incredibly important that authors have a deep understanding  of their niche expertise and where it adds value (the niche within the niche).  It’s great to have a broad understanding of a given topic (i.e. personal finance, health, human behavior) but there are a lot of experts who have that same scope of understanding, and in many cases, with bigger platforms.  Instead, the focus should be taking an area (or a few) within the niche and honing in on that angle to create opportunities.  Rather than being all things to all people, find something that you can really dig your heels into as an expert and establish that first.

Sizzle is good, substance is better

While how you say it does make an impact, it’s what you say that is most important.  Make sure your message and outreach ties in with your initiatives (selling books, creating new business opportunities, laying the foundation for more speaking, populating your brand) and then run with it.  It is also important to know your audience.  While everyone wants to be in The NY Times or USA Today, it is often the more niche-related outlets that will have an impact on your goals. !

Once you have done the good work  in your “tightened-up” niche and developed a level media credibility, it will open doors to cast that wider net most experts are hoping for.  So, the next time you engage in a book publicity or promotional effort, “know your niche, then make your pitch!

Visit our site at Newman Communications for more Book Publicity information and services.

Book Promotion and Book Publicity Tips for Authors

Promoting Your Book on Facebook

If you use Facebook (and who doesn’t), you’re probably by now familiar with  Facebook Business and Brand Pages. As an author, or anyone with a product or brand, you should familiarize yourself with these pages and learn how to take full advantage of their benefits to increase your visibility, marketing, and publicity efforts.

We’ve put together a few tips to help you get started with the new pages and to kick-start your book promotion and publicity. And if you’re not an author, we think you’ll find this information just as helpful.

The Cover Image
Judging a Facebook Page By It’s Cover

The Cover Image is new to Timeline and gives you a chance to really personalize or create an identity for your page. This is the first thing people will see when they visit your page. Just like the cover image of your book, you can really make or break a first impression here. Give this some thought and create an aesthetic and powerful heading for your page that really illustrates who you are and what you do.

The Cover Image is a landscape formatted image (horizontally long) that stretches across the top of your page. This is a feature you should take full advantage of on your book promotion page, but be careful not to over-promote. You have creative freedom over how you design your cover image, but there are a few “rules” to be aware of.

[UPDATED - 5/22/2013]

• The image can not be Ad-centric. In other words, you can not use the image as an Ad or to directly promote a product or service.
  • It cannot include prices or discount information
  • It cannot include contact information
  • It cannot use calls to action: Visit our site, Download now, Like our page, etc
  • It cannot contain more than 20% text
• The image must be at least 399 pixels wide. Facebook recommends 851×351 pixels.
• (NEW rules) All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines.
• Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.

It’s interesting that these changes now seem to allow page owners to use calls to action in a page’s cover image that encourage visitors to perform some specific action (download now, click, share, etc).

You can read all about the “official” rules on Facebook’s FAQ Page and Facebook Page Guidelines

Profile Image
Giving your Book Promotion a Face

In addition to uploading the Cover Image, you may also want/need to upload a new profile image. The Profile image is pretty important and should be selected with care. This image will be used as your visual identity across all of Facebook, appearing next to all of your activity, comments and posts. Be sure to select something that reflects you or your brand. A logo or personal picture are good options. As an author, think about using the same personal photo used in the book sleeve, or a photo of the book itself.

The profile picture is displayed as a square either as 125 x 125 pixels or 150 x 150 pixels, resizing automatically according the the screen size of the viewing device. Facebook suggests that you upload your image using a minimum of 180 x 180 pixels for the best results.

Highlight The Goods

One of the new features of Timeline is the ability to Highlight posts. Activities and news generated through a book promotion or publicity campaign make great pieces to add and highlight on your page’s timeline. This is a great way to include milestones or add emphasis to and make the good stuff stand apart from the usual posts. Normally, posts are reduced to half the width of a page and arranged to either side of the Timeline which runs vertically down the middle. Highlighting a post expands it to fill the full width of the Timeline. Using this feature will draw attention to posts that you want your page visitors to see above all others. The results of a good book publicity or book promotion campaign can produce lots of great events to highlight.

Highlights:

• Posted great interview with media
• Add Links to your articles that get posted on New York Times and other popular sites and blogs.

Milestones:

• Made the Amazon Bestseller List
• Goals Reached:  Sold X copies of your book

To highlight a post, hover over it. You will see a small box appear in the corner with a Star and a Pencil inside it. Click the Star and your post will transform, taking up the full width of your timeline.

Pin the Important Stuff

Pinning posts is another new feature similar to highlighting, but with some added emphasis on the “emphasis”. This is another effective book promotion tactic that you can easily include with your strategy. Pinning a post will move it to the top of your page where it will be one of the first things your visitors see. Any post on your timeline can be pinned to the top where it will be visible without having to scroll through the timeline (or at least not have to scroll far). Once pinned, the post will remain at the top of the page for 7 days. After the 7 days has passed, the post will be moved back to it’s original place in your timeline.

This is a great way to inform visitors of upcoming book promotion events, announcements or news. If you have an upcoming book signing, or a scheduled interview appearance, pin the post to make sure your visitors are aware of it.

To Pin a post, follow the same process for highlighting. Instead of clicking the Star, click the Pencil and select “Pin-to-top”.

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Visit our site at Newman Communications for more Book Publicity information and services.

The 84th annual Academy Awards, televised Sunday, February 26th to honor the years greatest achievements in the film industry. Over the years, the team at Newman Communications has had the honor of providing book publicity and creating radio, TV and print campaigns for many books that have  made the leap from their bound pages and on to the big screen. Several of these books turned feature film, have also been nominated and awarded for some of the most honored awards in the industry, including Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globes.

[Show as slideshow]

• Seabiscuit – 7 Oscar Nominations
  by Laura Hillenbrand
• The Blind Side – Won an Oscar, 2010.
  by Michael Lewis
• The Perfect Storm – Oscar Nomination, 2001
  by Sebastian Junger
• Marley and Me
  by John Grogan
• Tuesdays with Morrie
  By Mitch Albom
• The Celestine Prophecy
  by James Redfield
• Game Change
  by  John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (HBO)

Now, it’s your turn to vote: Cast your own nominations for “Best Book Turned Movie?”

Visit our site at Newman Communications for more Book Publicity information and services.

Remembering Jeff Zaslow

One of the greatest things about book publicity and doing what we do every day at Newman, is the opportunity to meet, work with, and get to know some great authors. They innovate and inspire us, make us think differently, entertain us, take us on new adventures, and more all through their writing and story telling.

On February 10, 2012, at the age of 53, bestselling author Jeff Zaslow’s writing career was brought to a tragic end.  According to police, Jeff lost control of his car on an icy road and was struck by an oncoming semitrailer truck.

Zaslow and Newman Communications worked together on radio book publicity
campaigns for many of his books including the best-selling, The Last
Lecture with Randy Pausch and The Girls from Ames.

[Show as slideshow]

In September 2007, after he attended the final lecture of Carnegie Mellon University Professor Randy Pausch, Jeff collaborated with Pausch on writing The Last Lecture, released in 2008. The book by Pausch and Zaslow, translated into 48 languages, and became a #1 New York Times best-seller, spending more than 110 weeks on the list. More than five million copies of the book are in print in the U.S. is a nonfiction book about a group of eleven women friends who grew up together in Ames, Iowa, remaining friends for forty years. It was billed by the publisher (Gotham Books) as “the inspiring true story of eleven girls and the ten women they became.” It spent 26 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, rising as high as #3.

Mr. Zaslow is survived by his wife, who is an anchor at a Fox television station in Detroit; three daughters, Jordan, Alex and Eden; and his parents, Harry and Naomi Zaslow.

The entire team at Newman Communication is saddened by this great loss not only because of our professional relationship with Jeff Zaslow but because the world has lost a writer with great sensitivity and style.

Visit our site at Newman Communications for more Book Publicity information and services.

Business of Selling Books

Wondering how the book business is these days from a bookstore manager’s perspective? Recently I had a chance to speak with Linda Shirley, manager of the W. Lebanon NH Border’s store, where we discussed coming out of a tough year, authors to watch and…is it really ok to just hang out at the store and read?

S. Becker - What’s hot at the W. Lebanon NH Borders these days? There are a few local authors who have great new books out right now.

L.  Shirley –  Chris Bohjalian’s Secrets of Eden is doing very well, as is Jodi Picoult’s House Rules. The areas of the store that have grown dramatically in sales and interest over the past year include young adult and independent readers — it’s truly wonderful to see more kids reading and some of the books (like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series which starts with The Lightning Thief), are fun and very well written. Speaking of young adult books, the twilight series remains a strong seller and we are having a midnight release party this Friday (March 19th) for the New Moon DVD.

Spring is coming which means the gardening section should be a strong selling area for the next 6 months — and there are more new books on vegetable gardening in particular this year, following the interest in books such as Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Our cafe sales have been growing steadily — especially the coffee and cocoa drinks. People may be saving money by not going out to eat as much, but they are still treating themselves to something fun once in a while and good whipped cream never seems to go out of style.

S. Becker - Has the economic downturn affected book sales, and were there any types of books that were more popular during the worst of it?

L.  Shirley - 2009 was a tough year in many ways, but books on the economy itself have been very popular, and the publishing world continues to drive sales with new titles and updated versions of classics. Conversely, escapist reading — science fiction, mystery, horror, light fiction, romance — also did quite well. The strongest areas were the young adult and the independant reader areas of the store. People might have decided not to buy a hardcover book for themselves, but they were certainly willing to treat their kids to books that would keep them reading. The area that seemed to be the most strongly affected by the economy seemed to be music (industry wide, not just our store or our company).

S. Becker –  You seem to have a pretty liberal “hang out and read” policy. Hopefully they end up buying something!

L.  Shirley - It’s one of the reasons that I joined Borders over 16 years ago — I loved to buy a cappucino and look over an armload of books while deciding just which ones I was really going to buy. We truly encourage just hanging out and reading — even if not buying. If you love coming to the store, then you’ll share that with other people — having coffee or tea in the cafe with friends, buying gift certificates for relatives, picking up various gifts when something catches your eye or you need a housewarming present or a book on the toddler years. It’s not that you buy something every time you are here, but that you enjoy being here and buy something once in a while, or end up introducing other people to our store who may also buy things once in a while.

S. Becker - Are e-book readers becoming more popular?

L.  Shirley - Definitely! We had great success selling Sony E-Readers over the holiday season and we’ll be expanding that selection this year. What’s available online is expanding daily — and you truly can take 100 books with you on a 10 day vacation!

S. Becker - What’s the next big blockbuster book to hit the shelves?

L.  Shirley - Rick Riordan has a new series coming in May on Egyptian Mythology which we are all excited about. The third book in the Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larrson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest will also be out in May. I’m counting on a new Stephanie Plum book to appear in June, of course — it wouldn’t be summer without a new Janet Evanovich title (Sizzling Sixteen). Those are some of what I’m waiting for, but I’m always curious to see what our actual bestsellers will be beyond what I know is going to top our sales. The Hunger Game surprised me, for example — and now I’m waiting for the third book in the series to come out at the end of the summer.

S. Becker - Who was the most popular author to make an appearance at your store?

L.  Shirley - We once had Captain Kangaroo do a reading in the kids department. Truly wonderful!!! Our biggest audiences beyond that one included Janet Evanovich and John McCain — both stretched our ability to actually make enough space for people to meet the authors (we really don’t have much open space in the store).

S. Becker - What’s big for spring books?

L.  Shirley - Gardening, gardening, gardening and travel. We also see an interest in weight loss and exersize books, but this is the season to start dreaming about where to go this summer and what will grow this summer.

S. Becker - What’s the best part of managing a bookstore?

L.  Shirley - I love to see what people are reading, and I really love to unpack new books! I love our coffee, pick up new movies, listen to all sorts of music – -and those are all bonuses to working at Borders — but I truly love to see the books, and to see what my employees, friends, family and customers are finding the most interesting or the most fun to read. It’s great to be able to work with so many people who love books as much as I do.

Photo Credit: goomauk

Visit our site at Newman Communications for more Book Publicity information and services.

Visit our site at Newman Communications for more Book Publicity information and services.