Getting the word out about ETM...
Book promotion is one good thing we could work on in this forum, if others are interested.
I'm new at this sort of thing, and would like to benefit from others' experience & ideas.
Also, as we chat, people might think of good radio stations, website, and other venues that could be approahd with some kind of announcement or press release.
posted by rkm @ 12:09 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Richard,
My thoughts, on stepping up to the dreaded “marketing“ side of life:
1. You would be organizing a Book Tour promoting an “alternative” press work of non-fiction, yes? In this day of the Internet, what seems to be successful is a two-tiered approach,
(a) get your name and title out there via alternative radio interviews always referring to your webpage; then
(b) follow-up with all of the “alternative” (popular) websites with on-site reviews and reprints (and ipod snips or partial audio interviews ) that the various websites can hyper-link to. Audio hyperlinks are very popular (and quite effective).
I would thoroughly research the portal http://www.whiterosesociety.org/
And contact the various shows’ producers for on-air interviews. Let this be the meat of your strategy.
2. You could also arrange the old-fashion itinerary of trans-city in person book signings and local radio interviews. [this is tedious]
3. Internet television producers.
4. Is the book self-published? If yes, you would need a tight, well-crafted publicity release blurb, for a Direct Marketing strategy via targeted slow mail [wheretodoresearch.com].
5. Don't do a blind email campaign.
Or, hire a publicist, and let him/her do all of the legwork . . .
Hi rml,
You seem to know what you're talking about, and I very much appreciate your suggestions.
I take your point about needing resources on my website that other websites can link to, such as audio clips, reviews, etc. I want to get those on board, in an acceptable first version, before systematically pursuing outreach. I have a couple CDs of radio interviews, and a DVD of a TV interview by Jim Rough. I think I could put something decent together from those, along with some appropriate PR text. I could have serveral URLs available, with various snips/blurbs etc. that would be useful in different kinds of venues. I'll need to learn a few new technical things first, but there are always easy ways to do things these days, blogs being a very good example.
With these in place, on-air interviews definitely seem like the place to start with outreach. I've done those before and it's a medium I'm comfortable with. I'm very glad to hear about http://www.whiterosesociety.org. I don't distinguish between radio stations which have a webcast and those which don't. My only concern is that there are people somewhere listening, in real time or otherwise.
I have a certain attitude about interviews, however, and I'd like your feedback on this. Now that the book is published, I'm only interested in interviews where the interviewer has read the book. If they haven't we always get stuck in one narrow issue or another, and never get anywhere near discussing what the book is really about. If they've read it, then they come in with an understanding of the scope involved, and the questions and comments are framed much more productively. There are currently three radio hosts who have the book and are supposed to get back to me about an interview.I hope they don't call before I'm happy with the website.
The trans-sity approach is out as regards book promotion. The net is the happening way to promote anything, and there are only skeleton funds available.
The book is very much self published. We didn't even go through one of those on-demand publisher houses. Booksurge acts only as a fulfillment & distribution service. They don't even read the book, check for liabeolous material, or comment on the cover. If you have an ISBN number and a PDF file, you're ready to publish.
Targeted slow mail? Is that a metaphor? What's a stamp? Seriously, who do you have in mind here as targets?
Hmmm...you're saying that a blind envelope is received better than a blind email. Again, who is that true for?
Perhaps I don't know what you mean by 'blind email', but I can't conceive of not sending messages to every influencer I can find, trying to communicate with them in their terms, saying why I think ETM is relevant to their expressed concerns and attitudes, and offering them a URL or two that seem appropriate. I'm eager to hear more from you about this issue, lest I blunder into a blind alley. There's time to discuss, as it'll take me a little while to do these website upgrades.
There is also blogland and wikipedia. wikipedia seems worth a bit of looking at, re/'democracy'. Don't know the posting/commenting protocols there yet. Need to find out if there are any big-audience blogs, or blogs with lots of influencers on board.
Publicist? For the forseeable future, all contributions must be on a volunteer basis.
I've been amazed so far at how much can be accomplished with minimal manpower and minimal funding, with the power of today's technologies, free tools and resources, etc.
back to you,
rkm
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