The David vs. Goliath Author Battle Is Won With Book Publicity

Everyone tries to get into everyone’s business.  There are just a handful of companies that seek to dominate every aspect of commerce – or at least influence it.  Even giants like Sears can’t survive against behemoths Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart.  Google, Facebook, Twitter run the online information infrastructure. What’s left for the other companies and small businesses that may have specialization, personalization, and even local roots on their side – but who can’t compete on price, speed of delivery, or reputation?

Authors should learn from the bigger world around them. Just as they compete with each other for book sales, authors also compete with other content providers, available for a free or fee, and they have to do battle against giants like best-selling authors or the Big 5 in publishing.  Even when an author has a great book – maybe even at a great price – how will he or she generate sales when no one knows his book even exists?

The lone differentiator is publicity.

Yes, that thing that’s misunderstood, feared, and loathed by most authors.

But a well-executed, creative and persistent book publicity campaign can be the difference between irrelevance and success.  Book publicity is an important cog in the writing machine that no author can afford to ignore.

Now I get it, the economics don’t always pay off for authors, even when they participate in a book publicity campaign. But there are many long-term benefits to doing a PR campaign that go beyond the short-term sales boost.

I know you are probably saying:  “Now why would I invest money, time, and effort into something that may not pay for itself in book sales?”

Here’s why you do publicity:

·         It can help with sales

·         It builds your profile up so that down the road you can advance your career, get a book deal, or secure speaking gigs.

·         It provides a forum for you to get an empowering message out, one that may help others.

·         It can raise interest for your book and possibly lead to rights sales – foreign, film, audio etc.

·         It supports your ideas and writings.

But make no mistake.  To do a proper book publicity campaign means you’ll have to put more into it than you may initially feel you will get out of it. There’s a risk that little will come of it.  But it’s worth it and it’s the only way to make a go at a strong writing career.

A book cannot survive on its own.  It’ll require food, clothing, shelter and nurturing.  Book PR is our lone weapon against the stats quo out there.

Please feel free to join me on LinkedIn --https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/.

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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2018. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America and participated in a PR panel at the Sarah Lawrence College Writers Institute Conference.