Sparking National Conversations with Authors in 2020
As our marketing director Susan Stitt pointed out in her column, Hallmarks of Successful Publishing, there’s an ongoing erosion in the popular practice of promoting books, and other products, for free on social media. That’s because big social media companies have added various controls on the spread of such unpaid promotional efforts, hoping to turn them into paid advertising.
Make no mistake about this! We continue to encourage authentic sharing on social media among authors and our readers. That’s still a powerful way to spread nationwide awareness of new books.
We also use best practices with opt in
email lists, which is a valuable trend in , according to Susan’s recent column.
We also are experimenting with new networks, including the Religion News Service (RNS) option to send out press releases to their community of opt in
readers. We just did that—and sent out this RNS news release about Duncan Newcomer’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln.
Then, we also are able to share this 1-page PDF version of that news story.
This contributes a new set of resources to our ongoing marketing campaign for the book, adding to our earlier one-page, printable, color flyer that we developed for the book.
Sparking National Conversations with Authors in
Another way many of our authors build an audience is by actively responding to opportunities to write for newspapers, magazines and other websites. Our marketing director Susan Stitt sometimes sends suggestions to authors. In other cases, authors develop their own media contacts.
That’s the case with Victor Begg, author of Our Muslim Neighbors. Victor recently wrote an inspiring column, posted by a Florida newspaper, headlined: The Quran, the Bible and our Founding Fathers offer lessons to carry into .
We are tracking the impact of each new effort and welcome your thoughts and questions about book marketing.