Guest Post & Giveaway: A Publicist*s Dream by Amy Green of Bethany House Publishers
We're back with Amy Green of Bethany House Publishers to give us more insight in the publishing world, from a publisher's side with "A Publicist's Dream: How to Help Authors." Welcome back, Amy!
"A Publicist's Dream: How to Help Authors"
I love chatting with readers, so I’m delighted to be here today talking about books, authors, and the behind-the-scenes of marketing. I’m Bethany House’s fiction publicist, which essentially means I do the grab-bag marketing tasks of anything not paid advertising—sending out review copies, planning contests, scheduling book tours, running our social media, setting up interviews, and generally being excited about our novels.
Because of this, I’m sometimes asked by enthusiastic readers (my favorite kind!) what they can do to promote authors and their books. And do I ever have answers for you. Some are obvious, some are less so, but all of them matter to help Christian fiction get out there to the world.
Like Everything!
Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But the more you like and comment on posts from authors’ pages, the more other people who will see it. So, even if you already have a book and thus the announcement of a giveaway is totally irrelevant to you, like the post. It’s a simple way to connect the author with more people.
Pro tip! For your favorite authors, the ones you want to sure to keep up with—or maybe a publisher called Bethany House who often posts giveaways and such—go to their Facebook page under their cover photo where it says “Following.” From there, click on “See First in Your Newsfeed.” That’s your way of signaling to Facebook that you’d prefer that they show you what the page posts instead of only doing so occasionally when they feel like it.
Answer Questions
This is also social-media specific. Authors and publishers will often include questions in their posts…so respond to them, even if it’s just a quick word or sentence. Because nobody wants to feel like that lonely kid in the high school cafeteria who no one wants to talk to.
Review Graciously
I’m not going to say you should only ever leave glowing, five-star reviews…but if the book just wasn’t your style, I’d say pass on reviewing it altogether instead of trashing it. No matter what, when you say things about a book on a blog or Goodreads or a retailer site, phrase things as if the author will read it (they often do!).
Of course, this is also assuming you review books, which you should! Even a one-sentence Amazon review or Goodreads rating can really help authors.
Be Understanding
This one’s especially for those who have interactions with me, or with other publishing people. Sometimes I’m behind and will forget to respond in a timely way or at all (it’s okay to prompt me). Sometimes I might accidentally come across as terse or rude. Sometimes you’ll hear a rule (no entrants outside the US, for example) and not know why it’s there (it costs us about $13 more in shipping to even mail a book to Canada, and that would kill our marketing budget).
Remember—the person on the other end of the book/FB account/email is a person too, even if you’ve never seen them.
Pray
I’ve gotten some great feedback to the prompts for prayer that go up on the first Sunday of the month on bethanyfiction.com, asking readers to join in praying for authors, their careers, and their books. But don’t limit yourself to that, of course! When think of an author—even seeing a book on your shelf—use it as a reminder to pray.
- to be continued . . .
About Amy
Amy Green is the fiction publicist at Bethany House. Her typical day might involve planning book tours, handling media requests, interacting with reviewers, answering author questions about marketing, and other tasks designed to introduce readers to great books. Outside of work, you can find her playing board games, baking bread, and bravely weathering Minnesota winters. She blogs every Thursday at bethanyfiction.com—feel free to stop by and comment anytime!Stay tune for "A Publicist's Dream" Part 2 tomorrow.
Welcome to the "Summer Giveaways" on Just Commonly. There will be multiple prizes and will run through the month of July. For full list of prizes, head to announcement post. (Click on the image above.) For this post, leave a comment for Amy, and be sure to enter the entry on the rafflecopter.
One commentator from all of Amy's guest posts will also be randomly chosen to receive a choice of a book from my stash.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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