Post

This whole thing has been getting me to think about writing some of the publicity work I do for the Day Job, and the types of things that have worked for me, both as a publicity goblin and reader.

The short version is that we see a decent bump when we announce a book (institution blog + newsletter + member magazine + social media): we'll get our dedicated members and readers picking up things from the start, which is super helpful.

The synergy between those things are useful: I can stand up an issue of our member magazine to align with a book release, then take those articles and put them into our blog, tell people about it via social media and our newsletter, all of which points back to the store.

BUT. Those are all resources that we've built up over the years: we're an institution that's been around since 1838, and already have a lot of name recognition, and a dedicated community. It's taken a long time to get to that point, plus internal strategy and intention.

What moved copies recently was my reposting one of those articles to our blog, and sharing it out on Facebook, which took off, somewhat unexpectedly. Here's the post:

I've been trying to think about why it took off the way it did. I think it's partially the image, the history that's blurbed, and the environmental angle that allowed commenters to talk back and forth, as well as the times that we weighed in about it. That moved 15-20 copies in the last week.

Something I've seen as a reader that I need to do /learn more is ads on Amazon and Meta. This feels like it's helped surface books that I might not have otherwise noticed (and I'm a dedicated book seeker!). If I had a $40k budget for Cosplay I would have carpetbombed Instagram and Facebook with ads.

One of our books about a pretty horrific crime that's coming up on a centennial mark in November: I'll definitely be telling folks about that ahead of the anniversary.

For authors with books: I'd definitely search for your local publications: TV news, NPR affiliate, talk radio, local papers, community bulletins, blogs, local Facebook groups, etc., and reach out there. Do some homework: see who's written about books or events and tell them.