Publicity is attention, promotion, notice, hype or spotlight. Something every author wants and needs to be successful. If you have a lot of money you can hire a publicist to get you publicity, you can place advertisements everywhere and probably do a pretty good job of getting your name out there.
If you don’t have any money you will need to do this yourself. Most authors I interviewed for my “Mosquito marketing for Authors” book did not realize this! Getting publicity is a hard job; it takes a lot of time and can be very discouraging. It can also be very rewarding. I like marketing myself because I can see the results of my work, if I am marketing myself and my books using the tools and techniques I have used for my business, I start seeing results in the form of being in the newspaper, being asked to write articles or requests for interviews.
If that is happening, you are on the right track and you didn’t have to pay a publicist. When you pay someone to do this work for you they normally already have media and press contacts and can get you publicity much more quickly than you will be able to do for yourself. The thing to remember when you tackle this yourself is that you know your book better than anybody. You have the passion and can explain your book like nobody’s business. That is a big plus when trying to get publicity for our book, something a publicist doesn’t have working in their favor.
Michelle Dunn, author of an award winning book is a writer, teacher, and consultant that has a contagious passion for her work. Michelle started, ran and marketed M.A.D. Collection Agency for 8 years.
Michelle is originally from RI and now lives in NH. Visit michelledunn.com michelledunn.com for more information on her “Mosquito Marketing Series”.