7 Comments

Great point about investing in upskilling publicity staff with marketing skills. Also, I just did a brand collab with my book and it worked well.

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Very informative piece, thank you!!

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I was book page editor of The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis from 1988 to 2003. Contact between book marketers and publishers and me was usually via a letter followed by a phone call, or, as time went on, just a phone call. This method was extremely effective. Even when email gradually came to dominate the conversation, I considered a phone call more direct and personal. All these years later, I still have contact with some of those people on Facebook and Instagram.

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founding

This is great Kathleen! Would you consider writing a bit more about author and brand collaborations? Where you’ve seen it work well? Some of the possibilities? Or have you written about this previously? Thanks!

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author

I’ve written a little bit about it previously. The truth is, there haven’t been many cases of it.

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Thanks for your take on the key tactics, Kathleen! A great list that goes beyond the standard tatics we've seen/heard before! I like the idea of reaching readers directly; however, as someone who's worked in marketing and studied direct-to-consumer brands' social media/mktg strategies, I know how time- and resource-intensive this can be. Any frameworks for how authors can think about 1) how to get up the learning curve of this particular tactic, 2) what success could/should look like and how to measure it, and 3) how to budget both time and $$ for this vs. other tactics? Could be a great paid class!

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Ah, clarifies some thoughts. Merci.

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