Great pre-publicity ideas for authors

I tell my clients from the get go that writing and publishing a book is just part of the process. These days, for most authors, even if they find a publisher to handle their book, they will still need to do a lot of marketing themselves. PR professionals know that when they work with author clients their press releases and review copies need to get out there before the book is released. Newspapers and other media want to publish news that is new. They only want to cover books that are about to be released or published within the last few months. Pre-publicity is very important to the success of a book.
Terry O’Halloran is a client of mine. I once helped with the editing of his co-written book, Building a  Business on Bacon and Eggs, and he is also a friend of mine from the Professional Speakers’ Association. Today, I received a link to his own brand new take on advance publicity. Sure, it’s a YouTube clip, and that’s been done before Robin Pascoe did a really cool one for her book A Broad Abroad, but the content of his video is a clever idea. Terry gets on his soapbox and shouts about the topic that is the content of his next book ‘The Fight for Our Post Office’.

​Is your topic something to shout about?
One way to test that your book idea has legs is to ‘shout about it’.

• If you are prepared to stand on a soapbox and speak out about your topic, then that proves you have passion for your subject.
• If you are able to take your idea and turn it into a talk or presentation, then that presentation can become the skeleton, or road map for your book.
• If you can talk about your idea for just a few minutes, then that short talk will necessarily be focused, pared down. A good book needs to be focused.
• Shout about your book on a soapbox, in a letter to the editor of a newspaper, in an article, blog, radio interview, talk, presentation or keynote and you will be producing something that can be used as pre-publicity for your book.
• If you produce a video, article or podcast then circulate that as part of your advance publicity.

Here is a link to Terry’s video. His book will be available in September and is a 96 page illustrated book about the travesty of Britain’s Post Office closures.