Zagging communications for Marvelous Hairy
I was just talking to an old friend of mine, Mark Rayner, who is in the beginning stages of publicizing his latest novel, Marvelous Hairy. Mark’s a great, funny writer - though under appreciated by way of sales and fame. That doesn’t matter though. He loves to write and through his books the world is a little sillier, intelligent and better.
He and I were discussing ways he could drive more interest in his book. He’s with a small publisher with a small budget. So - as often happens - much of the actual work of publicizing the book has fallen to him, the author.
We reviewed the usual ways books are marketed: advance copies to reviewers, build buzz for distributors and book shops, pitch the media, hope for some interviews.
That’s all fine. They’re all good things to do, but unless he’s extremely lucky, he won’t break through doing only that.
We started talking about ways he can differentiate his book from all the other books coming to market this fall. Jobs like this call for creativity strategy and tactics. It will also mean targeting people other than just the regular book industry insiders. In fact, they’re a secondary audience. The primary audience is actual readers.
The trick will be how to reach those readers without relying on the traditional machinery of the industry. The answer lies partly with social media - Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube. It sounds like a terrific challenge and I wish him all the luck in the world. We’ll lend a hand wherever we can.
If you want to get noticed, your communications and PR needs to zag where everyone else is zigging.
