Article Review: "How to Use Public Relations to Promote Your Book and Your Career" by Lorena Beniquez
This is another one I haven’t tackled for a while.
The book I’m dissecting is Writer’s Digest Guide to Self-Publishing 2015 . Writer’s Digest aims its publications at the aspiring and the emerging writer. It produces how-to and guidance books as well as reference books—not to mention webinars for those newbie writers who have a bit more money than peasants such as myself. Many of its volumes are the effort of multiple authors writing different sections or are compendiums of many articles.
Writer’s Digest Guide to Self-Publishing 2015 is the latter. The articles are quite short. The book is edited by Robert Lee Brewer, who also contributed a few articles.
I’d like to offer a brief overview of each article and note on each author over the next several weeks then sum up the entire book.
Writer’s Digest Guide to Self-Publishing 2015 is divided into three main subject areas: 1) Production 2) Management and 3) Promotion. Other sections include author interviews, listings (of professional services to the self-publishing author), resources such as conferences and book fairs, and an index.
The present article, “How to Use Public Relations to Promote Your Book and Career” is in the Promotions section. According to the contributor’s notes, author Lorena Beniquez has worked a celebrity publicist, reporter, filmmaker and freelance writer.
The title is a little misleading as the writer who wishes to take Beniquez’s advice will not be using public relations so much as networking. Not all of her suggestions will work for everybody, of course, but she is trying to get the reader to first find his/her tangible audience, not as an abstract marketing or writing activity, but find them as a concrete human beings. Is your book directed to senior citizens? Try to get a speaking engagement at a senior citizen center. They may not allow you to sell books there, but you will be networking, with the idea of creating word-of-mouth momentum.
She advises against hard sell. Be engaging. Be interesting. Offer the audience content to make them interested in your book. And if you’re not good at public speaking, get good at it.
As with so many of the articles in this book, this is a signpost. That’s not bad. You do have to do some work, put in some thought as to what will work for you and how to go about making it so. But this article points some fingers as to where to an author might start.
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Title: “How to Use Public Relations to Promote Your Book and Your Career”
Author: Lorena Beniquez
Writer’s Digest Guide to Self-Publishing 2015
Section: Promotion
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Last Self-Publishing Article: “ It Takes a Village ”
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©2015 Denise Longrie
Image Credit » https://pixabay.com/en/espresso-self-publishing-metallic-248881/ by DevilsApricot
Comments
MegL wrote on June 18, 2015, 6:04 PM
It's important to understand that you can write the best book in the world but if no one knows it's available you are unlikely to be read.
AliCanary wrote on June 18, 2015, 7:57 PM
I've learned to be leery of self-publishing, or "vanity publishing", as it is sometimes called, as you usually end up spending WAY too much and the books are priced too high to sell effectively, but I think e-books would be easier to sell, as they can be more affordable to buy, and you don't have to pay all those fees to print. Cutting out the middleman by selling your book directly would definitely save a lot of expense!
msiduri wrote on June 18, 2015, 10:51 PM
One can self-publish without paying for anything but the proof copy. This is what's available through amazon's CreateSpace (the paperback version) and Kindle (the ebook). (I did it). Smashwords is another service in ebook form only, but across multiple types of ebooks. None of the services do any marketing, though. That's what the article is about: Marketing by networking, drumming up speaking engagements and so on.
msiduri wrote on June 18, 2015, 10:53 PM
'Taint no easy thing, that I can say for sure. My Siegfried won't leave me alone, no matter how much I ignore him.
msiduri wrote on June 18, 2015, 10:58 PM
That is the catch, isn't it? One of the pieces of advice going around is that a successful author has to become a good public speaker. I didn't like public speaking in college. I sure don't like it now, but it's a gottado, I guess. Just like it was in college.
Paulie wrote on June 19, 2015, 4:10 AM
This is an excellent review which I enjoyed reading. I wasn't very good at public relations when I worked for the government and that is undoubtedly the main reason I was never promoted to the grade I thought I deserved.
msiduri wrote on June 19, 2015, 8:23 AM
Thanks for the kind words. It would be the same in every job, I think. Have to grease those wheels.
scheng1 wrote on June 22, 2015, 8:48 AM
To many writers, marketing a book is much tougher than writing a book.
msiduri wrote on June 22, 2015, 8:56 AM
It is. After all this time, I'm gradually getting the hang of writing a book, but I stumbling around in the dark with marketing.