Chesterfield Public Relations Pro Steve Turner Provides 5 PR Tactics to Help Authors Promote Their Books

A book can be a great marketing tool to help you promote your personal brand and your business. Yet, unless you are a well-known celebrity with a large publishing house behind your efforts, the job of promoting it will be left up to you.

Having worked with many well-known (and some not so well-known) authors and speakers over the years, here are a few tricks of the trade that could be most beneficial as part of your communications game plan.

1. Leverage the book for media coverage.
If your goal is to secure articles and editorials in targeted magazines publishing a book raises your level of credibility with journalists. They tend to regard those who have written a book in higher regard than those who have not. Utilize the book to open doors and pursue earned media.

2. Leverage the book for speaking opportunities. Much publicity, exposure and even sales can result directly from speaking at conferences and trade shows. Provided you can deliver a solid one hour presentation or serve as a member of a panel, the book can help you land appearances in front of your targeted audience. The author of Book XXX has a lot of credibility with event planners.

3. Pursue book reviews.
This tends to be a little tricky but can have great rewards. Securing a review with a key trade journal, and with Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble will give you instant credibility. You may even become an Amazon best-selling author in your category. Then you can use your success for even bigger and better opportunities.

4. Write an e-book first before you print. As Ryan Holiday expertly explains in Growth Hacker Marketing if you have the luxury of writing an e-book it will give you a number of sound options to make your print edition more professional and more enticing to readers. The e-book enables you to make your work available to a multitude of targeted customers at a low cost, and improve upon it before it goes to print.

5. Add your book title and authorship to your email signature.
If you send out thousands of emails per year (and who doesn’t) why not use your email signature as a marketing tool? Under your name put… “Author of 20 Ideas That Will Rock Your Business…Forever” or whatever the title. It lets your business colleagues, clients, friends and others know that you wrote a book, and that you are a thought leader in the industry.

For additional public relations ideas visit http://solomonturner.com