Public relations and publicity is critical for any author, since they make their living being in the public eye and getting the attention of readers. You can't do that one-on-one alone -- you have to talk to the press, be on the web and use social media like Facebook and Twitter.
Heather Drucker, associate director of publicity for HarperCollins, took the time to talk about how the web and social media are changing things for authors.
Do book tours still work in the digital age?
Yes and no.
It used to be that publishers would send many more authors on national book tours. But with bookstores getting fewer people into stores for events, the publishers have to do much more analysis before they determine how many cities to send an author to, or if they will at all.
In addition, booksellers have become pickier in booking events. It takes a lot of work, time, and money -- advertising, PR, ordering books and paying for shipping -- from their end, to set up an event. If the event is not successful, the store didn’t make money on it, which cuts into their bottom line.
Authors and publishers still feel that it's important to create a relationship with the booksellers and readers in the stores.
But the landscape has changed. These days, many more books are being sold at online booksellers and off of e-Readers. So, getting the word out via social media, and just plain old media, can often take the place of a book tour or a bookstore visit.
And book clubs are filling a need right now in helping spread positive word of mouth of book titles, both in person and virtually with sides like goodreads.com.
The good news is that great booksellers can still make it happen for a book. Publishers and authors try very hard to support booksellers, who can often fall in love with a book and author, and hand-sell that book, building a level of excitement.
And, making the case for events, if somebody goes to an event and talks to the author, and buys their book, that author may have made a fan for life, and that person may tell their friends.
Does every author need to be on social media now, to have a blog and be on Facebook and Twitter?
Social media is big now.
There's a mommy blogger movement -- moms who read everything and blog about it -- which is powerful. We get book reviews on all kinds of these blogs and a lot of sales that way.
Authors and publishers have to create new content and keep posting it regularly. You also have to mix it up. Video and audio is important. Authors should do short Youtube videos and podcasts. It's great if you have a clip from when you were on CNN or NPR -- but even if you don’t, video is a great way to connect with your audience.
It can't all be "buy my book." It has to be a dialogue, and it helps to have different forms of media.
If you post a question or a call to action on Facebook or Twitter, people will respond.
For instance, Gary Vaynerchuk, the media and marketing guru and author of CRUSH IT! posted one tweet on his Twitter page telling his followers if they pre-ordered a copy of his next book THE THANK YOU ECONOMY, he’d send them a special gift.
He posted a tiny URL of the link to his Amazon.com book page. His Twitter feed connects directly with his Facebook page. Gary has a huge amount of followers, and therefore this paid off in a big way. His book shot to 168 on Amazon.com in just a few hours and it doesn’t even come out until March!
Publishing is changing fast. Will Amazon do to publishers what Netflix did to Blockbuster, or is the industry simply evolving?
The publishing industry is vastly different from what it was 20 years ago, or even five years ago.
First came the expansion of Barnes and Noble and Borders into the superstore format, and that affected the independent bookstores. Then came Amazon.com with their rock bottom pricing, which effected all the brick and mortar stores, including the big box B&Ns and Borders.
Then stores like Costco, BJ's, Sam's Clubs, Wal-Mart and Target got on the bandwagon with big orders and big discounts. And now it’s the e-Book.
I met a man last summer at a B&B in Maine, and he told me that he buys and reads five times as many books per year now that he has a Kindle. The truth is that the publishing industry has always been changing. The industry was hugely different in the 1980s from what it was in the 1950s. It’s just that technology is speeding everything up so fast that change happens in months as opposed to years.
I think in five years, everybody will have something like an iPad or a Kindle for reading books, but also for reading the news, and watching TV and movies on the road.
Books are still being acquired, publicists are still booking media for their authors, albeit a lot of online media now, and authors are still being discovered. It’s actually a very exciting time to be in publishing.
How are e-books changing publishing and publicity for authors? It seems a lot like rock stars, who've figured out they don't really make money from albums in the age of iTunes, so they're giving away music for free to get people to buy concert tickets.
Publishers are learning how to promote both an author’s backlist and their new hardcover with free and deeply discounted e-Book promotions.
Free isn't necessarily bad. You're introducing readers to an author.
Is social media replacing traditional news media with book publicity?
It can't take the place of real reporting.
Newspaper, radio and TV, and online news outlets like CNN.com, Slate, Salon, HuffPost and the Daily Beast, and many, many others, can go deeper than Twitter and Facebook – it’s just a fact.
You can't tweet a newspaper story 140 characters at a time. It would take hundreds of tweets, and Twitter is just not designed to go deep like that. However, you can serialize things, and we are going to see more of this on Twitter.
So you'll always need seasoned reporters, editors, book reviewers, radio hosts, TV hosts. Social media can't replace it all.