Topics for so much speculation. So many regrets. So many opportunities lost, realized, capitalized, squandered. Bubbles burst, new ones forming.

Seismic shifts in the financial world and along the communications fault lines have led many of us to wonder where we go from here? Not just with our retirement funds or mortgage payments, our message platforms or information-gathering, but in overall terms of business, which still remains the focus of our lives.

If we’re in business, we need to build business. With the shifting technologies, attention-span deficits, and the thousands of viral fingers trying to touch us, however, just where do we spend our marketing dollars? Where do we focus time and energy?

Hmm. Social media? Sounds good. But where? Twitter. Or yet another emerging growth platform?

Banner Ads? Maybe. But what’s the click-through rate? Are they passé?

Blogs? Who’s going to write them? How do I draw traffic? What should I say?

In effect: What should I do?  Should I outsource, should I not?  Should I write more, should I write less?  Video or no video?  What is the best strategy to get your message out in a BIG way?

Well, I believe the way to go is through collaboration and execution. That is, get clear about the information landscape. At Prosper Now, publicity maven Michael Drew will speak to the new information age, the way the world has changed in barely the blink of a cosmic eye.

Mike will tell you about where society has come from, where it’s been, where it’s going and how to get there. He’ll outline ways in which you can identify for yourself the valuable things within you and your company that you can deliver, which can have an impact not only on your own future, but your family, your neighborhood and your larger community.

Who’s Mike? Well, he’s a book promoter par excellence – and helped launch 64 books onto national bestseller lists. He’s also helped emerging thought leaders develop their message – and send it out there to build their business.

Once you know what is going on, we have a Strategy Panel led by Michael Gerber of E-Myth Worldwide that will give you step-by-step instruction to getting your message out to a targeted audience, and creating systems to outsource, build teams and grow.

Did you create a job for yourself?  Are you really an entrepreneur?  Or as Michael Gerber puts it, you have fallen into an “entrepreneurial seizure”?  The two Michaels will help you see the way more clearly toward realizing your strengths, crafting your message and making sure it reaches the right audience.

Media List

Your media list includes the names of those who will receive a copy of the sale version of the book. It will include those who received review copies of your book plus national media outlets and local media in your area, the areas you plan to visit, and those where you have special contacts.

To find sources, go to the library and leaf through Cision’s publications, such as Cision’s MediaSource. Although you can pay for the same information on the Internet, at libraries, it’s free. However, the information may be dated because media people move frequently. Your best bet is to do your initial research at the library and collect a bunch of names and contact information. Then call or check websites to verify what you found and to get the most current information.

Also check the Harrison guides, Radio-TV Interview Report for national broadcast media information. Call media outlets and ask who you should send your material to. Try to get an actual person’s name, not simply an e-mail address to “info@.”

Internet Marketing

When people hear about you or your book, they go to the Internet to get more information. They Google you, read about you, and visit your Web site; they look for your book on Amazon.com. So, as an author, it’s essential to have a strong Internet presence.

1. The first step in your Internet marketing plan is to put up a memorable website, a site that people love to visit and will tell others about. You website must be great-looking and reflective of the impression you want to convey. For example, you may want it to appear authoritative, lighthearted, elegant, colorful, hip, scholarly, or goofy. Or it could have a theme related to your book or your area of expertise. Your site must also be up-to-date and easy and intuitive to use, and all links must work.
2. Register your site with all the major search engines under your name, your book’s name, and every conceivable variation of them. That way, when people misspell your name and don’t get your book’s title exactly right, they will still get to your site.
3. Include in your website everything that’s in your media kit. Your site should allow visitors to read a sample chapter, order your book, enter into exchanges with you, and view your upcoming events and appearances. It should link to other complementary sites and to your strategic partners. Your site must have a press room with the latest articles on you and your book.
4. In addition to your site, you can start your own blog, newsletter, or e-zine.

Numerous firms such as FSBAssociates.com (Fauzia Burke) and PromoteABookmedia.com can be hired to handle your Internet book-marketing campaigns. These firms can be invaluable because they know all the components that can be included in your campaign. They can create an Internet campaign that may include creating a website for the book, sending your book to relevant websites, and sending it to blogs. These firms have lists of Internet book reviewers; will syndicate your content on the Web; or will set up chats, downloads, newsgroups, and mailing lists.

In cyberspace, podcasting seems to be the next frontier. Podcasting is making material from your book available on iPods. Audiobooks can now be downloaded onto iPods and soon, experts predict, so will interviews, articles, and excerpts of your book. From your website, people could download a chapter of your book and then buy the rest if they like it. In the process, you’re capturing their name and e-mail address, which you can use in the future.

A subspecies of Internet marketing is the Internet blast or Amazon blast. Essentially, Internet blasts are when you send targeted e-mail to everyone on your list, and to everyone on your friends’ and associates’ lists, and to lists you buy. In the e-mail, you ask the recipients to buy your book on a certain date and even at a specified time on that date. You also can offer them incentives to buy your book at the specified time.

Internet booksellers such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com track their online sales on an hourly basis. Therefore, when they make a large number of online sales on a given day or hour, it can make the book a bestseller on their list. Even if a book is a bestseller for only an hour, it is a legitimate bestseller and authors and publishers can truthfully and forever refer to the book as a bestseller. Bestseller status increases the author’s profile and can generate more publicity, which usually translates into higher book sales.

Newspaper and Radio Releases

You can write feature articles, or articles can be written under your byline, that will be sent to over 10,000 newspapers across the nation. Similarly, radio features also can be written and sent to hundreds of radio stations nationwide.

Services including North American Precis Syndicate (NAPS) and News USA will write, produce, and distribute these features. They can put the cover of your book on them, link them to your website, and distribute them to news outlets. Feature articles can be produced as professional-looking two-column articles that newspapers will pick up and use without change.

Similarly, radio features can be produced and sent to radio stations throughout North America. They can write scripts and record an interview that will be sent to hundreds of stations. Through these services, your message about your book can be delivered widely without your constantly having to give interviews.

Although independent companies specialize in producing and distributing radio features, those of us who are book publicists, as a part of our jobs, supervise and work closely with these firms. We know from long experience the companies that we can trust to deliver the best results. We also review the content of articles and scripts, provide editorial input, and make sure that services cover all essential points. Then we coordinate their release and distribution with the rest of your book campaign. Since we work with these services so often, we get a special price, which we pass on to our clients. So, it’s usually cheaper for you to go through us than to deal directly with radio feature distribution services.

Newspaper and radio feature services also give PR firms that specialize in publicizing books discount prices, which many pass on to their clients. So it is often more cost effective and efficient for authors to go through their publicists than to do all the work involved to write and distribute these features.

Media Training

Many of us are petrified of publicly speaking or being interviewed. We wish that we could speak as smoothly, effortlessly, and articulately as all those people we see on television.

Well, surprise, surprise—all those accomplished speakers you see and hear are either trained actors or they have gone through extensive media training. If you hope to publicize your book, media training is essential. Good publicists won’t allow their clients to appear before the media until they’ve had media training.

Take heart! The sum of the parts of your book is far greater than the book itself! It falls to you, the author, to enable the book to reach its fullest potential.

When you look beyond the physical book itself, you’ll see that there are countless ways you can harvest and sell the book and also to promote the growth of your core business——which is likely why you wrote the book in the first place.

Let’s take a quick walk through your book in search of raw material and inspiration:

The Front Cover
Artwork ready and waiting for use in advertising and promotion. Wouldn’t it fit nicely on the front of a postcard for traditional mail? How about some greeting cards or even custom postage stamps? And don’t forget to include it in your email signature. Use your book to boost your credibility at every turn.

The Table of Contents
This is a gold mine. In addition to being an important piece of your media kit, use your TOC for speaking or presentation outlines, curriculum development, blog, and newsletter topics, worksheets, sell sheets, a starting point for web content or article development.

Foreword
Presumably, the foreword is written by someone other than yourself in support of what you are writing and why it is important. This is great fodder for PR efforts, Web content, or download as a fresh introduction to your topic.

Preface
Your own preamble to the book is a personal way to approach your topic and would be great for a blog or as inspiration for articles.

Content
Look for parts that could be excerpted or adapted for an article, workbook, or presentation. You could set up an auto-responder program that dispenses bite-sized pieces of content at regular intervals. Consider the content you didn’t use in the book and how it could enhance this repurposed material.

Appendices & Glossaries
The supplemental material you include in your book could make a great bonus item or giveaway as part of another promotion.

The Back Cover
You can recycle content from your back cover for use in other marketing materials and on the Web—testimonials in particular. And don’t forget that email signature here, also.

Take each of those areas and run with them, adapting them to use in your specific universe and putting your mark on them.

These ideas and suggestions are intended to get you thinking and acting——and to help you recognize the immense sum of your parts.

There isn’t much to say about YouTube that hasn’t already been said, but it would be careless to exclude this mammoth of social media from our series. And “mammoth” is no exaggeration: YouTube is big, hairy, and, er, tusk-wielding. Well, at least it’s the first of those three, unless we were to explore some extended metaphor. Get this: YouTube has the eighth largest audience on the Internet, pulling in 55 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Read: YouTube’s no fad. Google doesn’t pay $1.65 billion for fads. And fads don’t hold this much book marketing and publicity potential.

So, what exactly does YouTube—or at least the technology it employs—mean for book publishing? Well, duh, book trailers for one. (But that’s not all. More later.) In an interview with Publishers Weekly blogger Barbara Vey, Sheila Clover English, CEO of book trailer producer Circle of Seven Production, said she “expect[s] to see book video become a main element in most authors’ marketing campaigns.” Whether trailers become the “main” element remains to be seen, but there’s little doubt that online marketing and publicity efforts—including YouTube and other social media—will become standard in book launches.

This year Simon & Schuster partnered with the New York Film Academy to create the “Reel Reads Book Sizzle Contest,” in which 400 students were invited to create a three minute trailer for one of S&S’s titles. The contest itself hasn’t much to do with YouTube, but another S&S project does: BookVideosTV. BookVideosTV is a channel on YouTube that exhibits book marketing and publicity possibilities other than book trailers. It features author profiles and even some behind-the-scene looks at the book in the developmental stage. It’s like VH1’s “Behind the Music,” but twice as sordid! (No, not really. Not at all.)

So, bottom line, YouTube can be way more than just trailers for books. Even Oprah and Harpo Studios announced this month the launch of the “Oprah on YouTube” channel. Neither the press release nor Oprah’s welcome video mentioned Oprah’s Book Club specifically, but who knows? Perhaps the juggernaut that is Oprah’s Book Club will eventually find a second home on YouTube.

Mike Jenkins is a 28-year veteran of the remodeling industry, and his company, Renaissance Doors, has specialized in door and window replacement in Orange County, California for 24 years. One day Jenkins was inspired to write a how-to book on home remodeling. He titled his book, I’ll Do it Differently Next Time — a phrase he’s heard all too often — and set out to compile an informative and helpful guide to doing a home improvement project the right way.
Writing a book wasn’t easy – it’s not what he does. But he did feel it would be worth the effort, so he took the necessary time away from his normal office routine. He worked hard on research and developed what he feels is the best collection of information available on the topic of home remodeling in California.
Once the first printing of 3,000 copies was delivered on December 1st, Jenkins and his salespeople began handing out the book in their showroom, using it like an elaborate business card. The company’s main advertising vehicle, a direct-mail, large format postcard, began announcing the availability of the book FOR FREE to customers.
“People began responding immediately,” says Jenkins. “I don’t know how many people are reading it, but it really gave us something special, something that set us apart from the competition.”
Sales began increasing right away, delivering record months in both December and January, and a record February is expected as well. Closing percentage is up a whopping ten percent. And Jenkins himself has become a bit of a celebrity.
“People are treating me differently, and truly seem to be impressed by my new status as a ‘published author.’ I went to a regional meeting of business people recently, and about half of the people there insisted I sign a book for them,” says Jenkins. “One of our vendors came to visit the other day and said, ‘Before we get started, I want a copy of that book – and you’d better sign it!’”
“The credibility you gain by writing a book is huge. This is only an 85-page book, but the reality is that people now think of you as ‘the expert.’ Not only that, but I’m amazed how much people like to get something for free. They’re coming in and spending $20,000 on a project, but getting that $20 book for free seems to make a big difference. I really didn’t expect it to have such an impact.”
Having already gone through 1,200 copies, Jenkins expects that at this rate he’ll reprint twenty or thirty times during its life cycle.
Writing and publishing the book was quite a large effort, and he finds it gratifying to see his labor paying off. Part of what made the project go smoothly was turning production over to his brother Jerry’s custom book publishing company. “The hardest part was writing the book. But once that was done I was able to turn it over to the Jenkins Group production team – and I could get back to doing my real job.
“That really made it easy to make this happen, to use a turn-key operation that would handle everything, from design and layout, to registrations and graphics -– everything was taken care of. I hear about people wanting to do it themselves, but I don’t recommend it. Do what you’re good at –- put your expertise down on paper -– but let the publishing experts produce the book.
“It’s very much like a contracting job. When the homeowner tries to save money and do some of it themselves, they make mistakes, and all kinds of problems can happen. I hope my book delivers that message in more ways than one –- let the experts do their work.”

* * * * * *

Top Seven Characteristics of an Effective Business Branding Book
1. Compact – Keep it short, simple, and manageable. Business people are busy people.
2. Concise – Use simple, understandable language. Don’t get overly “expert” with insider lingo or technical terminology.
3. Usable – Include useful resources, glossaries, legal forms, etc. This content is often available from governments and associations for free, and just needs to be compiled for convenient use.
4. Timely – Do extensive research. Prove yourself an authority by giving readers the latest information available.
5. Great Design – Your book is a reflection of you and your business, so don’t scrimp on design. Even business books are judged by their covers. Use good design, illustration, and a killer cover image.
6. Quick Tips – Provide highlighted, takeaway tips and truths that readers put right to use without reading the entire text.
7. Identity – Brand yourself. Display your name and business prominently and often.

This is your “business card,” so use it that way.

If you’ve written and produced your book well, your customers will want a copy, and they will use it -– along with your products and services!

The summer harvest season runs from the beginning of June through the end of August. It encompasses 90 days when farmers gather mature crops from their fields, cool, sort, clean and pack them, and then ship them off to the wholesale and consumer markets.

The harvest period, no matter what time of year it occurs, is a make-or-break time for those who earn a living off the land. It’s the period when they find out what kind of return they have yielded on all the time, energy, and money they put into cultivating, planting, and growing their produce.

Your authors have a harvest season, too—the first 90 days after you publish their book. This post-publication stage is critical for a number of reasons. First, it shows authors how effective their pre-publication marketing plan was. But it also gives them an opportunity to brand their books through continued PR efforts. And finally, it helps identify the options that are available to them immediately following their 90-day “harvest season.”

Post-Publication: The First 90 Days

All it takes is 90 days for a bookstore to find out just how serious authors are about selling their own book. If sales expectations are met (generally, 50% of the books in their initial order), orders for more of that title are refilled and placed on shelves. But if sales fall short of this mark, all remaining copies are yanked from the shelves and sent back to you, the publisher. To make matters worse, bookstores will—from here on out—be reluctant to work with your author on future books. And that means your authors must be prepared to focus all their time and efforts during this 90-day harvest season to driving readers to bookstores for the explicit purpose of buying their book.

Pulling this off requires a relentless book-branding strategy—wherein potential readers can run but not hide. In terms of an actual ratio, the average customer must hear about your author’s book three times for every five nights of sleep over the course of the entire 90 days following publication. Ideally, of course, this will simply be a continuation of the pre-publication promotion that was started several months earlier.

This branding initiative should be comprised of several activities

• television and radio interviews,
• newspaper and magazine interviews,
• e-newsletters,
• seminars,

and any other means your author can do to recycle his name, message, and book title for his target audience.

Post-Post-Publication: 90 More Days to Build on Success

If your author’s book meets sales expectations during its first 90 post-publication days on the shelves, talk to your author about extending his promotional efforts for an additional 90 days. Initial sales will encourage bookstores to continue stocking it, giving your author the opportunity to promote in markets that did not pick up the story the first time around. As an added promotional boost, your author can point to the book’s success in those first 90 days. Everybody loves a winner, and media outlets are no different when looking for an interesting story to run.

If, on the other hand, your author’s book does NOT produce the number of sales the bookstores are looking for, post-post-publication promotion takes on a different meaning. At this point, your author should shift his focus to selling the book directly, either through a website or at seminars (if he is not doing that already). Try to be as encouraging as possible should your author find himself in this position. Do not let a bookstore’s interpretation of “success” get him down. Many-a bestselling author has come up short on the first pass and the second pass and the third pass at creating a bestseller.

All your author can do is plan everything he can, well in advance; carefully target his promotional efforts; work hard; and build buffers for the unexpected. If these measures are taken, he’s giving himself and his publisher the best chance at a plentiful harvest full of recurring book sales. And sooner or later, both of you will reap the benefits—sooner is better, but later is financially meaningful, too.

Questions about post-publication book promotion may be directed to Michael R. Drew at the Austin, Texas, headquarters of Promote A Book : 512-858-0040. You can also contact Michael via email at michael@promoteabook.com.

I think we can all agree that a strategically planned and well-executed PR campaign is a vital ingredient in the recipe for a bestselling book. And that your author’s goal in such a campaign is to whet potential readers’ appetites to the point that they walk into a bookstore with the specific intent of purchasing a copy of his book. Unfortunately, lots of battles must be won in order for that to happen.

The first battle that takes place is the battle for the book buyer’s attention. With somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 new book titles being published each year, your author’s PR message must jockey for position against all the competing messages out there.

Once your author manages to get a book buyer’s attention, the next challenge is holding it.

To do that, your author has to find a way to make the PR message relevant to the potential buyer. And, finally, even after attention has been gained and held, there’s the challenge of getting people to remember to drive to the bookstore and seek out the book. This final challenge is a battle against sleep, that great diluter and eraser of the human brain.

The human brain has three levels of memory (from shallowest to deepest):

1. Working Memory
2. Declarative Memory
3. Procedural Memory

Working Memory, otherwise known as short-term memory, is electrical, like the RAM on your computer. So important information is accessible as long as the machine is powered up. And if shutdown happens before you can save that important information in a more permanent way, it’s gone forever. Thus, your author has a very finite and precious amount of time to imprint a PR message on human RAM, or working memory, before it is erased by sleep.

The key to imprinting your author’s PR message more permanently is relevance—saying something that truly matters to the person receiving the message. If your author is successful in doing that, his PR message has a chance of working its way into Declarative Memory. This intermediate level of memory is akin to the hard drive on your computer. The information is there and available for retrieval, but you still have to consciously go looking for it. And if enough sleep takes place without such retrieval, the message is as good as forgotten.

If, on the other hand, your author has the ability to deliver a relevant PR message on a consistent basis over a period of time, that message can burn itself into a potential reader’s Procedural Memory. This level of memory is also referred to as tacit or implicit knowledge, and this is where lasting memory imprinting occurs. Procedural memory is long-term and chemical, as well as involuntary and automatic. Think in terms of burning information onto a CD. Once it’s there, it’s there for good.

But the reality is, most book-related PR messages just aren’t important enough to burrow their way into the procedural level without the assistance of relentless repetition. In terms of a PR campaign, the biggest successes I’ve witnessed have always occurred when a message was repeated three times every five days for a minimum of ninety days. This translates into a combination of 100 interviews, reviews, seminars, and newsletter articles every month for three consecutive months in the top seventy market regions.

You already knew that conducting an effective PR campaign takes a lot of work. Hopefully, this article gives you a better idea of exactly how much work we’re talking about. True, it’s an uphill battle, but it’s a battle that can be won when your author uses his or her understanding of the three levels of memory: Working Memory, Declarative Memory, and Procedural Memory. So share this article with your next promising author, and prepare to enjoy one of the sweetest PR campaign victories of your professional life.

Questions about the various levels of memory to address in book PR campaigns may be directed to Michael R. Drew at the Austin, Texas, headquarters of Promote A Book : 512-858-0040. You can also contact Michael via email at michael@promoteabook.com.

What would you say is the key to publishing a successful book? Good writing? The right niche market? A sizable marketing platform?

I think you need a layer of each of those elements working for you. But at its inner core, almost every bestseller is the result of a fully developed and seamlessly executed marketing plan that drives thousands of readers to bookstores as the book is being released. In this article I give you the tools you need to help your authors construct a pre-publication book promotion plan that does just that.

Planning 6 Months Ahead

Too many authors wait until their books are finished to initiate their marketing plans.

That’s like landing in Paris and heading to the nearest coffeehouse to map out a week-long European vacation. What do they most want to experience? How will they get around? Are there any governmental, economic or travel obstacles keeping them from implementing their last-minute agendas? If so, their short-sightedness may end up costing time, effort, and money they don’t have.

Book promotion campaigns present similar obstacles. Multiple people need to review your author’s manuscript before it’s published, right? And, as you know, the target audience should be informed and reminded about a book at least three times a week for a series of months. For these reasons, I always recommend that authors begin their book promotion campaigns no later than six months prior to publication—and so should you.

Galleys & Press Kits

Publishers should provide their authors with enough free galleys to send out to all major influencers of book sales. (So don’t be one of those publishers that insists on charging for galleys.) Free or not, I tell my author-clients to order 330 galleys 6 months before publication date. Authors might scoff at the added cost (if there is some) and bother—until they consider the discussions and word-of-mouth advertising these galleys can generate. And it’s a good idea to send a copy of the book cover with the galley for branding purposes, if the author can manage it.

You should recommend, as I do, that authors go the extra mile when constructing and presenting their press kits. Folders should be colorful and glossy, with pockets and placeholders for business cards. Book covers should be photo-copied to the front of these folders. Everything should be printed on quality paper. All of this will help your author’s press kit stand out, above the herd—and bring you and her more sales.

Endorsements

Since the right endorsements can infuse a book with credibility and authority, and since they won’t cost your author any real money, encourage her to shoot for the stars. What would you think if you saw a new cookbook endorsed by the likes of Emeril and Wolfgang Puck? I know what I’d be thinking – chow time!

The downside of going after high profile endorsers in the author’s niche is that they have extremely busy schedules. They have to be motivated to fit your author’s book into their crazy agendas.

The good news is that experts need to keep their names out there in order to remain experts. And having them plastered across thousands of copies of new books helps such industry icons stay in the limelight, stay relevant, stay experts.

So insist that your author obtain ten high profile, highly recognizable endorsements. They’ll get a lot more cooperation than they think from “the experts.” And it’s not at all farfetched to expect a one-thousand increase in book sales as a result.

Book Clubs & Reviews

It’s no news to you that book clubs offer great pre-publication opportunities, right? As you know, getting your author’s book into the right acquisition manager’s hands can result in a couple thousand more orders in the weeks both before AND following publication.

So require your author to set a goal of getting positive responses from a minimum of five book clubs. And tell her that the acquisition manager in each book club needs to receive materials a good six months prior to publication.

Since book reviews in trade publications will generate publicity, and since buying agents for bookstores often do base their book-ordering decisions on the reviews they find there, train your author to be ready to send galleys and press kits to reviewers at least four months before the book’s release date.

Press Releases & Public Relations

These two aspects of a marketing plan come from completely different perspectives.

Blasting multiple press releases to wire services in the short term can be compared to firing a shotgun, while nurturing long-term relationships with carefully selected media members is more akin to squeezing the trigger on a rifle. Rifle shots must be precise. For your author to hit both her broad targets and her more focused targets, she needs to have these long-standing media relationships in place when she begins her pre-publication effort.

So, four months before the book’s publication release, it’s a good idea to require your author to send out sixteen press releases at once to two different wire services, allowing them to distribute each one three times a week over a sixteen week period.

A well-conceived book, a targeted audience, and a substantial marketing platform are all essential parts of the bestseller engine. But the fuel that powers that engine and gets all those moving parts running in sync is a comprehensive marketing plan. If your author plans well six months in advance, carefully targets her promotional efforts, works hard and prepares for surprises, your publishing house and your author should both enjoy a smooth ride along the road to recurring book sales.

Questions about implementing bestselling marketing plans may be directed to Michael R. Drew at the Austin, Texas, headquarters of Promote A Book : 512-858-0040. You can also contact Michael via email at michael@promoteabook.com.

Maybe it’s a newspaper article or a radio interview – not necessarily a big deal type of placement, but media coverage nonetheless.

First of all, take a moment to celebrate. Be grateful for this, even if it isn’t as exciting as Oprah herself calling to invite you to be on her show. If you’re working with a publicist, thank them without asking about what they’re doing next.

OK, now you’re ready to begin leveraging your publicity results. Here’s what to do:

Send a Thank You Note
Write a quick, handwritten note of thanks to the person who wrote about you or interviewed you. If they ever need an expert on your topic again, you will be more likely to be called than someone else who didn’t make this personal connection. Also, they might recommend you to their media colleagues.

Start Your Publicity Results List
This is your list of all the media placements you’ve received. More than a simple list, your Publicity Results List should also track circulation numbers, minutes of air time, geographical coverage of media reach, location of the actual placement, and/or link to the audio or video file of the interview. (You should also have a Media Contacts List of those who know you personally. Make a firm commitment to yourself to keep this up-to-date.)

With your List, at any given moment you will know exactly how many placements you’ve gotten; what areas of the country you have covered; whether you are doing better in print, online, on radio, or on TV; and how to put your hands on the media placements.

When something newsworthy happens to you, let your Media Contacts know. They may or may not be able to cover you again so soon, but they are like customers who have already bought from you once — they know you and trust you, and it makes their job easier to work with a known source.

Update Your Website and Your Online Press Kit
On your website in your press kit, you will want to include a list of media coverage you have received. Grab the logo of the media outlet and post it with an “as seen in” tagline. Don’t worry if the media outlet seems too small for this kind of exposure. It is all about taking small steps and moving up. As you get bigger and better known, you can highlight the logos of big guys and give less prominence to these first placements.

You can link to the actual article online. Post the audio file or video file on your site. Not only will this help customers to see your credibility, it will also help the media to know you are media worthy and media savvy.

By the way, if you don’t have an online press kit (such as you can find at www.247presskit.com), you should seriously consider it. A recent study by TEKGroup International showed that 98% of media prefer to get information via email and online press kits. Make yourself available where and how journalists are looking, and you’re more likely to get media placements.

Include Your “As Seen In” List Everywhere
As you go about the business of your book marketing, you can use the list of media placements all the time. For example, in cover letters you are sending to solicit special sales deals, outreach to bookstores, in mailings to your list, in your e-zine, or on your blog.

The fact is that people like to be around success. The more people (media and customers) think you are appealing to other people, the more appealing you become to them. Leverage this.

Tell All Your Friends
In addition to your everyday friends, tell all your online friends. If you’re already social networking, you know what I mean. If you’re not, check out next week’s column. MySpace is not the only game in town, and it is not just for kids.

Next Week:
Social Networking to Build Your Platform

Public relations, or PR, plays an integral role in the success of any author trying to increase book sales and visibility in the marketplace. No longer the ugly stepsister to advertising, PR has changed its image and is on the rise. For the budget-conscious author, PR is usually the most cost-effective solution for maximum market penetration. Use the tools below to keep your money in your pocket and your book on the shelf.

1. Online Alternatives

Everyone has a story to tell, a message to promote, and a product to push—and they’re using online media sources to do their bidding. If you aren’t blogging, vlogging, podcasting, or even Googling yourself on a regular basis, then you need to jump on the bandwagon. Americans create an average of fifty thousand blogs a day. That means every twenty-four hours your competitor may be creating a blog to sell his or her message.

The Internet provides a way to promote your message on a global scale, with the ability to reach an unprecedented percentage of the population. According to Redbooks.com, Coca-Cola spends approximately $2.16 billion a year on traditional advertising around the world. New Line Cinema spent less than .5 percent of that amount to promote its new movie Snakes on a Plane. Starting in January of 2006, New Line Cinema started blogging about their new movie and has created a huge cult following. Consumers have since created external blogs and podcasts, all for a movie that will not be released until August and that no one has seen. This same pre-release hype can be applied to authors. Use the popularity of online alternatives to promote your book before the release date. Start a blog and get your blogging friends to write about your book. If Snakes on a Plane can get a cult following, maybe your book can, too.

2. Wham! It’s WOM!

If you follow trends in fashion and retail, then why not follow trends in the world of PR and marketing? Leading the pack of new trendy services offered by marketing and PR agencies is Word of Mouth, or WOM, promotions. WOM starts by eliciting the help of others, often called WOM agents, to spread positive buzz about your product, ultimately leading to the creation of brand ambassadors. How often have you read a book because a friend personally thought you would enjoy it? Probably more times than you can remember. Creating brand ambassadors will help spread the message of your book through your personal network and the networks of your ambassadors. The eMarketer/WOMMA report stated that 43 percent of marketers plan on conducting WOM campaigns in 2006. Companies such as Microsoft, Volkswagen, and Best Buy have all integrated WOM initiatives into their traditional media campaigns. Entire marketing agencies are dedicated to creating WOM promotions by making WOM agents available for purchase, just like media space. Instead of spending money on agency-created WOM agents, create your own. If you look, you probably already have brand ambassadors. Try checking with your parents, friends, and siblings; they have to like your work, so use that to your advantage.

3. Get Branded

J.K. Rowling. Dan Brown. Both authors represent two of the most powerful brands in publishing. Books, movies, video games, and cross-promotional products are all things associated with them. Creating brands raises positive awareness with any product, service, or message and helps in the creation of positive brand ambassadors. Our culture is built on branding—what’s hot and what’s not. Make yourself part of the hot list and create a brand image that is memorable and lasting. Find where you want your position to be in the marketplace and develop a brand position statement. This way, people will talk about you in the light you want them to when you’re not around.

All of these tools run the gamut of prices. If you’re budget conscious, hire an experienced freelancer to help you. If you have money to spend, hire a full-service agency. It will be more expensive with similar results, but agencies have their own brand awareness and respect in the market. If you want more information about the world of PR, I recommend Full Frontal PR by Richard Laermer and The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR by Al Ries and Laura Ries. These books offer great insight into the modern world of PR.