by Jenna Kalinsky.
When you are ready to dig in your heels and sell books, gain a strong reputation in the literary field, and lay the foundation for a long, successful writing career, knowing the difference between Marketing and Publicity is key. By having a strong author brand, you can use one to affect the other and overall gain the greatest traction with your audience and see your book take off!
“Marketing” for an author is the act of establishing a clear and consistent message through which you leverage a variety of communication methods to spread the word about your book.
This work is 100% generated by you (or anyone you hire to work on your behalf) and entirely under your control.
The clearer your message and the more targeted your marketing is to your readership, the more you can control how you are perceived, which influences the impact you make on the literary world and, importantly, on your book’s sales.
Publicity, in contrast, is “second-hand” information: interpretations and reactions shared by readers, critics, and journalists. This includes media coverage, book reviews, word-of-mouth recommendations, social media mentions, and book club discussions.
Yet unlike marketing, which you maintain full control over, publicity cannot be controlled—directly, at least.
The #1 best way to ensure you maintain a clear, consistent message and to large degree “feed” how you wish to be perceived to the general public is to control your narrative. You do this by creating an author brand.
An author brand is a predetermined and curated set of attributes, values, tenets, and traits.
Designing your brand before starting your marketing is not only highly useful (and freeing!) for you, so you maintain a consistent and focused message and image; it’s also great for helping the public get a quick emotional and intellectual snapshot of you so they feel like they know you.
Many authors smartly lay out their brand elements in an “Author Brand Guide” (a document that serves as a marketing operations manual). That way you have it in a shareable format to pass along to a website developer, marketing firm, or any other third party you hire.
An author who consistently markets their work as fast-paced, twisty psychological thrillers will ensure all their marketing reinforces this tone and energy.
[Check out these thrillers by One Lit Place authors Michelle Tang and Phil Eastwood.]
Their website copy may emphasize keywords like “suspense,” “psychological thriller” “good vs. evil” and other language that picks up on how they want people to understand their books (and by extension, them) as a kind of shorthand. Their books’ cover designs feature dark, minimalist imagery, and their social media posts engage readers with cliffhanger-style teasers while echoing the same visual elements from their book covers and website images.
This consistency in visual elements, language, tone, and purpose trains their audience to associate them, with near instant recognition, with a specific type of energy and reading experience. That is marketing doing its job.
Publicity enters the picture when readers begin reviewing the book, bloggers recommend it, or journalists cover it in reviews. If this author has done their job of disseminating their visual and tonal purpose, these third-party voices may very well take from existing content to describe the book as “unputdownable” or “full of shocking twists,” echoing and further reinforcing the author’s brand.
Authors commonly believe that they can only control the book itself, and once it’s published, it’s up to the public how they receive it.
To some degree this is true: a book reviewer or individuals leaving reviews on Amazon will have their opinions and say what they like.
But consistently proving you are a professional who is clear and focused in your message unconsciously indicates to people that you and your work are at a high level. With that as the public starting point, it does affect how people talk about you and your work.
Furthermore, when you use grassroots communication channels, such as visit a book club, write a guest blog, or do a video conversation with a fellow author, you’re entering readers’ private spaces.
It’s always a treat for readers to gain this kind of insider access to an author. That direct connection almost always inclines readers to feel warm toward you and your work—feelings they go on to share in online reviews, on social media, and through word of mouth.
(You can also request from those you meet, as well as friends and family, that they leave you 5-star reviews on Goodreads and Amazon–which, after meeting you in person—they always do!)
So while, yes, publicity can go any which way, when you hold your brand line and connect with people, you’re influencing how they perceive you. More often than not, they subconsciously pick up the baton of your marketing message and carry it forward with any publicity they share on your behalf.
Consider an author who works as a coach and has positioned themselves as a thought leader in the productivity and personal development space.
[Check out these thought leadership books by One Lit Place authors Dr. Mary Poffenroth and Ryan Manucha.]
Through marketing channels (social media, newsletter, and guest posts and videos), they share actionable advice, maintain a professional and insightful tone, and consistently highlight themes of efficiency and mindset.
They may tread into more human areas to seem accessible and vulnerable, such as share their personal journeys with a particular issue:
With consistent messaging efforts in place, when the book launches, early readers and reviewers are already primed to interpret the content through the lens the author has established. This makes sense; if you only give a selection of details, that’s all anyone has to go on!
As a result, any publicity they get—reviews, word of mouth, and sharing of their content with someone adding their two cents (a popular trend on Instagram and TikTok)—tends to echo the same ideas: “practical,” “insightful,” “transformative.”
Of course it’s tempting to leap into the marketing to boost that platform and get your numbers up.
However, if you don’t take time to create a brand guide and thoughtfully design and share the tenets you want to be known for, as Yeats writes, “The centre cannot hold.”
Rushing to put up a website, newsletter, or post on social media and simply sharing whatever you feel like on any given day may mean your public image is inconsistent or unclear, making whatever publicity you get for your book a kind of dealer’s choice.
Leaving your reputation up to others to decide is not a good strategy.
If you aren’t clear on the genre of your book; for example, you fluctuate between referring to it as a “romantic comedy” and a “dark thriller,” well, it will be no wonder that people won’t know how to talk about it or you!
When readers encounter the book, without a clear message upon which to hang their hat, they may speak from that confusion. That kind of murky publicity can harm your book’s future, and your career overall.
Marketing is active. It requires a clear vision and some planning to make a dent in audience reach and book sales:
⇒ Scheduling social media posts across a variety of purposes (sharing book “adjacent” content, reviewing books of peers or books you love, reviews, and testimonials of your work, forwarding links to media appearances, etc.)
⇒ Designing a daily system of toggling between 3 or so marketing efforts of various levels of intensity/commitment:
⇒ Fanning out to introduce yourself/your book to new audiences (guest-posting on a fellow author’s website to get in front of their subscriber list or contacting libraries or bookstores to plan a signing and meet-and-greet).
Publicity is passive. Yes, you can influence it indirectly, but you cannot dictate its outcome. You might pitch your book to media outlets or send advance copies to reviewers, and while you can hint at what you’d like their talking points to be, in the end, you cannot control what they say.
This, according to author and One Lit Place writing coach and editor Shasta Grant, is why professional literary publicists don’t charge by the impact they make but by their time or effort. Meaning, they can lead the horse to your book, but they can’t force it to turn your book into a New York Times bestseller.
Still, publicity does not have to be purely random, entirely left up to others.
The more intentional and on-brand your marketing is, the more likely that publicity will align with your desired image. By consistently communicating a clear message, you effectively “train” your audience and the media to see you in a certain way.
If you look at the most effective PR campaigns, earned media and placed media work hand in hand. Positive reviews or engaging podcast interviews are great for reaching a new audience, but if you don’t also share that coverage on social media or use it in marketing materials, then you won’t reach the widest possible audience. Having a strong social media presence can expand your name recognition and increase the likelihood that media outlets will cover you.
When your book is about to be published, you have a lot to deal with, and marketing may not be something you plunge into with great joy. (For most authors, it’s more typically like “put in a toe and grimace”).
Yet investing some time and energy in marketing builds the foundation of your public presence. Define your author brand, choose the methods through which you connect with readers carefully, and engage with consistency and purpose.
When you do, publicity becomes less of a gamble and more of an extension of the story you are already telling.
If you’re like most authors, you probably feel intimidated and overwhelmed by even the prospect of marketing, let alone how to tread in and get started.
Our online course Brand “You”: Marketing for Authors (who would rather do anything but) is designed for helping you gain a foothold in the marketing space so you can understand it, enter into it in ways that work for you, and have physical supports to guide how you bring yourself to readers (and even like the process!)
In only 5 lessons, you will go from feeling resentful and frustrated to being aware, savvy, and having a clear marketing action plan customized around you and your goals to help you begin selling your book and making the name for yourself you deserve!
Our 4-month Mentored Book Programs, Online Courses, & Writing Coaching and Editing Hours. From November 21-27, 2023
One Response
Great Article!! I am a published author and am getting ready to publish my fifth book with a different publisher. Branding, Marketing and Publicity are really scary and foreign subjects to me. This article explains the differences and how they interact and affect each other. Thank you for an informative and helpful article.