Sometimes it seems like the entire literary universe orbits around the tiny island of Manhattan. As self-published authors multiply around the country, this illusion has been broken–local book marketing is more important than ever before.
Last weekend, GalleyCat prowled the floor of the Self-Publishing Book Expo. Along with 450 attendees from all corners of the country, we picked up book design and marketing tips for the self-published authors in the audience. We also encouraged self-published authors to submit to our ongoing Book Pitch contest.
At the expo, we caught up with author and book marketing expert Shel Horowitz to get some advice on local marketing. Earlier this year, Horowitz (pictured, via) and Jay Conrad Levinson published the new book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet with John Wiley & Sons.
Horowitz urged self-published authors to focus on local marketing. He explained: “Book promotion is actually easier in a small community. I live in Hadley, Massachusetts. You want to talk about a small community–there’s 5,000 people in my town, 200 in my village … The nice thing is you can become a local celebrity very easily, because you will not be competing with every famous author who lives in the New York area.”
He concluded: “You are the author in town! You can get a feature story in the local paper, you can go on the local radio shows and talk about your book. If you have a local bookstore, you can probably work something out with the manager at the store–to do signings, or even better than signings, an event to talk about your book. These are some of the things I talk about in my marketing book, and they work well.”