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Connecting Creative Work with an Audience

Oct 27, 2014 ● By Loreen Niewenhuis

Congratulations. You’ve finished that creative project and are now sending it out into the world. Maybe you’ve composed and performed music to accompany yoga sessions, or you’ve self-publish an eBook about meditating, or you have found a small publisher for your memoir. You’ve done all the difficult work of creating, so what happens now? How do people hear about your work and then actually buy it?
 

Here are some hard truths for new authors. No one will care more about your work than you. You are the best person to connect people to your work (yes, even better than a publicist). Your book or CD is “new” for only the calendar year in which it is copyrighted; after that, it’s old news. Connecting your work to an audience is hard work. So it’s essential to have a plan and be intimately involved with connecting the books with an audience.

First, people will need to hear about your work three times before it even enters their radar. This is why new products are often launched with TV ads that hit us over the head. The only thing that trumps this is when someone hears about something new from a trusted friend. We all have people in our life that might suggest a book or new product and we’ll run out and get it. Word of mouth is the best advertising you’ll ever get, and you can’t buy it. It is essential that you are putting out your best work for this to happen organically.

Second, allow others to become emotionally connected to your work. If your sister wants to throw a launch party for your yoga CD with her yoga group, say “Yes and thank you,” and bring a nice bottle of wine. If you’ve developed your book with a writer’s group, throw a thank-you party for them and give them all a signed copy of the new book.

Third, consider developing a presentation to go with your work so you can get speaking gigs. Retirement communities, libraries, schools and community centers always need speakers and some places will even pay to host your presentation. If you do this, make sure to cross-promote all of your events, don’t just rely on the venue hosting you to publicize it. Put out a press release for free at prlog.org and then send the link to area media outlets along with a formal email about you and your presentation if the community is invited to attend. You can also order posters in bulk from VistaPrint.com and then customize them for each event. Send them to the venue weeks ahead so they can be displayed where you’ll be speaking.

Fourth, if you are launching a book, consider the importance of book clubs. They are a great way to get people to buy, read and discuss your book. Consider holding a contest to giveaway books to one book club and partner with area independent bookstores to publicize it. Speaking of giveaways, GoodReads.com is a great place to do this. GoodReads is a community website of serious readers that will post reviews.

Fifth, develop an e-mail list of people that like your work. Begin with friends and family and alumni offices of colleges/universities from which you’ve graduated and build on that. Allow people to sign up to follow you. Using a service to maintain a list and send out mass emails is free as long as you have fewer than a certain number of addresses. Use mass emails to update your followers on giveaways, new works coming out and awards you’ve won, but don’t overdo it.

Okay, at this point you may be a bit overwhelmed. It is a lot of hard work. Consider all the time you’ve put into creating your work. Doesn’t the promotional side of your work deserve some energy and planning, too? What good is your creativity if no one ever connects with it?

Have a promotion plan in place well before your work is released. Work with your publisher if you have one. If you are self-published, consult with other writers you know or check out KSBPromotions.com/articles.htm for a glimpse at how a publicist plans for a book launch.

Be creative with your marketing. You’re a creative person, so apply those talents here. Have some fun with it. And take the long view with your creative life. Most people know of Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling book, The Poisonwood Bible, but they aren’t aware that this was her eighth published book. She was building a dedicated following for years before this book “broke through.”


Loreen Niewenhuis is an author, adventurer and dynamic speaker. Her books, A 1000-Mile Walk on the Beach and A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Walk were published by Crickhollow Books of Milwaukee. Her novella, Atlanta, was published by MSR of Charlotte. She is currently exploring many of the islands of the Great Lakes for her upcoming book A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Island Adventure, to be published in 2015. Learn more about her work at LakeTrek.com.