Step Nineteen: The Marketing & PR Campaign

Let's Get This Book Buzz Going!

Word is starting to get out about LAST SEEN, and I owe you an apology for making you wait this long for the last few steps in this series. I’ve been holding off for a couple of reasons. One, because a huge component of our marketing and PR campaign was a secret. Now the secret is out—LAST SEEN is part of Amazon’s First Reads program for July! I’ll talk more about what that means later. And second…well, I’m not an expert in this part of the process at all. I fear I’ve been a little worried about trying to share information about a subject that I am not as well-versed in as, say, creating a book. Yes, I did aerospace marketing prior to my life as an author, but that was in the time of a crazy, burgeoning technological boom called developing a “Web site.” I had a fight with my team about it, actually. They thought it was a stupid idea. Ridiculous, in fact. Now you understand when I say I’ve generally been an early adopter, I’m not joking.

While the generalities of marketing itself haven’t changed, the tactics have, dramatically. And book marketing and PR is unique.

There are many people out there who write eloquently about marketing and PR. Publicist

Kathleen Schmidt

is one I’d heartily recommend. She recently posted an astoundingly comprehensive guide that you should definitely check out if you want to learn about some of the broader aspects of PR.

With the caveats in mind that I am not an expert, I’ll beg your forgiveness now for sticking to some generalities, and that way, we can finally move forward with the series.

Let’s start with the time-honored question. How do we differentiate between marketing and public relations?

In the simplest terms, marketing is about raising awareness of a product to drive sales, and public relations is about showcasing its desirability. Marketing focuses on awareness and conversion, while PR is about building and maintaining a reputation.

My better half,

Randy Ellison

, (here on Substack, lifting the veil on the polling world), likes to say marketing is identifying a need and creating a product to satisfy it. People want to be entertained by a thriller, so the product is created to fulfill that need: you discover and buy a book to be entertained, surprised, and thrilled.