I ‘met’ Alexis online as someone promoting books on behalf of authors. My question was “Wow, you can actually make money helping authors promote books online?” Alexis agreed to elaborate for me and here are some of her answers about how she makes it work.
Promoting a book anytime soon, or wonder how social media types make money online? Read on.
1. Do you work for a company or do you work for yourself?
I work for myself (well, for my clients!) part-time (through my company, www.10thFloorPR.com), and I work for an author/public speaker/counselor/life coach part time (www.maryannelive.com). Though I guess I’m technically still self-employed because I still pay all my taxes myself 🙂
2. Do you promote books full time or is that just part of your job?
I do web-based publicity and marketing – or social media strategy, whatever you want to call it! – which includes pretty much anything and everything you can think of. i publicize books, grow social media networks, facilitate blog exchanges, develop contact lists, market events through social media channels, integrate video clips, podcasts, blogs, articles, etc. etc. through multiple online venues, and pursue any number of web-based publicity opportunities to gain exposure.
Beyond that, I do a couple random things here and there: I am a content editor for a start-up travel site (www.valueweekly.com), I blog and write articles for several websites, and I (attempt to) maintain my own blog 🙂 (www.alexisinthecity.com).
3. How is promoting books online different then promoting other things?
I’ve been working with authors and promoting books for almost as long as I’ve been in the web publicity game, so I’m not sure how thoroughly I can answer that!
What I can say is that I’ve found that the ideal situation with book promotion online is to have an amazing “brand” to go along with it. Some people who aren’t as tuned in to the web 2.0 world want you to do that all for them, along with promoting the book! It can be done, but it’s much more difficult, with much less dazzling results – and it takes a lot longer! An author doesn’t have to have an established, highly frequented online presence – that’s what i’m here for! – but when the foundation is already in place it makes things a lot easier.
4. Let’s say I’ve written a book and want to hire someone like you to promote it. What’s one piece of advice you’d give me?
Find someone who actually cares about your message. I may be shooting myself in the foot by saying this – because – I’ll be honest – I’ve had clients I’ve taken on just for the money! – But both people will get so much more out of a partnership where there’s an understanding of the underlying work and message of the book/author/persona, etc. I can say that from experience 🙂
And … don’t expect results RIGHT AWAY. I’ve had people start out on a shoestring budget and then cut me out altogether because they weren’t selling books. Of course, as an author, the goal is to sell books, but you can’t sell books without building a presence and that just takes time – in the online world and in the offline world! If you don’t have the time/money/patience to invest in a long-term social media strategy, you’re probably better off either saving that money or putting it toward another type of publicity.
5. How did you get started doing this?
I always tell people – what I do now wasn’t even a “thing” when I was in college (and it hasn’t been THAT LONG since I was in college :-). The online world has blow up FAST and I guess I was in the right place at the right time.
My degree is in journalism, my background is in TV, specifically as a news producer. I started out at network affiliates (ABC, CBS, etc), and when it was clear that industry was dying, I moved over to internet/cable TV (current.com). When that wasn’t super stimulating, I went to work for myself, not really sure what I was doing, where I was going, how I wanted things to pan out – only that I was tired of having a “real job,” and didnt want to punch a clock any more.
I started out taking any type of relatively related consulting work I could get. I did a lot of article writing, blogging, ghost blogging, website publicity, brand evangelizing, content management, and website content writing etc.
It just so happened I knew a guy who had a small, independent publishing company – and he also did traditional marketing – and was looking for someone to help out on the web side of things. I began working with him and his clients developing their online marketing and publicity strategy (he’s one of the people I still work with!), and that helped give me the experience to land the job with Maryanne (the author whose book she is currently promoting).
Plus – I live in silicon valley and have always been pretty plugged into to web 2.0 trends – so I like to think that gives me a bit of an edge 🙂