Welcome to the February edition of The Authority!
It’s been a brilliant few weeks at SRA Books as we’ve been working away on the new books due to be published on 3 April. By then spring should really be in the air – and it’s a perfect time for new arrivals. So we will be inviting you to join us at Waterstones High Street Kensington in London in due course. For now, please pencil the evening of 4 April in your diary!
Also we are proud to announce this month the opening of our Authority Club Facebook group. Please join the group and share it with your friends and colleagues. The more the merrier!
This month’s Authority interview is with someone who knows a fair bit about book launches having planned and organised many on behalf of her author clients. Chantal Cooke is SRA’s PR associate, the founder of the brilliant Panpathic Communications agency, all-round book marketing guru, and the author of The Authority Guide to Marketing your Business Book. As well as sharing her thoughts on book launches with us, Chantal talks about the importance of getting the book right in the first place, how you should create a marketing strategy for your book, and offers up many other very helpful words of advice for those who are publishing or have published a book. There are also some words of wisdom in our chat about getting PR for your business too, so even if a book isn’t on the agenda just at the moment, it’s worth a listen.
You’ll notice we’re experimenting with a different kind of presentation this time – audio with some slides to accompany it instead of a video interview. Notwithstanding the slight audio glitches we had, especially towards the end of our chat, we’d love to have your feedback on which type you prefer. Just click on my email address for a 5-second way to do that sue@suerichardson.co.uk
All good wishes,
Sue Richardson
Editor of The Authority
Chantal Cooke’s Top Tips for Marketing Your Business Book…
Your book can do so much for your business – but only if you put some effort into marketing it. Here Chantal Cooke, author of The Authority Guide to Marketing your Business Book, gives us her three, quick, top tips:
- Start early: As soon as you decide to write the book start telling people: on social media, in person, on your website – anywhere and everywhere that’s relevant.
- Create images for use on social media, within talks, and on your website: Images help people remember you and your book. Take photographs of your book in interesting/relevant places. Create imagery to illustrate certain points within your book.
- Take an extract from your book and create a White Paper: For example, ‘top tips’ or your views on how your industry is changing. Be sure that it is useful to your target readership. Add your branding and your contact details and offer this as a PDF download on your website. Use it to collect the email addresses of potential customers.
Chantal Cooke is an award-winning journalist and author of The Authority Guide to Marketing your Business Book. She is also founder of boutique PR Agency Panpathic Communications specialising in working with small businesses and authors.
This month we’d like to thank Tony Burgess for recommending a book that has inspired him for many years. Tony is the co-author (with Julie French) of Beliefs and how to change them … For good! and Pink Bucket Thinking
- Fish! by Stephen C. Lundin, Ph.D., Harry Paul and John Christensen (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014)’I love the simplicity of the Fish Philosophy (four principles: Choose Your Attitude, Be There, Make Their Day, Play).’I love that these principles have a direct influence on success of the business AND enjoyment of the people working in the business. A win-win-win: the employees win, the customers win and the business wins. What I also love is that it originally took place in a workplace where it is not the easiest to apply the principles – a fishmonger’s stall in a market place. It’s cold, it’s smelly, it involves physical labour and unfathomably early starts. If the principles can work here then any workplace can potentially benefit.’Choosing my attitude was something I was already good at (being heavily involved in the personal development industry) and yet for many the idea of “choosing” any mental processes was a totally new way of thinking about thinking. Fish! has been a really easy reference point to help inspire clients that they can have “choice” about “inner stuff”. “Being There” is so crucial for the coaching and therapeutic work I’m involved in and of course in training, networking, sales meetings, personal relationships … It applies to so many areas of interpersonal connection. Choosing to be 100% present has served me very well over the years and Fish! has continued to be a vivid reminder of its importance.'”Make Their Day” and “Play” merge beautifully in my view. I made a commitment to myself when I went self-employed to keep my work enjoyable and to go the extra mile on customer service. I notice that when we are enjoying ourselves, our clients automatically enjoy things more. We’ve always enjoyed providing memorable life-enhancing experiences for people through our work and it has also spilled over into a passion for instigating “random acts of kindness”. Again, Fish! reminds me how possible it is to “Play” and “Make Their Day” even in the seemingly least inspiring professions.’
£9.99
The Authority Guide to Marketing Your Business Book