Conferences, Book Festivals, Literary Events, Oh My! 

That’s right. Sometimes, in order to market your book, you need to turn on your extrovertedness and power through for a few hours. I recently attended Proof, a Midwest Literary Festival, and was blown away with meeting other local authors and attending insightful workshops.

Alright, you must know I am an introvert, and going to this literary event took several days to recover from due to how many conversations I had. But this event showed me the power of marketing and how important it is to get out in the world and talk about what you’ve been working on. 

To prepare, I suggest determining what information you want to share about your book. Think of a small blurb that best describes your book to garner the interest of others. Having the snippet in the front of your mind will help move conversations forward instead of trying to conjure up an answer in thin air. 

Are there any materials that you want to bring with you? Perhaps some art of your book or business cards? For reference, I decided to have business cards printed out to hand out to other authors as a way to connect with them. Having this handy made it easy for others to check out my socials and find my work.

I was probably a little overprepared, but that’s okay, I was able to hand out my card to over twenty people and that’s a big win for me. 

It might be a little scary at first, but as the day went on I felt it was so easy to promote my book to others and I can’t wait to get back out to another event and talk about my writing.

See a local literary event in your community? Go to it! Sometimes word of mouth marketing is more effective than you think!