This YouTube training (Julie Broad and Sarah Bean of Book Launchers) explains how to secure endorsements for a non-fiction book. It covers identifying and researching influencers (including pragmatic sources like Google, LinkedIn, and Publishers Marketplace), how and when to contact them (brief email pitches under ~300 words, send ARCs once the book is in layout), and etiquette/timing (start outreach about six months before publication, limit to 1–2 polite follow-ups spaced ~10–14 days).
Questions this video answers
Keep it brief: one to two paragraphs, probably less than 300 words.
About six months before the book is ready (begin when the book is going into layout and during pre-sale).
Limit to one to two polite follow-ups, spaced about 10–14 days apart.
No — do not send the manuscript with the first outreach; provide it only if asked or via an ARC when appropriate.
Chapters
There's a reason brands pay big money for celebrity endorsements. A celebrity endorsement is a powerful spotlight that propels your brand unlocking new horizons. It amplifies visibility, builds trust, and generates buzz among fans. Now, you probably already know there are different kinds of reviews. And one kind is that celebrity endorsement. That's the one you might put on your cover or shout from the stars to get attention. If you're wondering how you get that fabulous endorsement from a well known person, then I have great news, my friend. This video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad of book launchers. In case we have not met, I'm certain we're to be friends. So please subscribe to the channel and turn notifications on and after you've watched the video, comment and say hello so we can officially meet. Now. This is a part two of a video, so at the end I'll link to part one in case you missed it. In part one, we talked about the three kinds of reviews you need. We dove deeper into each kind of review and shared excerpts from our deep dive training session that we hosted on the subject. Today we're going to get into how to get the endorsements, those kind of reviews. Now, this session was hosted by the brilliant Sarah Bean. And I'm just going to turn this right over to her, our book marketing manager at Book Launchers, to share the next piece which is how to get endorsements for your book. Take it away, Sarah.
We're going to start by talking about endorsements. Okay, so endorsements, again, they provide that social proof and the credibility for your book. And they are on a product page can insist keywords for the algorithm to place the book in front of those target readers. So there are some steps here on how to get endorsements. And this is something again, when we were talking about those notable figures, I often get a lot of people who are like, I want to get Oprah, I want to get Tony Robbins, I want to get Seth Godin, or you know, really, really Reese Witherspoon. Because both Oprah and Reese Witherspoon have book clubs. Again, it's great idea to get one of those. But if you don't have their information and you're not already connected with them, you're going to be better. It's going to be a better use of your time to identify the people who are actually connected to your topic. So your first step is going to be to create a list of influencers that you would like to target. You want to include maybe people you know so this could be if you know a business owner, if you know another author, if it's someone that maybe you're connected with on social media within your professional network, you want to include those people and then you want to include your dream list. Right now, again, let's not talk about the Oprah's and the Reese Witherspoons. Let's talk about the authors that inspired you to become a writer, the people in, in your genre that inspired you, that taught you, that became part of your journey to expand your brand, your business and to, to write on your topic. You want to ensure that these people, generally what we tend to find is that people, when they're skimming those endorsements, they're looking more at who's leaving the endorsement over what they're actually saying. So when I pointed out Jim Collins or the CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, though, that's the point that you're really going for is the higher notability of that influencer. If you're going to go ahead and you create your list and your dream list, then you're going to research how to contact that particular person. Now here at Book Launchers, we actually do that research work on your behalf. But I'm going to give you right now the tips of exactly what we do to make it easy for our authors. First thing we do, and I spent a long time doing this when I first started with, with Book Launchers, first thing to do is Google. Okay, you're going to Google that person and find the best way to reach them. Now very often these people are going to have websites that have contact form emails that you can reach out to. All of them have social media. LinkedIn is a fantastic resource for this because LinkedIn is a place where it is actually encouraged for professional partnerships and relationships and connections. So LinkedIn is a good place to reach out to people. You may have people in common as well. So if you have people within your network that might be connected to their network, that is definitely a way in. And what I often would just do is that person's name plus literary agent plus manager plus publicist. Publishers Marketplace is a outlet that actually talks about book publishing trends. It often is promoting the deals. It's all about the publishing industry. If you go to Publishers Marketplace, it is behind a paywall, but the search function will allow you to put in someone's name and you will see when they have been mentioned in Publishers Marketplace in the past. And you can usually tell from the preview if that, let's say it's an author and you want to know, okay, who is their agent? You can go to Publishers Marketplace, put it into the search. It'll show deals that have been announced for that author in the past. And those deals always include either the publisher that purchased the book or the agent that did the deal. So you can get to them that way as well. You can find, okay, so Jim Collins, represented by XYZ Literary Agencies, sold to Harper Collins in a mid sized deal, you know, so you can then go, okay, well if Jim Collins is at XYZ Literary Agency, you can go to that agency's website, you can go to HarperCollins website, find out what imprint they're under and reach their public, their publicity department that way. So there's a lot of ways that you can get to someone, all right.
Now you know how to find them. And, and of course, using social media can also be a great way. We've talked about that in the channel as well. And how Carol Sanford connected with Tom Peters through Twitter by engaging with his comments in a thoughtful manner. Nothing will ever beat the things that take effort and time, my friends. I know you wish there was a magic button unleash celebrity endorsement here, but it's just not going to happen that way. You have to do research and craft things, thoughtful messages that will connect with influencers or celebrities, and you can do that on social media. But you will need to be consistent in your efforts for this to work. Most people will give up a long time before they get results, but polite persistence can go a long way. But as Sarah covers next, you don't ever send the manuscript for the endorsement with your first outreach. Make sure you're asked for it or have an open door. Before you do that, your next step.
Is going to be to draft a brief and concise letter asking them to consider reading your book and providing that endorsement. You want to keep these pitch letters very brief, probably less than 300 words, one to two paragraphs. You want to include in there who you are, why you're asking that person, did that person influence you? Do they share your audience? Do you feel like your book is going to help them in some way, and you want to include what's in it for their audience. Because very often a reason for someone to give an endorsement on a book is because they feel that that book is going to be something that their audience should know about and it's more promotion for them. So you want to include in that letter what's in it for the audience, what are they going to get out of reading your book, and then finally you're going to send out that letter. And I'm sorry, when I'm referring to letter, I really am referring to email. Most things are done via email. Certainly you can write a hand, you know, like type out a letter and send it through the ma if that's the only way you have to get in touch with them is through a mailing address. But generally we're talking about email here.
Okay, so when do you actually do this? Well, anytime is a good time to get an endorsement. You can always update your cover with a juicy one or add it to your media kit so it's never too late. That said, if you're really keen to have this credibility boosting endorsement at the start of your launch efforts, then you probably want to wait until your book is close to being done. The book publishing process, Sarah covers that next.
You don't want to send just a word doc. You more than likely want it to be in layout so it actually reflects a real book. But you also want to do it in enough time that you have time to use those endorsements for marketing. So usually we do this process towards the beginning of when books are going into layout and then during the pre sale process. So you want to give them enough time to read it and give you the endorsement back so that you can use it. So be considering early on who you want your influencers to be, who you're going to approach and how you're going to approach them. Probably six months before the book is ready to come out. Once the book gets into layout, it's been designed, it's looking like an actual book and not just a Word document. And then you can go ahead and send out. It is very common to send out what's called ARCs, advanced reader copies. So those copies that may not be perfectly print ready yet, they might have some formatting errors, they might be missing a couple of graphs or, or something like that. But you don't have to wait until the book is actually out and done before you send these requests out. It's very important that you do not spam or harass influencers when asking for these endorsements, especially when I'm telling you to go search them and find them out and stalk them online. Don't spam or harass anybody. It's okay to send one to two, one to two follow ups. Maybe you send it and then maybe if you haven't heard anything, maybe 10 to 14 days later you send a follow up, maybe one more after that. But you want to be respectful of their time. You want to be very polite and if they say no you just thank them and you move on to the next one.
Woohoo. Okay of course there is a lot more Sarah covered on getting other kinds of reviews but we're out of time for today so hit that like button or just gently click on it if you prefer not to hit it and then head to the comments with any questions or thoughts you have on getting endorsements for your book. And after you do that this video on ARC copies of your book will definitely be good to watch because you'll use an ARC to get endorsements. And of course if you're looking for part one that's right here and then one more right here on working with influencers because there's more ways than just endorsements to work with influencers. So all three of those videos are fantastic and I highly recommend you click on over to one of them because I am right there waiting for you.
