7 ways to build buzz for your book without hard-selling - instead BUBBLE!!

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

How can you build buzz for your books without hard selling? I'm going to share with you 7 ways to do that in today's training. Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz. I am a best selling author of over 40 books. I'm an author coach at authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. I actually wrote out the outline for this training back at the end of April. One of my Author audience academy members was struggling with how to build buzz for her books and how to really market it without being salesy, without really being self promotional pushy. And I had written out this list and I just thought of it the other day. I'm like, I never gave that training and I found my notes in my bullet journal and I thought, I'm going to share this with you today. I know a lot of you really struggle with what to say, how to say it and in a way that feels authentic, that feels like it's a relationship. So the first way that you can build buzz for your book without being, without like hard selling or being pushy or self promotional is to share your progress. One of my friends, Kelly McCazey, likes to say that instead of like promoting, think of it like bubbling. You're just bubbling up. It's just coming out of you and it's just something that you're sharing. You're bubbling instead of feeling like you're forcing things upon people. And so I wrote out a few different examples of ways you can bubble. For example, my personality, I might say woohoo, I finished the first draft of my book today. Or yes, I finally outlined my next book. Or woot, my designer just sent back the first draft of my book cover today. My book xyz. If you'd like some fill in the blank templates that you can use on social media, I actually have some that you can download. You can go to sevendaysocial.com free. Write out the number 7s e v e n social or 7days social.com free. But these are just a few ideas. Share your progress. Share what you're doing. Share what you're working on. Share how God is breaking your heart with the topic of your book. And as you share, people are going to start interacting with you. They're going to be like, oh, that sounds like a great topic or I'm really interested in that, or wow, I'll be praying for you and people will start interacting when you do it in an authentic way. So if you're not as enthusiastic as me, you may not be saying woo hoo, but you may be just saying, wow, this is really a huge accomplishment for me. I just finished the first draft of my next book or my first book. So however you want to say it, the second way is to get people involved and so ask for their feedback. Facebook is a great place to ask for feedback. You can share excerpts or, you know, you can even share your book as you write it. I did this with one of my books in a private Facebook group so you could do something like that. You could share a couple different book cover images. There's so many different things that you could share and just ask for some feedback. Actually did an entire podcast episode with one of my author audience academy members, Beth Jones, where she really built buzz and was able to really just talk about her book and pre market it in a way by asking for feedback on her book covers, her book titles. She even asked feedback for the topic of her book. So that is something you can do as well. The third thing you can do is you can share quotes from your book. So as you're writing, as you're going through, you could take a screenshot of a certain part of your book and highlight that quote or put it in quotes in the text part of that and just say, I just finished writing this paragraph or I just finished writing this and this particular sentence really stuck out to me, even for me writing the book. You could say something like that. But just sharing quotes from from your book as you're writing it, it helps build buzz. It helps people to start to know what you're writing about, to be interested and pique their interest in your book. The fourth way you can build buzz for your book without hard selling is to also share your obstacles and your frustrations as you experience them and how you overcome them. So you may have some issues to some technical issues as you're working. You know, with the process of publishing. You may have some issues where you know you're facing writer's block or you feel like you're facing some spiritual attack, or you may have some other issues that you're coming up against. I recently posted about my upcoming book, Broken Crayons Still Color. And I said that I'd really felt blocked in writing that book and I just asked for their prayers and just shared from my heart. And I got a ton, a ton of response. Not only that, I really believe people were praying for me because God just really gave me a lot of insight and I'm moving forward on that book now. So that is number four. Number five is share in real time. So something that I like to do sometimes is when I'm working on my computer, maybe I have my coffee with me or I have my journal, my bullet journal, my pen. You may actually want to take a picture of that and say, today's a writing day or the next hour I'm writing, I'd appreciate your prayers. Or I'm so excited because I'm able to work on my book today and you can share a picture of what you're doing in real time and people love that, they respond to that. Or share your routines. Share. Like, you know, every morning I get up and I write and today it just feels flowed like crazy. And I'm just so thankful that I have this opportunity to write and share with the world. You know, be yourself, be your personality. I'm just giving you examples. But just bubble, just share and watch how people start to engage with you as you're writing your book. Your book's not even published yet and you're already pre selling it. You're already priming the pump. Remember the water pumps of the old days? Zig Ziglar uses this illustration. A lot of priming, priming the pump. You had to prime the pump, you had to do some work before the water would come up and then you would have that gush of water. And then you can just kind of keep it going with a little bit of effort. Well, what you're doing is as you're writing your book, you're priming the pump, you're bubbling, you're pre selling. So that when you have your launch, when your book is live, people are like, oh, I need to get this, I want to read this. I'm interested. I have really been listening to you and now I want to get that book. Alright, so number six is share insights you get as you write. So you know, we're all writing different things, but you may get some different insights that come to you that you really didn't think of it in that way before. Or it might be something, depending on your topic, what you're sharing about. It could be something from the Bible or it could be something from your experience. For me, I get a lot of things from my journal. So I might say, man, when I was looking back in my journal today, doing some Research for my upcoming book, Broken Crayons Still Color. I had tears in my eyes as I was rereading what I had written for my trip to Haiti after the earthquake. And that really did happen. That really did happen. Yesterday we had a writer's block party for Author Audience Academy. And during that time I was working on my book and I compiled a bunch of information and journals that I had done when I did medical relief in Haiti after the earthquake as a physical therapist. And I'd kind of forgotten about some of those things. So you can share insights. Like as you're researching, as you're working on your book, you can share some of those insights. And bubble, you know, you're just bubbling and you're doing it in a way that fits with you, your personality and who you are to prime that pump to get people excited for your books. And number seven, you can share your plans so you can say, okay, I'm getting ready to launch my book next month. I'm so excited because of xyz. I'm so excited because this is a really unique book. This is a book like I have never published before. And that's true for my Broken Crayons Still Color. Like, I'm doing an entire video study, like with Fill in the Blank Leader's guides. I mean, this is going to be really, really great. Great book and I'm so excited for it. So I could bubble about that and you could too. And as we close, I want to recap the seven ways you can build buzz for your book without hard selling, but instead bubble or priming the pump. Number one was share your progress. Something I had forgotten to share earlier is you can actually install a progress bar, your website. You could take a screenshot and then share that screenshot on social media. That would be really fun. Number two, get people involved. Ask for their feedback, their opinions, ask for their feedback on book covers, on book titles or topics. You know, you can get people involved. Just be careful not to crowdsource too much because it can lead to confusion. Number three is share quotes from your book as you're writing. And you're like, wow, you're, you know, that's actually a really interesting quote. Or you can say, you know, this is a quote from my upcoming book. You know, what are your thoughts on this topic? Number four, share obstacles, frustrations as you experience them and how you overcome them. So what it is that you go through and how you overcome them. 5 is share in real time. Take a picture of your computer screen as you're typing with Your coffee off to the side or your cat sitting in your lap, say, I'm getting ready to write, I'm working on my next book. Stuff like that is so fun. Or sharing your routines. The sixth idea is to share insights as you write. So just the different insights you're getting on your topic. Number seven is also then to share your plans. Let them know what's coming up that you're working on a book. And if you're an author audience academy, you can say, I'm working with an author coach. And my author coach is telling me, you know, I need to do this or is having me do this. You can put the blame on me or you can let them know I'm working with an author coach and I'm going through this training and it's really helping me for my upcoming book, xyz. Are you getting ideas? Is this helping you to get ideas for how you can bubble, for how you can pre sell, for how you can get people excited about your upcoming book? I hope so, you guys, if you watch me on my profile and if you go back through my personal profile, I usually do not hard sell because that is against Facebook's terms of service to put like a sales link or buy my book here and that sort of thing. But I will do a lot of bubbling and so I will talk a lot about what's going on in my business or my books. And people really interact with me because I do it in a way that's authentic with who I am, with my personality and consistent. I do that consistently. I'm not pushy with it. I'm not saying, you know, okay, now it's time for you to sign up for my program or, you know, buy my book right here. But I'm constantly sharing and bubbling and people are actually really interested. And I think 80% of people want to write a book someday. So 80% of your friends or your followers on Facebook or on other social media platforms probably also have that desire deep down in their heart. It may be a secret desire or they have that interest in wanting to write a book. So it's almost like they get to live through you. They get to experience it through you. As you share your experiences and get excited for you. People love to get excited with you for big accomplishments and things you're doing, how you're impacting the world with your message. There are so many ways that you can begin to build buzz and you can do this even after your book is published. You know, you could just build buzz by saying, wow, you know, I had an extra copy of my book in my car today, and it was just amazing how God just put it on my heart to give it to someone at the grocery store or, you know, I don't know. I mean, that's just a random story. Or you could say, wow, what a blessing. I got just a new review on Amazon for my book today, and it just really blessed me because I put so much work into my book, xyz and I just so adore and I just really appreciate all the reviews that I get. And you don't have to say what the review is, but you can just bubble about that. Or I got an email today and it just made my day because the person who emailed me said, xyz, and I know that this is the purpose God has for me. And it was just confirmation that I wrote that book for a reason. So those are just, just some bonus tips after your book is published. I hope you guys have a great weekend. My husband's mother is coming to visit us next week, so I'm in a different location. Normally my office is in the guest bedroom, but I had to move everything today, get ready and set up. So I'm going to be in a different location. But the cool thing about live video is you can do it from anywhere. I'm doing it today from my laptop using the OBS software, which I have a training for that inside Author Audience Academy. But you can do it from anywhere on your phone. And I love, love, love that. Have you ever seen, like, whether it's direct sales, whether it's an author, whatever you're selling, you can just feel it when somebody is desperate to sell something to you. And it's almost like that feeling of desperation comes across. Whereas if you're just excited, you're just bubbling, you're just sharing and building buzz and just sharing your life, sharing what's going on, and you want to intersperse that with like, real life things, but when you're just bubbling about it, it's not that sense of desperation, like, buy my book. Buy my book.

Now. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you know what I mean? Like, you can just sense it. I sense it in certain author's updates, but instead you can be the one that people are just excited to hear about your next update, excited to hear how God is using you, excited to hear what your book is doing to change people's lives and how you're making progress and the things that you're doing to accomplish your life goals. And they're excited for you and they're praying for for you and they're cheering you on and they're liking your post and they're like, yes, you can do this. Such a difference, right? Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for spending time with me today. And I really look forward to seeing your updates. As you bubble, as you build buzz about your books, as you share in an authentic way that builds relationships, that truly is part of who you are, your personality. You don't have to be like me. Be you. Have you guys seen the thing? It says be you and then underneath that it says you tiful, beautiful, but it's broken up. So it's like be you and it's beautiful. And it is. It's beautiful when you are able to be you, when you're able to be authentic, when you're not trying to just be like someone else. When you're not trying to just do what everyone else is doing. What works for me may not work the same for you. Be who God has created you to be. Build that buzz. Buzz, you know, bubble and share with people. Don't hide the fact that you're writing a book. Some people do that, I think out of fear or, you know, just. It's like it's built in accountability. But guess what? It really, really helps to build buzz and pre sell your book at the same time. All right, well, I will talk to you guys later. Again. My name is Shelly Hitz. I'm the author coach@shellyhitz.com I am the creator of authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message in a way that's authentic, that's not pushy or self promotional, and in a way where you work smarter and not harder, where you're not behind your computer all day, every day. That's why I've created the Author Automation system inside authoraudienceacademy.com I'll see you next time. Thanks for joining me for my free trainings as always and I We'll see you next time. Bye bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.