Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Giveaway + Interview with Children's Book Author Katie Davis + "How to Promote Your Children's Book"



Today's the big day! Katie Davis, Children's Book Marketer & Video Marketing Queen Extraordinaire is here to talk about picture book marketing. She's also giving away her newly published and updated How to Promote Your Children's Book which hits Amazon today, 3/25/14. Read all the way to the bottom of this post to enter the giveaway!

1. You mention in your book that team building with other authors is a great way to promote a book. Can you give some examples of how someone just starting out--with no author friends--could start a children's book promotions group?

Start networking in the many, many groups there are available to us now, online or “brick and mortar.” I have an entire section in How to Promote Your Children's Book: Tips, Tricks, and Secrets to Create a Bestseller dedicated to exactly that. There are groups and you will find and meet people at the same level of writing and experience as you, and they will want to connect and network also. In my newsletter there are a ton of resources listed every week, and I often include links and articles on groups like these. If you’re interested in signing up for my newsletter, you can do so by clicking here. And tonight anyone can ask me anything, LIVE by coming to a virtual launch party on Google Plus here - there’ll be giveaways and surprise guests and lots of fun.
2. You mention that Pinterest has really exploded onto the scene and that it's an excellent tool for authors and illustrators. Can you talk a bit about how to start out on Pinterest if you've never had an account or if you've only been following recipes and crafts, let's say. Should you make a separate Pinterest account for your business?

If you plan on getting published, or independently publish your own books, you're going to be promoting them. Therefore I advise that you do set up a business account. There are step-by-step instructions in by a wonderful guest contributor, Eric VanRaepenbusch. Eric has done exceedingly well by promoting his independently published Three Ghost Friends series on Pinterest. You can also follow Pinterest's tutorials on the site. But Eric's are way better, and that's completely objective. No, really. Completely.

3. YouTube is a new (and terrifying)  frontier for many writers and illustrators just starting out. Can you talk about why YouTube is an important place to be today? 

Google is the largest search engine on the Internet. YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet. Who owns YouTube? Google! So if YouTube is owned by the largest search engine on the Internet, you want to be there because you’ll gain all that SEO juice. SEO is otherwise known as search engine optimization. Video is making your site optimal for searching, in other words. Why? Because Google loves video. What I mean by that is that the algorithms Google uses to search favors video. Cisco Systems has said that in the coming years (if we are not there already), 90% of all Internet traffic will be driven by video.
Before everyone and his dog had websites, and writers were being advised to get them lots of folks moaned and groaned about having to do something other than just write. Those who didn't get a website were left behind. That is what video is now. If you don't start getting into video you will be left behind.

4. You are the Queen of Video Marketing. Can you recommend how an author who isn't a polished speaker or who is shy in front of a camera might create a video that markets themselves? 

Make animated videos using only your voice. Hate your voice (don’t hate your voice, peeps!) but okay, say you do anyway, use text cards. I don’t advise it, but it answers your question. You can also hire voice over people easily and for very little money. 

I do want to add this: no one likes to see him or herself on camera! And like anything else it takes practice. Many of my videos include bloopers at the end––I make plenty of mistakes, but I just reshoot. I make use of those mistakes by making it funny at the end for viewers. And by the way, there are many ways to use video and not appear in front of the camera and I can teach you how. 

Thanks for having me on!

We've loved having you, Katie!

Katie Davis is an author/illustrator and award-winning video marketing maven. She’s written and illustrated picture books, middle grade, and young adult novels through traditional publishers such as Harcourt, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Diversion Books. Her independent publications include a picture book, and two marketing guides for adult writers.
Katie has used her experience in publishing to establish her coaching business helping other writers. She does this on many levels, teaching tech-wary writers how to build and strengthen their platforms through video, and coaching writers on social media and marketing, or as Katie calls it, “making friends and meeting people.”
You can subscribe to Katie’s YouTube channel at KatieDavis.TV or the #1 podcast in iTunes in Children’s Publishing by going to KatieDavis.com/podcast.



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8 comments:

  1. Don't forget to leave a comment for extra entries!!

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  2. I enjoyed reading this interview and was super interested to learn about how important video is and how it is connected to search engine. Thanks for posting this.

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    1. Thanks, Tracey! (this is Katie - same as above... for some reason, this site isn't recognizing me! Took about 15 minutes to send the above comment!LOL)

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  4. Thank you, Annina! I'll be having a webinar in the near future all about video and letting the people on my mailing list know about it. And thanks again, Sallianne for having me and helping me celebrate launch day!

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  5. Thanks for the chance to win your book. I'm hearing great things about it!

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  6. As a teacher I used video quite a bit and loved the creativity. I am looking forward to doing some video for my website (I am just starting) or for my books (when they get published- I am thinking positive).

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