8 Tips for Successfully Promoting Your Literary or Author Event

by Jessica A. Kent

May 12, 2021

When it comes to hosting an event, you may have the coolest author line-up, a great “in conversation with” interviewer, or are trying something unique and creative you think everyone will be interested in.

But how are people going to attend if they don’t know about it?

I’ve been tracking the promotion of local literary events here at the Boston Book Blog since 2012, and have seen all the great ways to promote events, and not so great ways. Here are some best practices I’ve collected to help you better market your events.

1. Start Early and Plan Ahead

Getting people aware of your event starts early, and promotion should typically begin a few weeks to a month before the event happens. This gives potential attendees the chance to see the event announcement, and fit it in their schedule so they can attend. Event announcements that go out a day or two before just don’t have time to circulate enough to attract an audience — and calendars are probably already booked anyway. Promoting early, of course, presupposes that you’re planning and booking your events a few months out so that you have plenty of time to tell everyone.

2. Promote Often Across Multiple Channels

Make sure to promote often across channels. Everyone finds out information from different sources, so in order to maximize how many people are seeing news about your event, promote it across different channels: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, the newspaper, local events calendars, your newsletter. And promote often: The ever-changing news feed works against you, and posting about your event once will quickly be lost. Also, be sure to tag the people participating in your event so they can share it, and always use relevant hashtags as well to get it in front of new audiences’ eyes.

3. Always Have an Event Page or Entry

People need a way to find out about your event: who’s speaking, what their book is (if nonfiction, include the full title, not just what’s before the colon), if they’re in conversation with someone, the date, the time, and how to attend (or how to view it if it’s virtual). Create an individual event page for each event on your site, use a third party like Eventbrite or Facebook for event details, or list the events on a master event page on your site.

Also, be clear on who the headliner is, and who the “in conversation” is — having both listed as headliners when only one is the feature can be confusing. Include a registration or ticket page, if you require one. Always think about ease-of-access for the general public — so circulating a .pdf or screenshot without any further info or link to go to won’t be helpful.

4. Have an Overall Event Calendar

Have a dedicated place on your website that holds an event calendar — and use it. List all your upcoming events there because the first place people will look for events is your website. You can duplicate to Facebook or Eventbrite, and there are good reasons to do so. But outsourcing events off your site to a third party might get confusing if people are only looking on your website.

On your events page, be sure that all events follow the same formula. If you want to lead with the author’s name, lead with the author’s name on every entry. If you want to lead with the book title, lead with the book title on every entry. Again, the idea is to make it clear and easy for the general public to see what your event is about, so they can determine if they want to attend.

5. Photos, Images, and Link Preview

As the world becomes more visual, it’s no surprise that social media posts with images or video receive more attention. As you promote your event, be sure to have a visual with it, not just text: an author photo, a book cover, or both. Additionally, make sure that your website enables link preview, which shows a preview and an image when you drop your URL in a social media post. This will catch the eyes of scrollers more than just a text post. (And if your site doesn’t enable link preview, all the more reason to include an image!)

6. Create Some Marketing Collateral

Think about creating some extra marketing material you can post to promote your event, in addition to promoting the event itself. This could be a blog post interview, a short video interview, or a bookseller talking about the book, for example. This not only draws people in to find out more, but can increase attendance, as it gives potential attendees more information about the author if they’re relatively unknown. (Extra marketing collateral like this can also drive traffic to your website, which increases brand awareness, exposes visitors to other events, and can increase book or product sales.)

7. Analytics Before and After

As you’re in the midst of promoting your upcoming event, track your analytics to see how well your promotion is doing. If there’s a sign-up for your event, check the sign-ups — if they’re on track, great! If they’re low, increase your promotion, try different channels, add hashtags, or make other tweaks. But if you don’t have a registration page, or even if you do, check the analytics of the page to see if your social media posts are driving traffic to your event page. If you’re posting but not seeing traffic to your event page, there’s an issue with your post copy. If you are getting traffic to your event page, but aren’t getting sign-ups, check the copy and wording on your page, and see if there’s missing information.

8. A Lot is Riding on Your Promotion

Finally, remember that there’s a lot more riding on an event than just booking an author and a time slot. Getting people to come to your event directly impacts the author’s income — more attendees means more book purchases (and current sales data determines future book deals), and awareness about the author to get their name and their work out. Great promotion also increases author trust in you, in that they know you’re going to get the word out about them — and that confidence can build your reputation and your brand as well.

If you have great events, market them. Get the word out. You don’t want to think that no one is interested in your event because they just haven’t heard about it. And you don’t want an author showing up to an empty room because you didn’t prioritize your marketing.

Use the tools available to you on various social media and marketing channels to ensure that your events get in front of people’s eyes. The first step is to commit to marketing, and learning more about how to increase awareness around who you are and what you’re doing.