How to Get the Word Out About Your Book Signing

You’ve sent out your emails, contacted every book store and library in your area, and finally gotten a positive response. Congratulations! Now, how to let people know about it?  Town criers aren’t exactly in abundance nowadays.  And we don’t really suggest you attempt to hire one, either. The modern populace doesn’t generally respond well to a random person yelling at them in the street.  Instead, try one of these methods that we’ve found to be a little more useful in the digital age.

Create a Facebook Event

This is the far and away the most important thing to do once you’ve gotten a signing scheduled. And make sure it’s a public event. You don’t want people missing out just because you don’t know them personally.  All of the important information is in one place and you can make it a fun experience, post fun eye-catching pictures, make a poll asking your followers what you should wear to the event, any questions they may have for you to address, have some fun with it! Create a Facebook ad to promote the event to an even broader audience! Your fans will appreciate what a cool author you are.

Facebook advertising allows you to target people located in the city/county/state where your event is taking place. You really can make it as general or targeted as you want.  You can set the audience to focus on the people who are interested in the specific topics in your book.  We’ll go back to the grasshopper example. You just wrote a book about a grasshopper tea party and are having a signing in Somewhereawesome, USA. You can use Facebook advertising to make an ad targeting people from ages 0-60 (kids, parents, and grandparents) who like grasshoppers, tea parties, and live in a 25-mile radius from Somewhereawesome, USA. Nice, right?

Invite Everyone You Know

Sure, this is an obvious one, but it’s also easy publicity.  If you can’t count on your friends and family to brag about you on Facebook, who can you count on, right?  And then all of their friends will see it and support their friend and so on. For once, it will actually benefit you when grandma gushes about you publicly.

Share the Event with Local Media

This is not as daunting a task as it may seem.  You know best which newspapers and TV stations circulate in your area. All you have to do now is look them up online and search for the person who would be the best fit as a promoter for your event.  This does not mean to email the host of your favorite TV show. They will not appreciate that.  Instead, try to find the producers of shows or the community news editors for newspapers.  If you have an event coming up and it’s their job to cover community interest pieces, you could be just the person they’re looking for.

While you’re on these sites looking for the appropriate people to contact, make sure to be on the lookout for a calendar of events.  Normally, you are able to submit your event to the calendar so that anyone looking for a hip and happening event that week will spot your signing right away.  You can also post the event on local listings such as Yelp or Eventbrite.

Best of luck, you modern crier, you!