Through the years, I’ve had a lot of experience using Canva to create flyers, signs, social media materials, bookmarks, and even playlist covers—almost entirely with a free Canva account with no subscription. Sure, there are more options available with a paid subscription, but even with a free account, Canva is still a valuable tool with a ton of resources and design templates. It’s amazing what you can create without spending anything. This year, in helping with the publicity for Jill Swenson’s memoir releasing in June, The Land of Everlasting Sky, I took on a new challenge of learning how to use Canva to create a book trailer. Making video content is not something I have done before, let alone creating a trailer from scratch. But after reading and watching several tutorials online, I found Canva makes the process fairly accessible. In the end, I’m happy with what I was able to create on a free Canva account with no previous video-making experience. And I’d like to share some of the insight and advice I picked up from this process so that maybe you, too, can create your own book trailer with Canva. The Script The first step in making a book trailer is to come up with a script. Basically, the script should be a short book description of no more than five sentences. To do this, I pulled lines and inspiration from the existing cover blurb and marketing materials for The Land of Everlasting Sky but then edited it…

Pre-order. You might be surprised to learn that pre-ordering a book is critical to the launch of a book. Publishers may make decisions about how much marketing support to provide a new release based on the volume of pre-orders. Some even determine the size of a first print run using those numbers. If a book has strong pre-order sales, reviewers are more likely to review it, the media is more likely to hype it up, and retailers are more likely to carry it in stock and give it premium placement. If you know an author has a book coming out, please pre-order it. Write a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. It doesn’t need to be very long or a deep literary analysis. The number of reviews a book receives affects the algorithms for getting found online. If you don’t like the book, don’t leave a review. As my mother used to say, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Spread the word. Let your friends and family know how much you enjoyed a book. Share this on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or wherever you do social media. Take a book-selfie. Post a picture of the book, your cat lying across the couch with a paw on the cover, you falling asleep on the couch with the book. Follow. Many authors have Facebook Pages you can like and follow. On Twitter, many authors have accounts and you can follow them and retweet to amplify their voices. Follow authors on…

Six or seven years ago my advice to aspiring authors of nonfiction books was to build an audience platform by blogging. An example of how critical blogging could be to securing a publishing contract can be found in the case of Ann Marie Ackermann, author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee. After an initial assessment of her manuscript, I had recommended she start a historical true-crime blog, and she did. In fact, the editor of the ideal book series at Kent State University Press became a fan of her blog and invited her to submit a book proposal. Her book won a 2018 IPPY in the True Crime category, closed a 180-year-old cold case, and has also been translated into German where it received critical acclaim and was recognized for its scholarly contribution to the history of forensics. Today, blogging may or may not be something an author decides to invest time and energy in. If your authority as an author is based on your subject-area expertise, it remains an important goal to have a visible presence on the internet establishing your credibility. Whether blogging is the best means to achieve that goal depends on you and your project. It may be more important to be listed as an expert source available to journalists and appear as a credible source in news publications covering your subject area. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) may be a better fit to…