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…

Jill D. Swenson’s forthcoming  memoir, The Land of Everlasting Sky: A Memoir of Loss and Legacy on Lake of the Woods, will be released on June 2 from She Writes Press (distributed by Simon & Schuster). Early reviews have praised the book; D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer at Midwest Book Review calls it, “…a powerfully evocative discourse on race, culture, and personal empowerment which weaves together a seemingly disparate set of values and observations, creating a narrative powerfully impactful in its tone and approach to life.” And Kirkus Reviews writes, “Deeply moving and eye-opening, this memoir confronts the centuries of systemic bigotry that have led to Indigenous erasure.” Clear-eyed and yet deeply personal, The Land of Everlasting Sky is a compelling exploration of the history we inherit and our relationships to land and each other. You can pre-order your copy here. Q: You learned an Ojibwe family had been removed from their land to build a casino. How did that discovery lead to a book? A: After my mother’s funeral, I visited northern Minnesota where she grew up. My fondest memories of Mom were from my childhood vacations spent with her family in Warroad—picking wild blueberries, swimming in Lake of the Woods, seeing a moose, meeting an old Ojibwe man named Kakaygeesick in the nursing home. When I returned to Warroad in 2014 and discovered Kakaygeesick’s great-grandson, Don, and his elderly mother had been forcibly removed from their land by Red Lake Nation to build a new casino, I thought it…