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…

Whether you are preparing to launch your new book, still writing the manuscript, or marketing your book a year after its release, you can’t ignore the importance of your author platform for your success as an author. Today you need to demonstrate to a publisher you have built a big enough platform to sell a sufficient number of books before they’ll offer you a contract. And if you pursue self-publishing, it is even more important. How else will readers find your book? An author platform isn’t measured by the number of followers on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, but on the size and scope of readers who know you already and are interested in what you have to say. Taking stock of your efforts to attract readers will help you determine where to put your efforts into growing your customer base. Building your author platform requires a consistent, focused effort to make incremental improvements in extending your reach through expanding your social networks. Whether you use an Excel or Google spreadsheet, or a whiteboard on your wall, create a grid for assessing your current author platform. Channels: Make a list of all the ways you communicate with (potential) readers and places where you can be reached by someone who is trying to connect with you   Mailing address Email address Agent’s contact information Publisher’s contact information Publicist’s contact information Website Blog Newsletter Amazon profile Goodreads profile LinkedIn profile Facebook Page and/or personal profile Twitter profile Instagram profile Pinterest profile Previous publications…

Social media gives us new ways to connect with others and pursue our interests, which can include following our favorite authors, publishers, and bookstores. While it may seem an unlikely place, Instagram is one of these platforms with a rather large book-loving community. Recently, I became the new admin behind the Swenson Book Development Instagram account, but of course, there are many others in the literary community that have been #Bookstagrammers for much longer. Author and filmmaker Elizabeth Rynecki – who documented in both book and film her “emotional quest to find the art of her Polish-Jewish great-grandfather, lost during World War II” – is an experienced member of the Instagram literary community and models the best practices of #Bookstragrammers. As a guest for Swenson Book Development, Rynecki has written about writing book reviews and using Instagram, and I am excited to share it with you. Elizabeth Rynecki: Last year I posted 50 mini book reviews on Instagram. That might seem like a large number of books to read in a year, but it’s notably smaller than the number of books I started and then decided, for various reasons, not to finish. Not all books are for all readers. It seems like an obvious statement, but as an author myself I have come to understand this in a much deeper way, to the point that I’ve almost made it a mantra. My recent background as an author [Chasing Portraits was published by Penguin Random House in 2016] leads some people to…