The Basics of Marketing and Promoting Your Work Online

Learn how to successfully market your own book without the support of a publisher, whether it’s a new or old title. This session will look at key strategies and principles for selling books through online retail (as either a self-published or traditionally published author), and how you can build a plan that’s customized for your work and target audience. Topics covered: the basics of leveraging your platform and driving awareness; online advertising options; how to optimize anything you have available on Amazon; the selection of proper categories and keywords; and more. Self-published authors will receive guidance on whether or not to enroll in KDP Select and how to use pricing/discounting as a strategic tool.

The Digital Age Author: Best Practices in Marketing, Promotion, and Reader Engagement

In this six-session series, publishing consultant Jane Friedman will teach you the principles and techniques for building your author platform—particularly online—and publishing and promoting your own work, whether traditionally or self-published, using the many new tools and platforms now available to writers. The first sessions will cover the foundational strategies that govern author platforms, with nuts-and-bolts discussions of author websites, blogs, email newsletters, and social media. The last two sessions will look at the self-publishing landscape and what it takes to market and promote work in a predominantly online environment, regardless of how you publish.

Jane Friedman has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in digital media strategy for authors and publishers. She’s the co-founder and editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest. In addition to being a columnist with Publishers Weekly and a professor with The Great Courses, Jane maintains an award-winning blog for writers at JaneFriedman.com. She’s delivered keynotes on the digital era of authorship at the San Francisco Writers Conference, The Muse & The Marketplace, and Willamette Writers Conference, among many others. She speaks regularly at industry events such as BookExpo and Digital Book World, and has served on panels with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund. She has a book forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press, The Business of Being a Writer (March 2018).