How Authors Can Successfully Approach Book Clubs
Book clubs are a fantastic way to get readers talking about your book and grow your audience. But how do you actually get your book in front of them?
One of our wonderful newsletter subscribers (hi, Erskine!) submitted the question, “How do you successfully approach book clubs to see about them reading your book?”
I’ve never addressed this question on the blog or on social media, so I think it’s high time I do so! I wanted to give you some practical and easy to apply tips that you can apply to your marketing strategy.
Start Local
With Oprah and Reese Witherspoon’s incredibly popular online book clubs it’s easy to automatically think, “I need to get my book in a big club!” But let’s pull on the reigns and slow down to think about this for a minute.
If this is your first attempt at book clubs or if you haven’t had much success with other online clubs, start local. Readers, librarians, and book sellers love to support local authors so your chances of being featured in a book club close to home are strong - much stronger than in the global market.
Here are a few ideas to help you locate local book clubs:
Contact your local library. Librarians are a fountain of knowledge! They are usually aware of book clubs in the area, who you can contact, other local authors that you can team up with, and more. The library might even have genre-specific book clubs that you could submit to as well.
MeetUp.com. This site is full of great genre based book clubs that you can connect with and get to know.
Area churches. If your book is faith-based, many churches have book clubs that meet on a monthly basis.
Community Groups. Contact your local chamber of commerce to see if they know of any organizations that have book clubs. This could also include your local city’s parks and recreation department.
Google. A good old Google search for “[your area name] book club” will often do the trick!
If you live in a smaller town and you don’t have some of these resources, look in your closest metropolitan area and try there.
Something else you might want to consider is locating your town on a map and drawing a circle for everything inside one-hour drive of your home base. Contact local libraries, community groups, and bookstores in each town inside that circle. Once you exhaust that list, draw a new circle on the map for everything within a two-hour drive. You’ll be surprised how quickly your circle can grow if you dedicate just half an hour each week to researching and reaching out to groups in your area.
Connect with Book Clubs Early
You need to remember that book clubs are not short on options. When I’ve been involved with book clubs, I know I had three or four books I wanted to read and the other members each had multiple recommendations as well. The hard part was narrowing it all down to 12 choices for the year.
Now think of a book club whose members don’t know you as an author and aren’t aware of your book(s) or writing style. What are the chances that they’ll decide to add your book to their reading list?
This is why it’s very important that you connect with book clubs early on and understand how they pick their books. Many book clubs pick out their books well in advance, while others pick them as they go. Some have a theme or other criteria that they are considering for the year.
I would suggest that you start researching and reaching out to book clubs even before your book is finished. Connecting with them early on will help you figure out your pitch first so it fits that book club and has a better chance of being picked.
But also remember that the lifespan of your book is infinite. Many authors think that they have to get their book into book clubs near the release date, and that’s not true. If you haven’t started to connect with book clubs or you’re a little late to the game, consider it for the Follow-Up phase of your marketing plan.
Create Resources
Think about what you can provide for book clubs to make your book stand out. Creating a list of questions they can discuss that they can easily download from your website is very appealing. You can also offer discounts to book clubs, like 10% off for book club orders, or a free digital copy of your book with the purchase of a hard copy. Offer them a video stream chat, or (when it’s safe) an in-person visit to their book club to share more about the inspiration behind your book and to take their questions.
Remember to put yourself in the reader’s shoes. What would make your offer irresistible and make YOU want to include a book in your club?
And also try to approach these opportunities as a way to authentically connect with other people who will enjoy your writing. If you come off as just trying to make a sale, you’re sure to turn people off.
The great thing about starting local is that you’ll have reviews and feedback that will give you more credibility and a firmer standing to approach other online book clubs. And each interaction will give you more experience to know how to best approach bigger book clubs.
It’s important to remember that book clubs have a lot to consider - there are many people involved, there are tons of reading options, and they might have certain criteria they are trying to stick to. So it might take some time and several tries.
Strong connections are established through building meaningful relationships. Before you know it, you’ll have an active database full of book clubs that you can return to for your next book.