As an author, you do want to create a significant buzz for your book. But how will your book stand out and get noticed? In this episode, Jill Lublin, the author of Profit of Kindness, reveals her secret to get a publicity edge for your book. She also shares the success formula she plays in her books. Jill also talks about how authors can build their books’ publicity even if it’s not done yet. This episode is for you if you want to grow your business, get noticed, and stand out. Be sure to listen in today’s conversation because you don’t want to miss Jill Lublin’s gift!

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The Publicity Edge: Stand Out, Get Noticed, And Grow Your Business

We have a book marketing guest in this episode. If you’re someone who’s looking forward to marketing your book or you have a book already out, our guest could be a great asset to you. Before we get started, I want to remind you to go over and grab your free subscription to Breakthrough Author Magazine. You can find that at www.BreakthroughAuthorMagazine.com.

Also, we have a new course coming up and you can find it at AIAuthorAcademy.com. The reason I’m telling you about this is we have a system that we have been using with AI for quite a while now for platform building. We are ready to share it with you guys to make your platform building a little bit easier and to make your marketing a little more saucy.

Also, get your book out there with the right keywords and with everything you need to be successful. AI is a garbage-in, garbage-out system. We’re going to be focusing heavily on those areas where you probably need to do some avatar tightening to get great results. Once again, www.AIAuthorAcademy.com. The course is going to start in April 2024 and we hope to see you there.

Our guest is Jill Lublin and she’s an international speaker on the topics of publicity, networking, kindness, and referrals. She’s the author of four bestselling books, including Get Noticed… Get Referrals by McGraw Hill and Coauthor of Gorilla Publicity and Networking Magic [00:02:19]. Her latest book, The Profit of Kindness went to number one in four categories.

Jill is a master strategist on how to position your business for more profitability and visibility in the marketplace. She’s the CEO of a strategic consulting firm and has over 25 years of experience working with over 100,000 people plus national and international media. She teaches a virtual publicity bootcamp and consults and speaks all over the world. She has spoken to many stages with luminaries such as Tony Robbins and Jill also leads a conscious kindness community. You can visit her at PublicityCrashCourse.com and there’s a free gift over there or go to JillLublin.com. Stay tuned for our interview with Jill.

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Welcome, Jill. It’s so great to have you here.

It’s wonderful to be here, Juliet. Thank you.

We’re going to get down and dirty in this episode and talk about whether you are being realistic about your book and how it fits with your business. Also, how you’ve built your audience and all those things that you and I both know authors come to us and they give us these grandiose plans that we sit there and go, “We might not be a good fit because I can’t achieve that. That was your work. You should have done it in advance.” Talk a little bit about that because I know you get the same thing I do. What does that look like when people connect with you and start talking about that?

Integrate Your Book Name Inside Your Message

There are a couple of things. One is, “I know you want to sell books. That is the point, yes, of your publicity campaign,” and what we’re talking about here is publicity. I got four books and the more publicity I got, the more books I sold. I sold over 80,000 of Gorilla Publicity. The Profit of Kindness for instance, we’re in Random Acts of Kindness Week and we’re talking about kindness in that way. One of the things that I’m big on is entering your publicity to solve problems in the marketplace and book sales will naturally happen.

One of my clients following the system of a greater message instead of, “I got a book,” sold 42 books in a fifteen-minute podcast because she hit the right message. This is something I want to tell you about. The media, as much as we are so proud of you, and yes, we’re happy and we want you to have a book out. That’s a great key and instrument to create more publicity. What the media wants is for you to be a problem solver and you to be an expert so that they’re saying yes to you because you’re the expert who has the book so that your position is elevated.

I’m going to give you an example here of something that happened that went a little negative, but I would love to hear what Jill has to say. I referred one of my clients out for a podcast and the podcast host came back and said, “She needs training.” I was like, “What happened?” She said, “I would ask her questions about the book and she would talk about the book but then she’d say, “You have to read the book to get the rest.’” That is not what you do.

That is not the right answer. Please send her over to me. I’ll help her out but here’s the thing. When you’re on a podcast, here’s the general rule. You do repeat your book title at least three times and here’s how you do it gently. In my book Gorilla Publicity, I give you the solutions for getting out there without having a big budget because it’s important as an author to look well-prepared and have the right words to say in an interview. You work it in. One of the things that I find authors do a lot is they’ll say, “In my book,” and they won’t say the title. What you’re going to learn to do is, “In my book, Gorilla Publicity,” and so on.

Here’s another that is a little advanced, but I’m going to teach you a shortcut trick, which I love. You’re going to integrate the name of your book inside of your message. I did this with Networking Magic. I said, “If you want to create networking magic, what you do is.” I got the book title in. That’s fun and that should be very helpful for some of you.

Don’t say the whole book title. Maybe even just one word because here’s the deal. Even at bookstores, they will use two words to find your book. That’s why typically you don’t have long book titles and it’s more memorable and quick. Now, the subtitle you can have. That’s great. You don’t need to say the whole darn subtitle anywhere. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend it. You put that title in people’s names so they can find it fast.

That is excellent. I don’t know if you do this on your end, but on our end, we encourage our authors to also go get the name of the book as a URL. That way you can send people because a lot of you guys probably don’t know that someplace like Amazon is a search engine. If I go and I spell Lublin not exactly the way it is, I’m not going to find her. It’s looking for exact matches. That’s something else they can do as well when sending. I know you do that for the bigger like we’re on a podcast and we’re out there. We’re doing that three times. How do you manage if you’re on TV because that is such a small soundbite? You’re on for a very limited time and mostly it’s the host. How would you position it as something like that?

Publicity Blueprint

A podcast is twenty minutes and a TV show is four minutes. One of the things is you have to get right to the point. You noticed we got right to the point, didn’t we, Juliet? We’re no-nonsense kind of women. Let me say that you are responsible for your own message as an author. Please get right to the point. One of the things I’m big on and I have systems and processes in publicity. I think it’s great to have a blueprint and a way to get your publicity done simply. One of my systems is your message and your message is your key to your success.

One of my suggestions is you look at your message every 30 days. Is it current? Is it effective? Is it right now message so that if you wrote a particular book about a certain thing, there are also holidays that are appropriate? One of my clients has a grief book [Ma1] for caregivers. Guess what we found out? It’s National Alzheimer’s Month. She’s got to be talking. You want to be looking at the holidays that are appropriate for your book. It means what can you tie into?

It may not be as obvious. Interestingly, not for those of you who live in the United States, there’s Independence Day. It’s the same with Canada. I turned that into a story called What Would You Like to Be Free From? Do you know how I got in one of the biggest ABC radio stations in Detroit, Michigan which I happen to be from, but that’s not why I got it because I now live in California? I got on the biggest station in Detroit, Michigan talking about being afraid that we are no longer a kind society. That’s how I got The Profit of Kindness in.

That’s what I was talking about. On July 4th, let’s be free from a nation of hate. Let’s have more kindness in our world. That was my message and not, “I got a new book out.” This is what I want you to all hear you’ve got to take your message and wind it into what’s going on right now or getting into holiday. If I made Juliet go to NationalDayCalendar.com, it would be a great resource. It’s wonderfully filled with holidays that’ll stimulate you and go, “I could talk about that.” Let me share it with you. I have a divorce coach. She wrote a book. I have her for Valentine’s Day talking about how to fall out of love. Sometimes you can take a contrary position. That works too.

Along those lines, we just released a book. As you can tell from Jill’s lovely sweater [Ma2] that finding beauty in your broken pieces. It’s a relationship book, but it’s a relationship book about, “You don’t have to drag your spouse to counseling. It all starts with you and how you heal and change.” There are a lot of different ways to take that stuff and position it. I think the key there though, and disagree with me if you don’t, is if you’re going to change that messaging, make sure it’s relevant and make sure it’s along the guidelines because you don’t all of a sudden want to switch messages.

When you say along the guidelines, here’s what I’m going to say. You do what works in the media and sometimes yes, you will switch. You will go on another path talking about, for instance, a business consultant I work with who wrote a book on profitability in business, how to have more of it, and how to scale who also has a son who is autistic. On National Autism Month, we talked about that.

That’s called using everything you’ve got. If you are a Black author, we’re going to go after Black History Month. If you are a Hispanic author, we’re going in for Hispanic Heritage Month. If you are an author who’s Christian, let’s use all the Christian media. I call it using everything you’ve got, all parts of who you are and that will help you get your books out faster.

Case in point, I was in Detroit. I told you I’m from Detroit. I happened to find a good excuse to do some book signings at Barnes & Noble in Detroit. I was signing for Get Noticed… Get Referrals. That’s my book on McGraw Hill. Here’s what happened. I basically pitched the Detroit media not that I was going and doing book signings, but like a local girl makes a good kind of story. I ended up in the Detroit Free Press, a major paper talking about a success story.

If you’re an author, you’re a success story. I wasn’t even concerned about driving people to my book signing, although it did help. I’ll say it helped. Not to mention, every time you’re in media, you are going to see a spike in your book sales and I mean a major spike plus your website and visits on all of your social media too.

Let me give you a success formula that I play with in books. I call it my 2 x 2 x 2[Ma3]  Formula. I’m a girl from Detroit. I wanted to go to Detroit. I want to celebrate with my family. If I’m going to go to Detroit, I want two book signings, which I set up. I want two media interviews which I promote and pitch, and then I want two speaking engagements. That’s always what I’m going after. Sometimes I hit it, sometimes I don’t. My point is I want you to have goals with regard to your media and showing up. It’s going to make a big difference.

I have a tough question for you because we mentioned the holidays and the thematic. We ran into a situation with a fabulous LGBTQ+ book. What it was is he has a fabulous book, but it’s LGBTQ+ month and every channel has influencers. They’re taking the big names over the little guy. How do you overcome something like that when you know you have a great product? We saw it a lot with women’s books. One of our clients lost out to Maureen Dowd and she was bummed. I was like, “I could see why they took Maureen Dowd over you for the interview.” How do you combat something like that or are there ways around it?

Number one, I go local. I have a transgender client and one of the things we’ve done very successfully is get her into Arizona Media, where she’s from. She has another house in another area so we do both areas. It’s been quite successful and has supported her a lot. I particularly think your local media is a fabulous source for most of you that maybe you’re not heating up properly, particularly when we have a particular month like Pride Month or whatever it is.

Publicity Garden

Go for it and do it a little more in advance. Also, I believe in planting flowers for your evolutionary publicity garden. You want to be as much as possible looking ahead 3, 6, and 9 months. Sometimes [00:15:48] absolutely works and you’re good but I’m going to say to you ahead as much as possible, 3, 6, and 9 months. It’ll make a big difference.

I could see how it would. What you’re advocating here is a marketing plan.

Yeah, but some of you are going to be planning more than others but I’ll tell you, in case of emergency, pick up the fricking phone and call your local media. You can say, “This day is the start of Hispanic Heritage Month,” or whatever. “I’m a Hispanic author who wrote this great book about so on and so forth. I want to talk about this and that.” Pitch and go verbal. It’s okay. Sometimes we can skip all the steps and go straight to the media because the media needs you. They do. I promise. They need your wisdom, expertise, and who you are in the world. They need you.

Don’t take that rejection personally. You’re going to get a lot of noes and it’s like, “Next.” Move on to the next. It’s probably not you. It’s probably not your book. They may have someone else in mind. There are a lot of things that happen there as a part of this. One of the other things that I wanted to find out about is you have an amazing workshop that you put on all the time. What kinds of things do you go over in there? I feel like it’s something that authors should look at because you don’t have to go out and pay a big publicity company. You can start building this on your own early even before your book is out.

Here’s the thing. I do this get it done Publicity Breakthrough Bootcamp as I call it. It’s virtual. It’s online. It’s a short day because I know people are busy. Everything I orient toward wonderful people to get things done and we have media to hear your pitches upfront and connect to you as to what works in these times and to hear your pitches. That is super exciting. Also, it’s highly interactive where I have you getting your publicity done. In fact, three documents are done so people love it. It’s called the Publicity Breakthrough Bootcamp.

I’m curious about something too because we get people who say, “My book is a one-and-done.” You have four books. I think I have nine and a lot of them are fiction. I noticed as I transitioned that in the first book, I didn’t do a good enough job. The second book picked up more audience. The third book picked up more. The fourth book was a big success and people started going back and buying those other books. Did you experience the same thing?

My answer short answer is yes and here’s what’s interesting. I could tell you the same thing, Juliet. With Gorilla Publicity which is my foundational book and first book, this is the third edition. We have now sold over 80,000 copies. I do practice what I preach. I make sure it works in the marketplace, yes, and. I come out of the music business. That’s where I learned my publicity skills.

Guerrilla Publicity: Hundreds of Sure-Fire Tactics to Get Maximum Sales for Minimum Dollars

Let’s take the case of Tracy Chapman who did I’ve Got a Fast Car. [Ma4] She put out great albums. She came out of the women’s music scene. She was there for twenty years before she became an overnight success. Guess what? They released her other albums right after I’ve Got a Fast Car and all that other stuff hit stride. Sometimes, shall we say, bring forth the other things you’ve written, yes, and as soon as one hits you start getting publicity.

Also, one may hit because it’s a very specific subject area, etc. I want to say to all of you that the power of your message multiplies. I’m from Michigan. I can talk about snow. Think of it like building a snowman or a snowball. It creates and gains momentum as you do with your publicity and then your message can keep coming forth.

Jill has books like The Profit of Kindness. [Ma5] There are days she can promote that. Also, Get Noticed… Get Referrals. As those things come up, people start Networking Magic. Let’s talk about power partnerships instead of affiliates. There are areas where you can resurface a book to go back in and generate more buzz. It’s not like the book is gone and you’re like, “I’ve moved on to my next book.” There are opportunities. We run ads on our old books all the time. It ends up that we always have an ad or a free book giveaway on Amazon with one of our books going at pretty much all times.

Let me tell you, whatever book I’m being interviewed, I know I’m talking to authors. Now, we’re going to talk about publicity. If I’m on a show talking about kindness, I’m going to switch orders or Get Noticed… Get Referrals. We’re switching orders here because I want the main focus to be there. Also, it would say, “Author of,” somewhat as a multi-book author. Sometimes it’s funny to me when I’m on and being featured for one particular topic because it will say at the bottom, “Author of.”

One of the things you have to decide is what your Chiron [Ma6] is or the thing at the bottom of your TV screen or on a podcast or on a StreamYard or anything. Mine will say, “Four-time bestselling author.” Why? It’s because I earned that. If you’re a bestseller, make sure you say that on there. I say, “Four-time bestselling author, Gorilla Publicity,” if we’re just talking about that. However, I want people to know I got more books. That might be a good way to handle that and the one-time author is beautiful wherever you are. It’s perfect for getting your publicity out.

I know you wanted to talk a little bit about not just about the book, which we’ve covered, but what if you’re a business book. You have the opportunity to go on publicity and send people to your website to buy those bigger products and services as well. When you’re prepping people for these interviews, how do you do that to connect them all together?

Free Gift

Free gifts do that well, and I know we have that for all of you. The point is you can drive people to your free gift, which hopefully puts them into your website which shows them all of your products and services. That’s the way I like to do it. I would tell you to make sure that you have a way that every time you’re being interviewed, you’re also giving away something which could be a chapter in your book, which makes sure that you drive people. I know Juliet, you’re so good at marketing. You’ve got to drive people to where you want them to go and that’s whether it be a chapter in your book, a checklist, or something that relates to your product and service that then you’re driving them to look at everything you offer.

Publicity: The power of your message multiplies.

That person who opted into that free gift, you have to keep giving them some good stuff. It’s not a one-time, “Go get the chapter of my book and buy my book.” Keep feeding them good material that helps them continue to be nurtured and ultimately, if you have that business say, “Jill is my person. I’m going to take the leap.” You jump into the workshop, into the program, or into bigger products and services. Jill, I know that you have something you want to give us today. Would you like to wrap it up with a link to your gift?

What I did was create a Publicity Action Guide. This is filled with great tips that you can use immediately and actionable publicity-specific ideas as well as things to implement quickly. I put it all together in an action guide plus this gift also includes a live free interactive on Zoom, get your questions answered publicity masterclass. That’s all included. You can go to PublicityCrashCourse.com/freegift.

I forgot to mention it, and I’ll mention it now for you guys who are reading. Jill also is one of our contributors to the magazine and I think her first article is coming in June 2024 but we’re excited about it because for many of you, I know we’ve got the platform-building side, speaking, and all those little things covered but this is where authors fall off is their book comes out and all of a sudden, it drops. It’s a thud[Ma7] . They never sell a book again or they sell minimal books. This is where when you see Jill’s advice in these columns that it could be helpful to keep that book’s momentum going after your launch.

You always want to be thinking and looking ahead. It’s great advice.

Jill, thank you so much for taking the time[Ma8] .

Important Links

• BreakthroughAuthorMagazine.com
• AIAuthorAcademy.com
• Get Noticed… Get Referrals
• Gorilla Publicity
• Networking Magic
• The Profit of Kindness
• PublicityCrashCourse.com
• JillLublin.com
• NationalDayCalendar.com
• PublicityCrashCourse.com/freegift

About Jill Lublin

Jill Lublin is an international speaker on the topics of Publicity, Networking, Kindness and Referrals. She is the author of 4 Best Selling books including Get Noticed…Get Referrals (McGraw Hill) and co-author of Guerrilla Publicity and Networking Magic. Her latest book, Profit of Kindness went #1 in four categories. Jill is a master strategist on how to position your business for more profitability and more visibility in the marketplace. She is CEO of a strategic consulting firm and has over 25 years experience working with over 100,000 people plus national and international media. Jill teaches a virtual Publicity Bootcamp, and consults and speaks all over the world. She has spoken on many stages with luminaries such as Tony Robbins. Jill also leads a conscious kindness community.  

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