In episode 090 of the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome back Gabrielle Gantz and welcome for the first time, Brian Thompson.
About Gabrielle:
Gabrielle Gantz is a Publicist with Viking and Penguin. She interviews author for The Nervous Breakdown, writes about arts & culture at The Contextual Life, and can be found on Twitter @contextual_life.
About Brian
Brian is better known as the guy behind Thorny Bleeder (Records). He’s a Vancouver based music industry entrepreneur, record label owner, artist manager, marketing consultant, digital strategist, brand architect, web designer, blogger, podcaster and industry speaker. Brian’s been in the music biz for twenty years. Formerly the corporate head of music buying and marketing for a large national music retail chain, Brian has since moved on to become a well respected voice on the convergence of artist development, music marketing, social media and technology.
Links:
- Gabrielle Gantz (blogs)
- Gabrielle on Twitter
- Brian Thompson (website)
- Brian on Twitter
© 2012 Patrick Hester and John Anealio
This podcast features original music by John Anealio
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Gabrielle here. Since I couldn’t come up with an answer on the show when John me what I’ve found effective when working with authors, I’ll answer it now.
Contributing original content to websites and blogs, as well as being open to Q&As, can do a lot to get your name out there. If you are an author publishing with a publishing house, your publicist should know of a few outlets and can approach them on your behalf. However, it doesn’t hurt to do some research and find out what sites there are within your genre — and who accepts outside material. Keep a close eye on the content they run and think of a few ideas that would fit. You can send those to your publicist who can then pitch your for an essay around publication date.
If you are a self-published author, it’s on you to pitch the editor/owner of the site. Research their submission guidelines (if they are available) and follow them to the letter.
I’m not sure what the equivalent would be for a musician — maybe writing something about music or reviewing an album — whatever it may be, original content is really big these days.
Great interview.
I do appreciate newsletters and stuff that some authors I connect with use, because its a more direct connection for me as a reader/reviewer without the interplay of facebook, myspace or twitter.
Kay Kenyon, for example, gets this.
Thanks again for having me you guys, it was a great little chat. Looking forward to seeing the feedback that rolls in from your listeners…
[…] You can listen to the episode here. […]
I’d be interested in a follow-up podcast zeroing in on what specifically works in specific promotion areas, like Twitter or e-mail newsletters. Your crew definitely hit some good information bites, but at the same time there’s a lot more to succeeding on Twitter than an avatar and talking to a bunch of people before poking Neil Gaiman. Though I also adored the Gaiman anecdote, and it did harbor very good advice on how to treat people.
John, I think the takeaway is: be a real person. A major turn off in social media is someone who is constantly promoting things and never interacting with people. You can promote things, but that can’t be your primary focus. Get people to like you, then add links to your stuff here and there.
~P