If you’re thinking about how best to market the novel or nonfiction work you’ve just published, don’t forget about the possibility of promoting a book on podcasts. According to Buzzsprout, some 90 million Americans now regularly listen to podcasts, and that number is expected to grow.
Of course, that doesn’t help much if you don’t know how to find a podcast that’s relevant. To be honest, I had no idea how to find podcasts–or podcasters–would might be interested in my most recent book. So, of course, I also had no idea how to help my writing coach clients on that front. Clearly, it was time to do a little research and write a blog post.
The first thing I learned about promoting a book on podcasts is that podcasters usually book guests who pitch themselves rather than those represented by publicists. That may be because so many publicists blindly send out pitches that have nothing to do with the focus of the recipients. I first experienced that while working as an editor at the Ladies’ Home Journal, my very first job in the publishing arena. I still get those wildly inappropriate pitches today.
Whether you’re trying to get on a podcast as a guest or just have the podcaster review your book, you have to know which podcasts to pitch. As it turns out, there are several podcast search engines, including ListenNotes.com, PodSearch.com, and MatchMaker.fm, that will allow you to identify podcasts that would be a good fit. This is critical. The chances of getting on a podcast that doesn’t directly relate to your book are minimal. Even if you do, the audience is probably not going to run out and buy your book if the topic is too far removed from why they listen to that podcast in the first place.
When using the podcast search engine, you’ll want to search keywords that relate to your book. If you’ve written a novel, you might start out with the word “romance” for example, and then apply filters like “books” from there to home in on the right podcasters. With nonfiction, instead of focusing on the genre, I’d use your topic as the keyword. My writing coach client, Sam Simon, for example, is writing a one-man play called Dementia Man about his experience with early-stage Alzheimer’s, which he hopes to turn into a memoir. When I typed “dementia” into the ListenNotes search field, I got 329 results, almost all of them spot on.
You have to be smart about your keyword. When I typed in “law enforcement” to find podcasts that might be interested in Busting the Brass Ceiling: How a Heroic Female Cop Changed the Face of Policing, I got 1,073 results with virtually none of them appropriate. The terms “female empowerment” and “gender equality” yielded less than half that number of results, but provided me with a slew of potential podcast options.
From there, you want to read through the titles and descriptions of the podcasts to create a list of those podcasts you want to approach. You might also want to check when the last episode aired to see how current they are, how many episodes have aired in total, and whether they bring on guests, so you know whether to pitch yourself or just your book.
In her post, “How to Promote Your Book on Podcasts“, Kelly Schuknecht has some great suggestions for how to organize your search results and keep track of your outreach efforts when promoting a book on podcasts. Check it out. If you decide to pitch some podcasts, please let me know how that works out.
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