Publicity vs Marketing: What's What?
Authors should know how to market their books. They should also know how to publicize them. But what’s the difference? A quick guide.
Many of you may know that I had a career as an author publicist several years ago, and honestly? Sometimes I miss it. I found it to be really rewarding to help people find new-to-them authors and books, and to connect authors to new readers. One question I used to get all the time was, "What's the difference between publicity and marketing?" Well, today I'm going to tell you!
When I hear authors say, "Ugh, I hate marketing my book!" often they really mean they hate doing publicity. Publicity is anything you do to draw attention to your work. Posting on social media, doing YouTube videos, writing blog posts, press releases, interviews, book signings, convention and event appearances, reviews... all of that and more is publicity. Publicity can be thought of as "earned attention," meaning that you are doing stuff to get attention for your work. You are writing a blog post, you are posting on Facebook or TikTok, you sent your book out for reviews, and you're talking about your book using your elevator pitch. It's work that you put in to spread the word about your book. But, it's also things other people do as well, like reviewers and people talking about your book.
Publicity can be consider PART of marketing. But marketing encompasses a whole lot more, and can be a bit more complicated--and expensive. Marketing can be summed up in the briefest terms as the stuff you pay for to promote your book. Advertising is the most common form of marketing. When you pay BookBub, Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, and other places to feature your book in some way, that is marketing. When you pay a bookseller to put your book on an endcap, that's marketing. Goodreads giveaways and creating swag to give away at events also counts as marketing rather than publicity. Building your social media presence is marketing, as is creating an effect website. Getting your book into book clubs, and creating partnerships for merchandise is also marketing.
Marketing involves numbers and knowledge about SEO, keywords, metadata. Having an understanding of statistics really helps in marketing. You want to know what keywords will attract your audience. You want to know how to balance keeping your existing readers happy while attracting new readers at the same time. And you definitely want to make sure you are creating the most effective advertising you can so you get the biggest bang for your buck. No one wants to pay good money for an ad that isn't going to work.
Now, there is some overlap between the two, and some things--for example, social media--can fall into both categories. Growing your social media following and creating a posting strategy to accomplish your goals is often considered marketing, while the content of the posts you write could be considered publicity. With the amount of overlap, sometimes it's hard to tell what it is you are doing. Is it publicity? Or is it marketing? You'll find that experts often don't even agree, so don't sweat it too much. The important thing is that you (and your team, if you have one) are doing the best things possible to spread the word about you and your book.
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