Digital Branding for Authors at BEA15

Fauzia Burke of FSB Associates and Kristen Frantz of Berrett-Koehler Publishers

One of the cool things about BookExpo America is that there are seminars aimed at authors, publishers, and so on. For the past few years there has been a whole track of programming about the digital space and using digital tools for marketing and commerce.

Fauzia Burke (of FSB Associates) opened by explaining that agent Amy Hughes caught the flu and so didn’t make it, so it was just her and Kristen Frantz (VP of sales and marketing at Berrett-Koehler Publishers).

Fauzia began by answering the question, What is digital branding? “Think about what comes up when you do a Google search for a person. Your website, your social assets, etc.”

“I know the authors in this room are thinking I wrote the book, now I have to be a marketing expert, too? But yes, you have to think about why it’s important. The people who do digital branding get more speaking gigs and they spell more books. If you had a one tweet equals one book sale ratio we would all do it, right? It isn’t so obvious, unfortunately, and it’s not just a sales tool.”

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Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

We Need Diverse Books! Panel discussion recap BEA15

I was so glad I got to catch one of the We Need Diverse Books panels at this year’s BookExpo America. I am a fast typist so I am able to capture a lot of what was said, but nowhere close to everything, so please do no take this as a “transcript.” It isn’t. It’s a selection of the comments made and may contain errors because I can’t type perfectly and listen at the same time! But I wanted to capture as much as I could so that people who couldn’t be here could still hear this conversation. Because it is such an important conversation no matter what genre you write or publish in.

The panel included:
Ellen Oh, author of The Prophecy Series, co-founder
Lamar Giles, author of Fake ID and Endangered
Linda Sue Park, Newbery Award-winning, NY Times bestselling author
Matt de la Peña, NY Times bestselling author of multiple books
Tim Federle, author of Better Nate Than Ever and Tequila Mockingbird

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Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.