Hiring a publicist isn’t for everyone — if you have a marketing background, have time to dedicate toward promotions, or if you lack the budget, you may not want to consider hiring a publicist yet. But if you do decide to hire one, you should ask the right questions to make sure they’re a good fit for you and your book’s genre. Here are a few key questions you should ask when interviewing a potential book publicist.

Most self-published authors, especially first-timers, would LOVE to have 50 preorders, let alone 10,000. In this guest post, author Julian Hosp shares the steps he took to get over 10,000 preorders for his first book. Warning: It takes a lot of hard work, but it has definitely paid off because launching with 10,000 preorders will definitely catapult him to instant bestseller status once the book goes live, which will lead to many more sales.

Almost every author I know jumps into book marketing with very mixed feelings. Authors are committed to the long, slow process of writing, so the fast-paced, socially awkward, time-sensitive demands of promotion prove difficult and draining for many authors. Even worse than that, many new authors know next to nothing about marketing and feel slimy when jumping into it, but we’re still tempted to measure our personal worth and the value of our books based on our sales numbers. How do you promote a book well without bringing misery on yourself?

Periscope, whose website describes it as offering users the opportunity to “explore the world in real time through someone else’s eyes” is the newest darling on the social media scene, says US social media consultant Chris Syme. Here she examines the service through an author’s eyes – and, handily, she also happens to be an author!

If you’ve been looking for a way to increase your Instagram followers or get your posts out to a wider audience, now you can. This post will walk you through how to set up your first Instagram ad! (Please note: Don’t panic if you don’t yet have the option to advertise on Instagram. While the feature is now available to most users, the roll out process isn’t yet complete.)

Engaging your email list boils down to one simple question: How can this email benefit your subscribers? In other words, how can you help them? We all agree the end goal is to convert your subscribers into customers, but by helping them on the frontend you’re building trust and creating deeper relationships. Creatively engage your email list with these eleven practices and you will experience higher conversion rates and deeper trust with your audience.

Running a price promotion for your book — temporarily dropping the price and promoting the discount via a service like BookBub — is a great way to drive a large volume of downloads or sales. And the more momentum you get from your campaign, the higher you’ll drive your book up retailers’ top lists and even the bestseller lists. So how can you promote your book on social media while it’s discounted without being spammy?