Must-Read Interview: Insights on blog marketing for book publishers, social networking, e-newsletters and more
When it comes to incorporating multimedia—such as blogs, webcasts, e-newsletters, social networking, video, among others—into the business model, Christian publisher Baker Publishing Group is well ahead of the curve. Book Business Extra spoke with two executives from Baker’s different divisions: Jim Hart, the Internet marketing manager at Baker’s Bethany House Publishers, and Twila Bennett, the senior director of marketing at its Revell, Baker Books and Chosen divisions. In this exclusive interview, Hart and Bennett share their insights behind the company’s innovative marketing tactics.
EXTRA: From a marketing and sales perspective, describe some of the innovative ways you are using blogs to increase your ad revenue while offering more content for your readers.
HART: Bethany House Publishers is seeking to establish its profile within the blog community through a number of different means. Acquisitions Editor Dave Long runs a well-read blog, “Faith In Fiction,” which also assists marketing by promoting Bethany House as a quality fiction producer, and one that is open to dialog with readers. We have continued that by approaching bloggers as an offshoot of our traditional media efforts and sending them review copies. Most recently, we have used blogs to publicize a survey about a book cover, and encourage bloggers to post about the survey. We will follow this up with continued interaction with bloggers about the book that the survey covered, and will provide many of the survey respondents with review copies of the book.
I have also worked with groups of bloggers who have organized to support Christian publishing. For example, the Christian Fiction Blog Tour group selects a book and has their affiliated blogs (30-50 blogs for any given book) post about the book for a period of 3-5 days. I frequently work with this group to promote new novels to their members, and they have currently selected six of our novels for their schedule.
