Building Buzz with Your Book Photos

Would you like to know how to build buzz with your book photos, and help promote—and sell—more books?

The Power of Book Photos

Images catch people’s attention; by using photos of you—and others—engaging with your book, you can easily engage others to support the cause, helping to promote your book:

• Quality images, including photos, can keep people reading a blog post longer. That means that bloggers are often looking for great photos related to their topic (more about that opportunity, shortly)
• Social media updates with images such as photos get much higher engagement than those without. In fact, 87% of Facebook shares included photos.

You can capitalize on the value and power of photos by taking lots of photos of you and your book and:

• Post your book photos on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media.

  

• Include them in your blog posts.
• Take some high quality and interesting photos of you and your book and post them on quality royalty free image sites like Pixabay, Unsplash, Gratisography, or PicJumbo, to name a few. Tag the images for keywords that people might search for, such as writing, reading, books, bookshelf, reader, teen reading, couple reading, child reading, business man reading.

You can even get highly specific in tagging your book photos. I’m going to be teaching my book writing course in Thailand this fall and the company sponsoring me has been working on a brochure. Last week, I did an image search for “Southeast Asian businesswoman reading” and “Southeast Asian businessman reading” while looking for an appropriate image for one page of the brochure. There weren’t that many images. So, your book cover could come up on several searches if you get granular with your photo tagging.

[bctt tweet=”Anyone using your image will automatically be promoting your book!” username=”LisaTener”]

When I post an “out of the office” or “vacation” message on email, I like to use the opportunity to recommend a few great books—often ones by my clients. Dr. Victoria Dunckley made the top of the list when she sent me a great book photo of her finding Reset Your Child’s Brain in her local bookstore.

Helen Deines, author of A Dance with Hummingbirds also topped the list at one point with this lovely book photo that I have used in newsletters and blog posts.

And Willie Nugent, author of A World of Good: 550 Madcap Schemes to Save the World, may set a record with the good his book is accomplishing—and his photos play a part. Willie donates 100% of sales to charities around the world. In this photo, he is presenting his book to UK  representative Navaz Bustani after donating £300 to the VAFA Animal Shelter in Iran.

Navaz was so inspired she bought ten books for her friends and also donated £50 towards the next charity (a total of £100 ). She is going to Iran in July, where she plans to take a photo at the shelter with volunteers holding the book.

So, the book itself inspires creative ways to raise funds for charities, proceeds from sales of the book go completely to charity, the activities are inspiring additional philanthropy AND the photos themselves promote charitable giving, in general, and the charities Willie supports, in particular—everything from dog shelters to libraries!

Willie’s around the world photos reminded me of Flat Stanley and I imagined a “Flat Stanley” type series of book photos (you know, the children’s book that has you take photos of Flat Stanley and send them around the world). In your case, you can take a photo everywhere you do a seminar, book talk, book signing or event—and encourage people throughout your book tour to be in photos with you—and share.

Below are a few more fun photos of recently published authors.

[bctt tweet=”Have a fun photo of your book? Email me and I’ll upload it as a comment! ” username=”LisaTener”]

Not published yet? Design a cover and you can inspire yourself.

Dr. Craig Malkin’s daughters pose with his book Rethinking Narcissism in the New Releases section of the bookstore.