How Authors Can Use Relationship Marketing
Very few of my author clients are truly excited about relying on social media to promote their book.
Yes, social media can be very powerful, but only when done consistently, authentically, and not by simply blasting “buy my book messages” three times a week. Generally, what I notice for my website clients is that social media succeeds only if you were already using and loving a platform, and building community there.
And yet, the myth persists that authors must embrace social media marketing in order to succeed. Other valuable, long-term tactics, like building your author email list and engaging with your audience through podcasts, blogs, and local events, are still (in my opinion) getting overlooked.
And another wonderful way marketing — building genuine, mutually beneficial relationships so you can (nicely!) borrow other people’s audiences — is definitely not talked about enough.
That’s why I’m so pleased to welcome my friend Sophy Dale with this guest article today.
By the way, will you join us?
Early next month, Sophy is hosting a small group program that prioritizes connection-building between participants, making it easier to get started with collaborations and partnerships by offering a ready-made pool of fellow creatives and entrepreneurs who are open to collaborating with one another.
I will be enrolling in this and if Sophy’s approach resonates with you, we’d love for you to join us too.
Hello!
I’m Sophy Dale, a marketing strategist for experts (coaches, authors, therapists and course creators). Pauline kindly asked me to write here about how the relational marketing that I recommend to my clients can work specifically for authors.
Why relationship-based marketing works so well for writers and authors
Before I became a marketing strategist for small business owners, I was a book coach (and before that I worked in book publishing, both as a publicist and as an editor).
Often, when I was coaching writers who were creating their Book Proposals, we would discuss their author platform and they would despair over the perceived need to have tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of followers on social media in order to get a book deal.
However, my experience was that, when we came to the negotiating table (either with literary agents or with publishers) although a large social media following was definitely not seen as a bad thing, other factors were just as important, if not more so.
Here are some of the elements that, at least for my former clients, had enough sway to make up for having a small social media footprint:
Having an engaged newsletter list
One or two people who were recognized names in their field (this is important - they don’t need to be celebrities, they just need to be well-known in your book’s particular niche) who are happy to blurb the book
Having a membership group, Patreon community or paid Substack - anything that shows a publisher that, rather than only having an audience of people who are following you for free, you have a decent number of people who are prepared to pay you in exchange for your writing
Having a reasonably successful podcast, or guesting on lots of relevant podcasts
Relevant press or media features and/or contacts
Having the makings of a street team for their book (learn more about street teams here)
As you’ll appreciate, none of these elements rely on having a big social media presence.
What they do have in common is that they all require building strong relationships, both with people who might buy your book in the end (your newsletter subscribers or Patreon members or street team for instance) and with people (such as podcast hosts) who are in a position to share your work with their own audiences.
What is relationship-based marketing?
This kind of marketing focuses on the following sources of lead generation and nurturing:
Borrowing other people’s audiences (going on podcast tours/delivering workshops in other people’s communities/doing a newsletter or Substack swap/guest posting/delivering the keynote/being on a panel at a conference)
Building close and ongoing relationships with colleagues and former clients (or readers), such that you are always top of mind when opportunities come up - so that your name is mentioned even when you’re not in the room
Deepening relationships with a small number of people, through doing things like running private accountability groups or co-working/co-writing sessions
Hosting your own bigger events in collaboration with others (for example, pop-up podcasts, virtual retreats/conferences) in order to pool your audiences
Referral partnerships (such as a copywriter who gets most of their business via 4 or 5 web designers who refer their clients to her for copywriting services)
This form of marketing is also sometimes described as joint venture marketing, because you’re usually collaborating with someone else to offer something (a workshop, guest post or event) to one another’s audiences. But relationship-based marketing is wider than that, because, as you have seen in the list above, it also includes simply strengthening your existing relationships, without necessarily offering specific events/opportunities to share with other people’s audiences.
Not all of the tactics above make sense for writers, but the essence of the idea behind relationship-based marketing is the same, whether you’re a life coach, a photographer or an author. Finding collaborations and partnerships and building community around your work is the common thread. Whether you’re trying to get a traditional book deal or you’re self-publishing, building community around your writing is critical.
An example of writers building their own community
Over a quarter of a century ago, seven relatively unknown crime writers in the north of England decided to band together to promote their work as a collective, calling themselves the Murder Squad. One of their number, Ann Cleeves, went on to become a break-out bestselling success, with TV adaptations of her Vera and Shetland series of books, but the group as a whole have between them gone on to win about 30 prizes including Daggers, Edgars, Macavitys, Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, RTS and Agatha Awards and honorary degrees.
As one of the founding members of the group, Martin Edwards, wrote:
“Margaret Murphy first had the idea of a group of northern crime writers banding together for mutual support and promotion, and she’s remained a driving force ever since.
Writing is, famously, a lonely trade, and many authors are natural introverts. But it’s long been clear that collaboration between writers makes a great deal of sense. The Detection Club, formed in 1930, was the first social network of crime writers and it thrives to this day, but although it has a fascinating history, it is essentially a small dining club. Formed in 1953, the Crime Writers’ Association is a much larger professional organisation, a British equivalent to the Mystery Writers of America, founded eight years earlier.
Murder Squad sprang out of the CWA, and specifically the northern chapter of the CWA, which was set up in the late 1980s by Peter Walker, and proved highly successful. Margaret invited a number of us to join her in an attempt to secure wider interest in our books.
Margaret’s idea was brilliant because it was simple. Squad members wrote a very varied range of books, and were different from each other in many ways, but they had important things in common, including a strong commitment to good writing and a genuine commitment to taking a consensual approach to Squad projects.
If you enjoy yourself, you’re happier, and you do better work. I can honestly say that there’s never been a moment when I’ve felt disgruntled with the Squad. Our shared activities have been a source of a great deal of pleasure and have never interfered with the projects that I wanted or needed to undertake by myself.”
This kind of collaboration, which led to book events around the world and a number of anthologies of short stories, also has powerful intangible results - accountability, motivation, a sounding board for new ideas, introductions to new agents, editors, literary festival directors, a pooling of talents (one person might be better at PR outreach, another might be better at the logistics of planning a tour, another might be better-connected with agents, etc.).
I can’t promise that every such group will go on to have the international success that some of the Murder Squad writers went on to achieve, but I do think it’s an interesting model that could be replicated more often. Of course, more recently, first Bookstagram, then BookTok and Substack have seen many different forms of author collaboration - but it’s helpful to see how powerful the underlying partnerships can be without the involvement of the double-edged element of social media (double-edged in the sense that it’s both potentially amplifying but also such a saturated space it’s easy to feel like a tiny voice shouting into the void).
Creating your community of super fans
Beta readers
Another effective strategy, this time relying on creating a community of readers rather than of fellow writers, is to create a team of beta readers to give you feedback while you’re still writing your next book. This strategy works more straightforwardly for non-fiction writers, where beta readers can help to decide even really fundamental issues, such as the structure and contents of the book, alongside giving feedback about how engaging different sections of a new chapter are, where they think you need to give more detail, where you’ve gone off on a tangent etc. Your beta readers can receive all kinds of rewards for their help (these might include anything from being mentioned in your acknowledgements page in the final book, to getting 1:1 support from you in whatever the field of expertise that your book is about). For much more on how this can work, see Rob Fitzpatrick’s book, Write Useful Books, or his website here.
Beta readers can make your final book much stronger and they also become super fans, the people who will be cheering your book on as it gets closer and closer to publication, writing reviews and promoting it to their friends and their own audiences or communities. In this way, they can become the core members of your book’s street team.
Street team
Your street team is a group of fans of your work who commit to actively promoting your book. They may do this by pre-ordering copies ahead of publication day, by posting reviews, or talking about the book on social media, and/or promoting other book-related events, giveaways or competitions you may be running.
The term comes from the music industry, where teams of fans might literally hit the streets to put up posters in advance of a band’s live event.
Usually street teams aren’t paid - the idea is that they’re genuine fans who enjoy sharing their enthusiasm with others - but they’re often incentivized via special access to the author, signed copies of books and other forms of perks or prizes.
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Whether you choose to collaborate with other writers or to focus on building your community of readers, relationship-based marketing is a powerful way to find an audience for your writing.
And unlike most people’s experience of churning out new content for social media, it also has the potential to feel nurturing and supportive.
It’s extremely motivating not to feel like you have to do everything alone - instead you know that you have a band of supporters (whether that’s other writers or committed readers of your work) who are cheering you on.
Would you like to do book marketing differently?
I’d love to invite you to join my own community of readers by subscribing to The Lowdown, my email newsletter. This also gives you access to my free monthly roundtable sessions - small group hot seat coaching Zoom calls where we can talk through your marketing ideas.
And if you’re ready to really focus on collaborations and partnerships to grow your audience, you might like my new group program, which will start on 10 November 2025.
Expand Your Business Ecosystem is a 4-week structure to help you increase your reach, without having to spend your life on social media. Find aligned partners and collaborators so you can put your offer in front of new audiences - even just one really aligned partnership has the potential to double your audience or fill your client roster.
Thank you so much, Sophy, for sharing this human-centered approach with us. I’m looking forward to being part of the community inside Expand Your Business Ecosystem!
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