Marketing Intensive for Illustrators - Reaching the Picture Book Audience

Jed Bennett of Penguin, Deb Shapiro, principal of the new Deb Shapiro & Co., a PR, marketing and consulting firm, and Michelle Fadlalla of Simon & Schuster spoke to the attending illustrators about how to help sync their personal marketing efforts with the efforts of their book's publishers.

Great tip from Michelle:  SimonandSchuster.net is a site targeting librarians and teachers, so the marketing elements and lead books on that site may be different from what you might see on bookseller or retail driven SimonandSchuster.com. I think developing separate marketing materials for the same book where appropriate is a wonderfully clever idea all authors or illustrators could take to heart for their grassroots marketing efforts, AND THIS IS JUST THE FIRST OF MANY GREAT IDEAS!

I'm so thrilled with the way the Marketing Intensive for Illustrators turned out. Here are two more tips, and then we'll go on radio silence until the conference officially starts tomorrow morning!!

Super tip from Deb: Any awesome marketing ideas you have are great, great! But the real question is how are you going to effectively disseminate all that information? Know this before you go nuts on, say, a blimp advertising scheme and you remember, as you are boarding that big GOODYEAR, that you are allergic to helium. And heights.

Final helper from Jed: Look first to the communities you are already involved with and use your connections, you never know where you could have a fantastic book event. If you sell 200 books to your Zumba Support Group in the basement of your local Y, and not to unknown kids at a children's book store, it doesn't matter! You've still sold 200 books, and for Jed, that's the goal.