Photo by Steven Jones on Unsplash

Today’s guest post is by author and editor Patrice Gopo.

Leading up to the release of the anthology I edited, other writers often said to me, “That’s so great that you’ll have help promoting the book.” The implication of these comments was that I wouldn’t be alone in the author-side promotion efforts. A book with multiple contributors would have many more hands to lighten the promotion load.

In theory, there was a great deal of truth in those statements. I knew that each contributor celebrated being part of We Deserve to Heal: Black Women on the Perils & Promises of Friendship with White Women and was eager to share the book with others. In practice, however, I recognized that the desire to help promote didn’t necessarily equate with actual promotion. As the editor, I knew the energy devoted to promoting this book would be the greatest in my life. I developed the idea, found the funding, wrote the book proposal, and signed the contract with the publisher. This project has been my primary focus.

For the contributors, however, being part of this project was just one endeavor among many in their full lives. To effectively activate their engagement in promotion efforts, I needed to understand their level of interest in helping, provide them with the resources to support their efforts, and offer a diverse list of promotion ideas available for their choosing. Above all, I needed to make their promotion efforts as easy as possible, reducing the friction between their desire to help and their ability to actually help.

It’s important for me first to note that, from the very start of this project, I intentionally built community among the contributors. In both virtual and in-person spaces, I worked to foster a sense of ownership and collaboration in the development of this anthology. Given the anthology topic, I valued each contributor feeling that this was our anthology rather than Patrice’s anthology. I chose this path not for the sake of promotion, but because it mattered to me. However, this path also had a positive impact on creating a solid foundation of contributor interest in promotion efforts.

With that solid foundation in place, as time to begin promotion work neared, I sent a survey to all the contributors. I explicitly asked about each person’s capacity and interest in participating in a variety of promotional efforts. Are you interested in organizing an event in your community? Are you interested in taking part in a virtual launch event? Are you interested in being a guest on podcasts? I made it clear that none of these answers became a commitment. Instead, this was to help me better understand who I could reach out to when different opportunities surfaced.

In addition, I asked contributors to share ideas for possible events, podcasts to pitch, and organizations they thought might be interested in the book. I added their ideas to the information I shared with my publisher’s marketing team.

In the months leading up to launch

As the publication date neared, I was continually looking for ways to empower the contributors to help with promotion. Some of my activities included:

Online and digital promotion

• Creating a social media asset personalized for each contributor and general assets (my publisher’s marketing team also created endorsement-specific assets). I posted those on my social media accounts and also shared the assets with the contributors so they could post as well. Some contributors opted to reshare my posts or accept my collaboration invitations. Others used the assets to create their own posts.
• Creating a one-sheet for We Deserve to Heal that contributors could share with their local bookstores, libraries, and other organizations they thought would have an interest in the book.
• Writing an email letting people know about the book, encouraging pre-orders, and asking that people suggest their library system purchase the book. I shared this email with all the contributors and asked them to please forward it to their networks along with a personalized message.
• Creating a book discussion guide that contributors could use when hosting book gatherings. This guide, of course, has proved useful to anyone wanting to discuss the book with others.
• Creating a press kit for contributors to direct media and organizations interested in the book.
• Creating a shared Google folder where contributors could easily access the materials I created that might help them support book promotion efforts. This included their personalized social media assets, general social media assets, the book cover, the group photo of all the contributors, the book’s info sheet, etc. (These last few items replicated much of what I also added to the press kit.)
• Sending the contributors an email with information about accessing all the digital resources. I gave this email the subject: “Please SAVE THIS EMAIL | We Deserve to Heal launch resources, info, etc.” A small thing, but it helped the contributors find information days, weeks, or months in the future.

Merchandising and print-based efforts

• Printing tote bags with the book cover and mailing those to contributors. Multiple contributors expressed delight in using those tote bags as they participated in conferences and other public activities/events.
• Printing postcards and mailing those to the contributors so they could distribute to others.
• Creating a comic-book style companion essay to this book. While that essay is available digitally on my website, I had some hard copies printed. I made those available to contributors upon request.
• Printing I Deserve to Heal stickers for water bottles, etc. and making those available to contributors upon request.

Other

• Encouraging interested contributors to set up events/conversations in their community and letting them know I was willing to take part if my schedule aligned. Multiple contributors organized events.
• Ensuring that contributors were well aware of the book’s publication date and launch events so they could easily share that information with others.
• Organizing pre-launch Zoom sessions so contributors could reconnect. During these gatherings, I shared book updates and ways people could help.
• Providing strategies for approaching bookstores, libraries, and other possible interested organizations. For some of the contributors, such work was new. Sharing strategies helped empower interested contributors.

Ultimately, I developed a wide range of options for helping to promote the book—so many options that I knew it could feel overwhelming. As a result, it was important for me to emphasize to the contributors that I understood each person had different capacities for this work, different areas of interest, and so on. I celebrated whatever ways they wanted to help and recognized that contributor engagement would vary. I just wanted the options to be there so they had plenty of ideas and didn’t need to create promotion opportunities from scratch.

I would be remiss if I neglected to mention a final area I didn’t plan that helped activate promotion efforts. Each contributor’s name is displayed prominently on the back cover of the book. This reality has been so useful as the contributors have told others about We Deserve to Heal. It’s wonderful for them to be able to highlight their names, making promotion efforts in their networks that much easier.

Post-publication

In the months since We Deserve to Heal’s publication, I have been thrilled to see all the many ways the contributors have supported the launch of our anthology. They have posted heartfelt reels about receiving their contributor copies and shared beautiful pictures of the book. One contributor and I did an Instagram Live on launch day, where I joined from my local indie bookstore. Another contributor and I did a Substack Live that she later shared across multiple platforms.

The contributors have also organized virtual and in-person events and mentioned the book to influencers. They have told their friends and family about the book. They have introduced the book to faith communities, workplaces, and other organizations. They have invited readers to leave reviews, and they have told their local bookstores and library systems about the book. They have used their tote bags and requested additional copies of the comic book essay and postcards. They have gathered people for book discussions. And they have used my offered ideas as well as developed their own ideas. Along the way, they’ve shared with the group words of praise they have received about the impact our anthology is having on other people’s lives.

What I’ve seen is far beyond “help” promoting the book. Instead, I’ve witnessed invested creators rallying behind a project. The We Deserve to Heal contributors have truly shown me the power of many in promoting this anthology. In the end, I believe anthology contributors often want to help with promotion efforts, but they need to know how. When editors share ideas and provide resources to support that work, they can help activate contributor engagement in ways that matter.