Why promote your book on podcasts?
Podcasts are a great place for authors to promote their books. Well-established podcasts have hundreds, if not thousands, of listeners tuning in to their episodes. These listeners are tuning in to hear about a specific topic they enjoy. There are podcasts on every topic you can imagine, including books. And not just books, but some are even more specific about the genre(s) they cover.
Not all podcasts have guests, but those that do are always looking for new guests to have on their shows (trust me, I manage 3 different podcasts!). And even those that don’t have guests but are book-related may be open to reading and reviewing your book on their show, so you can still get your book in front of their audience.
How to find podcasts where you can promote your book
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Start by going to ListenNotes.com. Listen Notes is a podcast search engine. As their website says, “It’s like Google, but for podcasts.” You can use it to search for podcasts that would be a good fit for you and your book.
Start by searching a specific keyword. For example, if you are a romance author, you might search “romance books.” You also want to select Podcasts up at the top (as opposed to Episodes). This search gives me 575 results.
Next, you can add additional filters to your search results. For example, you can select “Books” under Categories, select a Region, Language, Age, etc. You have to upgrade to use the filters, though, so I wouldn’t worry about this too much. I don’t recommend getting too detailed with filters anyway, but if you do choose to upgrade in order to use the filters, I typically just add one filter: Latest episode pub date. By setting this to “Past year,” your search results will show the more active podcasts.
Analyzing the search results
Now you want to look for podcasts that would make sense for you to pitch to. Some of the things to look for include:
- The general title/description of the podcast — does it make sense for your book?
- How many episodes the podcast has published. It may be okay if this number is small, it’s just something to consider.
- When the last episode was published (or the update frequency).
- Do the podcast episodes include guests? If not, it may still be okay, but you want to be sure you understand the host’s approach — do they have guests (authors) on to talk about their books or do they do reviews for books without the author present?
Organizing the search results and outreach efforts
575 search results is a lot to sort through. Your particular genre may have less, but you may have additional keywords you want to search which will result in more podcasts to sort through and organize. Either way, I recommend creating a spreadsheet to keep track of the podcasts you think are a good fit. In this spreadsheet, you want to indicate the name of the podcast, name of the host(s), contact information* (see more on this below), contact name (if not the host), and the date you reach out.
Example:
| Podcast Title | Host | Contact Info | Contact Name (if not host) | Date Contacted | Notes |
*Some of the podcasts in Listen Notes will have a link to send an email to the podcast’s contact person, but you have to log in to Listen Notes to have access to this function. Also, not all podcasts have this link. I’ve found a good workaround for this is to do a regular Google search for the podcast. Usually, you can find a website where there’s a contact form or email address you can use to reach out to them.
How to pitch yourself as a podcast guest
I’ve created this pitch letter template to get you started. Personalize the template for your own use and start contacting the podcasts on your list. I recommend starting with just a few at a time. You probably won’t hear back from all of them, but you also don’t want to overwhelm yourself with too many interviews to schedule all at once. Maybe shoot for 5-10 per week and adjust as needed.
How to promote your podcast interviews
This is super important and something that a lot of people forget. Every time a podcast episode publishes where you were a guest or the host talks about your book, share the episode with your audience. Yes, your original goal was to build awareness for your book with the podcast’s audience, but sharing the episodes with your existing community helps build your credibility as an author, allows them to celebrate with you, and gives them something to reshare with their audiences. Marketing should never be viewed with a “one and done” approach. Take advantage of every opportunity to share your marketing accomplishments!