Start Building Your Literary Audience

A practical starting guide for literary organizations, bookish businesses, and authors

Start your audience-building journey.

You’re a literary organization, business, or author who wants to build your audience and share what you do with the world.

But you’re just not sure where to start with social media, a newsletter, or a website. Or your efforts just don’t seem to be working.

Let’s start with the basics.

With Start Building Your Literary Audience, you’ll learn the foundations of literary audience-building: what to say, who to say it to, where to say it, and how.

Written specifically for the literary community — for booksellers, literary organizations, librarians, authors, and more — it’s filled with examples and ideas you can use to guide your literary marketing efforts.

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Here’s what’s inside Start Building Your Literary Audience:

Getting Started

You’ll learn why audience-building matters and how to use a “Story & Systems” approach to your marketing efforts.

Part I: Story

Through examples and guided questions, you’ll create a foundation for who you are and what you offer, what your audience-building goals are, who your audience is and what to say to them, your key topics that will guide all your content, and how to be more recognizable to your audience.

Part II: Systems

You’ll create a system for turning that foundational material into engaging content that gets your audience interested and wanting to learn more. Through guided questions and exercises you’ll pick which channels to use, build a simple content calendar, create and post content, invite your audience to act, and track your efforts.

This guide is for you if…

  • You’re starting from scratch and don’t know where to begin.

  • You’re posting on social media but not sure what the posts are supposed to accomplish.

  • You sit down to create content and stare at a blank page.

  • You’ve been told you “need to market,” but no one has explained what that actually means.

  • You want to hire help, but you don’t know what strategy or direction to give them.

  • You’re sending newsletters, posting updates, or promoting events, but nothing seems to be building momentum.

  • You know your literary work matters, but you need a clearer way to help the right people discover it, understand it, and stay connected.

A 20-page practical guide to help you stop guessing, start planning, and build your literary audience with more clarity and confidence.

$19. Get your digital download today.

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Hi! I’m Jessica A. Kent.

I’ve spent over 25 years in the literary community: founder and director of Literary Boston, published author, bookseller, Boston Book Festival director, lit mag staff, library assistant...

I’ve also spent 15 years in marketing and events management: building audiences through content strategies, and planning and executing events from 10 attendees to 10,000 attendees.

Let’s create great experiences for your audience — from how they experience your brand, to successfully executing meaningful events, both small and large.

Sample Pages

FAQ

  • Yes. If you run a bookstore, literary nonprofit, writing center, festival, library program, reading series, publisher, or other literary project, this guide will help you clarify your audience-building foundation.

  • Yes. This guide can help authors who are beginning to think about readership, platform, content, and book promotion. It is not only for authors, though. It is written for the broader literary community, including literary organizations, bookstores, libraries, nonprofits, publishers, festivals, and bookish businesses.

  • Not exactly. Social media is included, but this guide starts before social media. It helps you think through who you are, who you’re trying to reach, what you want to say, and how your channels can work together. Social media is one part of that system.

  • No. This guide is designed for people who are starting from scratch or want a clearer foundation.

  • Start Building Your Literary Audience is the short starter guide. It gives you the foundational path without overwhelming you.

    The Literary Marketing Playbook is the deeper, more comprehensive resource. It goes into more detail on strategy, channels, setup, content calendars, social media, newsletters, analytics, and examples.

    If you’re just getting started, begin with Start Building Your Literary Audience. If you want the fuller system, move on to The Literary Marketing Playbook.

  • You’ll receive a digital download of the guide and can start working through it right away.