How to Promote Your Book via Local Radio

Indie author Chrissie Parker

When English indie author Chrissie Parker was seeking to market her novel set in the Greek island of Zakynthos, she thought laterally and came up with a great way of targetting a very specific market: the people who visit the Greek island where the book is set, Zakynthos in Greece. Here's how she did a deal with the local English-speaking radio station on the island, and how it worked out for her.

Beautiful Greek island setting of Chrissie Parker's novel

Zakynthos is quiet during winter months, but flights operate between spring and autumn, bringing thousands of holidaymakers to the island for their much needed week in the sun.  88.6 Island FM is an English-speaking radio station that operates on Zakynthos. As well as being listened to in restaurants, shops and hotels, the radio station also has an online stream where listeners can log in and listen from anywhere in the world.

I have listened to it online myself for many years, and I knew that they were looking for advertisers for the 2015 summer season, so contacted them to ask if I could buy six months of advertising. They agreed to host me for a six month period that would start at the beginning of April and finish at the end of September 2015.

Writing the Right Advertising Script

All I had to do next was write a suitable advert that was 20 seconds long and get a voiceover artist to record it. Writing the advert was extremely hard. How do you get all the information about the book, and where to buy it, in an advert of twenty seconds? It took a lot of writing and rewriting, with the help of a stopwatch to time the length. Eventually I got the text down to a reasonable length and then set about finding my voiceover artist.  The station helped me by recommending someone they had used before. I approached her and she was happy to take on the job. I talked her through the details and within a few days it had been recorded, checked and agreed. One of the DJ’s at the station produced the final advert, adding background music etc. and it was ready to go.

The Verdict

Chrissie Parker's novel, set on the Greek isle of Zakynthos

The advert for Among the Olive Groves started playing on 88.6 Island FM in April, and it was great to hear it on the air.  It was my first piece of mainstream advertising, reaching both tourists and residents on Zakynthos, as well as people living abroad.  It cost me €200 for 6 months, and the voiceover artist only cost £25. Sales of the book went up in comparison to the first half of the year, and the book has sold consistently over the summer, and I recouped my costs in the first month which showed that the advertising really worked.

I now intend extending the advertising to run until the end of December and will be writing a new advert for 2016, as I think have now managed to find a local business on the island to stock paperback copies for sale.

Conclusion

I would definitely recommend radio advertising. Many local stations are always looking for advertising revenue. I would recommend using it if you have a selling point that would interest their audience. Mine was that the book was set on the island, so it was of direct interest to those listening to the station, so definitely a source of marketing that is worth pursuing.