Photo of Patrick Lenton by Daniel Boud
Recently, author and digital and social media marketing specialist Patrick Lenton launched his brand-new business: Town Crier Consultancy. Town Crier is a social media and digital marketing consultancy for authors, teaching the skills authors need to create an online platform and sell their books. Patrick’s got the runs on the boards for his new business, having recently worked for Momentum–where I first met him–and several other major publishers. As a Momentum author new to the world of digital-first publications, I found Patrick wonderful to work with: both savvy and sensitive, flexible and focussed. And so, learning of his new enterprise, and intrigued to find out more, I asked him a few questions.
Congratulations on the launch of your new business, Patrick–what a great idea Town Crier Consultancy is! How did it start? Tell us about the development of the concept.
Thank you so much, Sophie. The idea was a bit of a slow burn, generated from conversations with authors who seemed to have a lot of misconceptions about marketing their books. There seemed to be a lot of fatalism – leaving the success of the book completely up to chance or the attention of the book gods, or believing that promotion involved more time or effort or skills than anyone possessed. There were also a lot of authors spending money on expensive one-off promotions and advertising that I knew from experience didn’t really do anything. I felt like lots of authors would jump at the chance to learn the skills they need to market efficiently, and decided to go ahead with the idea and create Town Crier!
You are both an author and a social media/digital marketing specialist. How do you combine these different strands?
It’s actually fairly separate skills for me right now – as an author I have a collection of literary/comedy short stories, which is a genre that is fairly immune to most digital marketing. However I think being an author myself means I have a lot of empathy and understanding for other authors. Unlike a lot of generic social media strategists, I’m fully aware that an author’s main job is writing, and all my
strategies and campaigns try to reflect that.
Before starting Town Crier, you worked for some time at Momentum, the very innovative digital-first arm of Pan Macmillan. What kinds of things did you learn from your time there?
Momentum believed in growing the author, rather than just marketing a book, which can be a very different strategy to a lot of publishing houses. That meant that we invested the time to teach an author skills and grow them as a cohesive brand (sorry for the marketing talk, it’s not great to be referred to as a brand). This was the biggest lesson I learnt, and one that helped created my view for Town Crier. It was also great to have the freedom to test out different strategies, and see how well they worked.
Your services are suitable both for self-published authors and for more ‘traditionally’ published authors looking to expand their digital and social media horizons. What kinds of things do you think each group of authors might be looking for?
All social media and digital marketing is about using online spaces to connect with readers! It’s an exciting time to be an author, because more readers than ever are online, and able to interact with authors and find more books that they want. Social media and online communities are basically digital word-of-mouth machines. Self-published authors are looking to sell to them directly, whereas traditionally published authors aren’t so dependent on that, and instead use the space to promote buzz and excitement about their books, so people can go and purchase them from bookstores.
What’s your number one tip for effective use of social media and digital marketing by authors?
Be genuine! The last thing ANYBODY wants is to engage with a Twitter or Facebook account that’s just an endless stream of ads and promotions. We’re very good at shutting advertising out, and even if it’s the best book in the world, we’ll probably ignore it if it feels like an infomercial is trying to sell it. Create your community by being engaged, genuine and interesting.
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strategies and campaigns try to reflect that.
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