Halloween is here, which means it’s time for costumes, candy, and pretending we aren’t going to eat the Reese’s Cups before the trick-or-treaters arrive. I’m particularly good at that last one, although my credibility tends to disappear somewhere around the third peanut butter cup.
This year, we’ve decided to hand out something a little different at Current Words Publishing. No, we’re not putting books into children’s Halloween bags. Even I recognize that would make us the least popular house on the block. Instead, we’re giving our authors a few treats designed to help them fall in love with their books all over again.
And perhaps introduce those books to some new readers in the process.
🍫 Your Reese’s Cup: Your Book Isn’t Dead
One of the stranger things about publishing is how quickly authors can begin thinking of their books in the past tense. We spend months, sometimes years, writing, revising, editing, and preparing a book for publication. Then comes launch day, followed by a few weeks of promotion, reviews, social-media posts, and whatever else we can manage before ordinary life comes crashing back through the front door.
Eventually, we move on. We start another project. We get busy. We convince ourselves that everyone who might possibly want to read our book has already heard about it.
They haven’t.
A book doesn’t have an expiration date. A novel published in 2022 can find its ideal reader in 2026. A poetry collection can reach someone who wasn’t ready for it when it first appeared. A memoir can suddenly become relevant to a conversation happening today. Nonfiction can introduce its subject to an entirely new audience years after publication.
The publication date is the beginning of a book’s public life, not the end of its usefulness.
And, unlike the Reese’s Cup I’m currently hiding behind my keyboard, your book can be enjoyed more than once.
🍬 Your Twizzlers: A New Season, a New Reason
I love autumn. The air changes, the light changes, and suddenly we’re all supposed to become people who own decorative gourds. I have no objection to gourds, but I do wonder where we’re expected to store them for the other eleven months.
A seasonal change is also a perfectly reasonable excuse to talk about your book again.
Autumn brings Halloween, Thanksgiving, shorter days, and more time spent indoors. Winter brings holidays, gift giving, and readers looking for something to curl up with. Spring suggests renewal and new beginnings, while summer offers vacations, beach bags, and reading lists.
Your book doesn’t have to be about Halloween to benefit from Halloween. A mystery author might discuss suspense. A historical novelist might share a strange custom from the period in which the book is set. A poet might revisit a poem about loss, memory, or change. A nonfiction author might connect a chapter to something readers are thinking about this season.
The point isn’t to invent a connection where none exists. It’s to look at something familiar from a slightly different angle.
And you can do this every season. You don’t need a new edition, a new cover, or a new book to have something new to say.
🍭 Your Tootsie Roll: Fall in Love With Your Book Again
I suspect most authors have a complicated relationship with their published books. By the time a manuscript reaches the printer, we’ve read it so many times that we can practically recite entire passages while washing dishes. We remember the sentences that fought us, the chapters we moved, and the characters who refused to behave.
What we sometimes forget is why we wanted to write the book in the first place.
So here’s an exercise. Pick up your book and look at it as though you haven’t seen it in a year. Read the description. Open it to a random page. Think about what first interested you in the subject, the story, or the people who inhabit it.
What still surprises you? What are you particularly proud of? What did you learn while writing it? Is there something you understand differently now?
Those answers can become blog posts, social-media updates, interview topics, newsletter articles, or conversations with readers.
You might even discover that you like your book more than you remembered.
I realize this is a dangerous suggestion. Some of us have spent years cultivating a perfectly respectable habit of finding fault with our own work.
🍫 Your Snickers: An Interview Is a Conversation, Not a Commercial
At Current Words Publishing, we’ve been putting together personalized publicity opportunities for our authors under the heading
🍂 Falling for Your Book All Over Again.
We’re sending these opportunities to our authors as part of what we do. There’s no additional charge, no special marketing package to purchase, and no requirement to participate.
The recommendations include opportunities for written author interviews and podcast appearances, chosen with each author’s book, background, and interests in mind.
Why interviews?
Because readers are often interested in the person behind the book. They want to know what inspired the story, what the author discovered while researching it, what was difficult to write, or why a particular subject mattered enough to spend years exploring.
A written interview lets an author consider each answer carefully. A podcast offers something different: a chance for listeners to hear the author’s enthusiasm, humor, knowledge, and personality.
Neither requires an author to become a professional salesperson.
In fact, an interview is usually more interesting when the author isn’t trying to sell anything every thirty seconds.
The trick, if we’re allowed one trick in an otherwise treat-filled Halloween blog, is to remember that you’re offering the interviewer an interesting conversation, not asking for free advertising.
🍭 Your Lollipop: How to Apply to Be a Podcast Guest
If you’ve never applied to appear on a podcast, the process can seem intimidating. Fortunately, most hosts aren’t looking for someone with a broadcasting background. They’re looking for a guest who has something worthwhile to discuss.
Start by finding a podcast that suits your book, your expertise, or your experiences. Listen to an episode or two. Notice whether the host prefers informal conversations, detailed interviews, or practical advice for listeners.
Then visit the show’s website and look for a guest application or contact page.
When you apply, introduce yourself briefly, mention your book, and suggest two or three specific topics you could discuss. A historical novelist might offer to talk about surprising discoveries made during research. A memoirist might discuss the challenges of writing about real people. A poet could explore how a collection developed or what inspired a particular sequence of poems. A nonfiction author might offer practical insights drawn from the book’s subject.
Be specific about what listeners will gain from the conversation.
And don’t send the same generic pitch to twenty different podcasts. Hosts can generally tell when they’re receiving a message that could have been addressed to anyone.
I know this because I receive messages like that myself, occasionally addressed to people who don’t even work here.
🍬 Your Candy Corn: Be a Guest People Want to Invite Back
Once you’ve been invited onto a podcast, a little preparation goes a long way.
Ask about the show’s format, expected length, recording platform, and whether the interview will be audio-only or video. Make sure you know when you’re recording, including the time zone. Have your book’s title, website, and purchase information handy.
Before the interview, think about a few stories you can tell. Not just facts about the book, but the interesting discoveries, unexpected problems, and memorable experiences behind it.
Find a quiet place to record, test your microphone, and silence your notifications. Keep a glass of water nearby. If the host has sent questions in advance, review them, but resist the temptation to write a speech for every answer.
Most importantly, listen to the questions and respond as though you’re having a conversation with another human being.
Because you are.
You don’t need to be dazzling. You need to be interested, interesting, and reasonably audible.
Afterward, thank the host and share the episode when it becomes available. That’s part of being a good guest, too.
🍫 Your Hershey’s Bar: A Podcast Opportunity to Explore
Here’s one opportunity to get you started: The Resilient Author podcast guest application.
The show welcomes published authors whose books are shaped by lived experience and who have something meaningful to share about life, growth, courage, or the writing process. The website explicitly states that there is no fee to appear. Selection is editorial, so applying doesn’t guarantee an invitation.
This could be worth exploring for memoirists and some nonfiction writers, as well as fiction writers and poets whose personal experiences strongly inform their work. It’s not necessarily the right fit for every book, and that’s fine. Finding a good match matters more than submitting as many applications as possible.
Before applying, read the guest guidelines and consider what you could contribute beyond a description of your book.
🪙 Your Shiny Dime: A Fresh Perspective Costs Nothing
When I was a kid, finding a shiny dime in a Halloween bag was a pleasant surprise. It wasn’t candy, but it was something I could save and use later. I used mine to buy Zots and Bazooka! And that tells you all you need to know about me. Green Zots, btw.
That’s how I think about revisiting an older book. ZOTS! No, just kidding.
But yes…, you already did the difficult work. You wrote it. You revised it. You brought it into the world. Now you have an opportunity to find something new in what you’ve already created.
Maybe that means writing a blog post about a forgotten bit of research. Maybe it means contacting a podcast, answering a few interview questions, visiting a library, or sharing a passage you haven’t thought about in years.
Maybe it simply means picking up your book and remembering why you cared enough to write it.
At Current Words Publishing, we believe our relationship with an author doesn’t end when the book goes on sale. We want our authors to keep finding readers, discovering opportunities, and enjoying the work they’ve already accomplished.
So this Halloween, we’re handing out publicity opportunities instead of candy.
Which is probably just as well. If we were responsible for distributing the actual Reese’s Cups, I’m not entirely certain there would be any left for the authors.
Happy Halloween from Current Words Publishing. All treats, no tricks. And here’s to falling for your book all over again.