How Can Authors Use Storytelling to Market Their Books More Effectively? - BM527

Do you know why some authors struggle to market their books even when they have a powerful message?

This week’s guest expert is April Adams Pertuis, award-winning journalist, producer, and founder of Light Beamers. After conducting more than 10,000 interviews over a 30-year career, April has learned one truth most authors miss: storytelling is not separate from marketing. It is the marketing.

In this eye-opening conversation, you’ll discover how to use your personal stories to build trust, spark curiosity, and create stronger connections with readers. April also shares how AI can help uncover and organize your stories without replacing your authentic voice.

If marketing your book feels forced, awkward, or exhausting, this episode may completely change the way you think about promoting your work.

Key Takeaways:

•  Storytelling makes marketing feel human. When you stop “selling” and start sharing meaningful stories, people pay attention. 
•  Your “why” matters more than your pitch. Readers connect with the reason behind your book before they connect with the book itself. 
•  AI can help uncover your stories. Used the right way, AI becomes a creative partner that helps you organize ideas and discover stories you may have forgotten. 
•  Create a story bank. The best authors collect stories from their life, work, and experiences so they always have meaningful content to share. 
•  Authenticity builds trust. Real stories, challenges, and lessons create deeper audience connection than polished marketing language ever will. 

Don’t miss this episode if you want your marketing to feel more natural, more engaging, and far more effective. Tune in now!

Here's how to connect with April:

Website

Free gifts for listeners:

Your Story Formula: www.lightbeamers.com/formula

Your Story Formula Quiz: www.lightbeamers.com/quiz

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lightbeamers
Instagram: www.instagram.com/lightbeamers
FaceBook: www.facebook.com/apriladamstv

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Transcript

Susan Friedmann [00:01:05]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas and tips from the masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, my special guest is April Adams Patui. April is a force in the storytelling world, helping mission driven leaders and entrepreneurs discover their inherent ability to to reach people by teaching them how to share their story so that they can create deeper connections and build strategic relationships. She's the CEO, founder of Light Beamers and has over 30 years of experience as a journalist, producer and digital storyteller. April has interviewed more than 10,000 people in her career and firmly believes everybody has a story. April, what a pleasure it is to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest, expert and mentor.

April Adams Pertuis [00:01:05]:
Thank you, Susan. I'm so happy to be here.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:08]:
I love the fact that you say that everyone has a story because as you heard before we started that I once admitted to a storyteller that I don't have any stories. And she's like, of course you do. We just have to find them.

April Adams Pertuis [00:01:26]:
Absolutely. I say if you have blood pumping through your veins and you've lived a little bit of life, you have some stories inside of you.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:36]:
Let's talk about this as it relates to marketing, because many of our listeners, as you know, have actually published their book and maybe it's contained stories, maybe not. But then how about the marketing? Because I believe that there's a place for story in our marketing. Talk to us about that.

April Adams Pertuis [00:01:59]:
Yes, I actually believe that marketing is storytelling. That marketing becomes a lot easier when you think of it as storytelling as well. I even have a kind of my own mantra when I go to market myself. Right. Whatever I'm wanting to share, I just remind myself, hey, April, you're not marketing, you're storytelling. So how can you share the same message you're wanting to talk about? And maybe talk about an offer, program, a service, you know, an event, a ticket or whatever. I'm trying to sell a book, but do it through the lens of storytelling. This is for authors, a really critical piece because authors have a really special opportunity when they're marketing their book to do that through the lens of storytelling.

April Adams Pertuis [00:02:47]:
Because we're kind of expecting an author, a writer, to have a little bit of storytelling in them. Like you said, they may have written a really practical book. Maybe it's a business book, a leadership book, some sort of nonfiction, where we're trying to share our expertise with the world, but to communicate what we're wanting to talk about if we can wrap that up in a story, then it makes it so much more digestible for our audience to consume. Because you're going to teach them all the things in the book anyway. But we got to get them to the book. And getting them to the book, we have to kind of tantalize their senses a little bit. We got to get them waking up. Their imagination and curiosity and storytelling is going to be a vehicle that helps you do that.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:37]:
The this begs the question, do you have an example of something like that that you could share? Just a small, like a vignette. What might you share?

April Adams Pertuis [00:03:47]:
Just a really simple one for authors is even telling the story of what made you want to write this book. Very simple. If you've written a book and published a book, there had to be a point in your journey where you decided to write the book and there was something that made you decide to write the book. Because we, as we all know as authors, we are kind of an elite group of people. Only a small percentage of the population actually goes through with this actual dream of writing a book. The data shows that about 3% of the population wants to write a book, but about only 1% of the population actually publishes a book. You are in a unique category. Guess what, 97, 98% of the population wants to know how did you do that? What got you to do it? Tell us us more about that journey.

April Adams Pertuis [00:04:37]:
That's not necessarily sharing what's inside the book. It's more of a behind the scenes story of what made you even want to write this book to begin with. That is just an example of how you can share the story of deciding to write this book, why you thought this book was needed, why the content is needed to be shared, and how you were the person that was going to write it. And by doing that, you're actually marketing your book because you're talking about the book. You're talking about why you think it's important, why you were the one that's going to sit down and write this and all the things. And it's really elevating the audience's awareness around, oh, maybe that's a book I should read. Right? So we're marketing the book through the lens of storytelling.

Susan Friedmann [00:05:26]:
It's so subtle when you think about it that way, that inadvertently you're telling people more about the book because that was your impetus potentially for writing it. And they're like, yes, as you said, maybe I want to know more. Maybe I should buy this book rather than you saying, hey, I've got a book. I just published a book. Wouldn't you like a copy?

April Adams Pertuis [00:05:51]:
Exactly. It's a much easier way to talk about it. That's why I say marketing really is storytelling. And if you just start looking at it through the lens of storytelling, it will make marketing easier. Because I think for most of us, if we just go out there and say, hey, I have this thing and I want you to buy it, that is uncomfortable. We don't like doing that. And we feel salesy and pitchy and slimy. We've heard all those things.

April Adams Pertuis [00:06:12]:
Right. Well, then we're just saying the same thing without saying, hey, I want you to buy it. We're just saying it through story. And it feels so much easier.

Susan Friedmann [00:06:21]:
So much easier. I love that. Yes. And as you say, we've all got a backstory of why we wrote the book. I mean, I never even thought that I would be writing a book, but when I asked someone at National Speakers association how to progress in the business, they said, write a book, write a book. And I was like, oh, my goodness, this was the furthest thing from my mind. But then once I knew that this was something that I was going to do, then of course the subject matter and everything that I just wanted to pour into the book happened. So, yeah, everybody's got their story.

April Adams Pertuis [00:07:01]:
They really do. And I think for authors, and you mentioned speaking, right. I think they go hand in hand that once someone publishes a book and becomes an author, well, guess what else you just became. You became a speaker and a storyteller, because that's how you're going to market the book. You need to be out there talking about the book, sharing the stories, you doing book tours, book signings. And when people come to those book tours and book signings, they don't just want your signature. They want to hear from you. They want you telling stories.

April Adams Pertuis [00:07:33]:
They want you to tell more about your writing process. That's a whole nother story you could share. And then I say the same to speakers, you know, much like you've been advised, like, oh, you want to be out there speaking more. Write a book. They go hand in hand.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:47]:
Yes, they do. And it gives you that credibility, that authority. I'm an expert in this subject, therefore, that's why I'm talking to you about it.

April Adams Pertuis [00:07:57]:
And that's, I think, you know, for nonfiction writers, that's why they're writing the book anyway. They do know. They have expertise and they have knowledge, and they get to a point in their career where writing a Book becomes sort of just absolutely the next step. That's where I am right now. I am currently writing my first solo book. I have written and published. I've been the leader of the project. I've published three collaborative books with women in my community and I've ushered them through the writing process.

April Adams Pertuis [00:08:29]:
And so we all became published authors through collaborative projects. So I'm writing my first solo book right now. And it is about my expertise around storytelling. And I'm to the place in my career that it is the next step. I know that I want to reach more people than I can physically and verbally reach here in this space. Right. So the book is adding a whole nother level and layer to that visibility and my ability to reach people. And it's to the place where it's kind of non negotiable for me.

April Adams Pertuis [00:09:02]:
It's very clear to me that that's what I want to do and that that's why I'm writing this book. There's my little story about why I've decided to do it right.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:11]:
And I'm going to tell you, you've got your first customer.

April Adams Pertuis [00:09:14]:
Well, there we go. I appreciate that. And so, yeah, I mean, it just really, I think when we think about the audience who's listening to us today, primarily, I think a lot of them are nonfiction authors. And so what they wrote about was already something. They had expertise around, they had knowledge around. They have a desire and a purpose and a passion. And so we did it for the book. Then the logical next step is like to market that book.

April Adams Pertuis [00:09:41]:
Because the reason why you wrote it was to get that book into people's hands and to help them with the thing that you want to help them with or to share your knowledge. I think we just have to remember, like, we wrote this book for a reason and that the extension of marketing is just part of the process.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:59]:
And that backstory is so important, as we say, as part of that process. And even before you finish the book, as you're doing it, even sharing along the way, well, you know, today I didn't feel like writing, but I knew that I had to. And I mean, I always assign myself two pages a day. I had to do minimum. And some days it was excruciating. And other days 10 pages, 11, 12, and it didn't matter. I could go on and on. Those are real experiences.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:34]:
And I'm sure every author has had days. You've sit down and you're like, I know I need to write, but nothing's coming. It's A blank. All parts, everything is blank.

April Adams Pertuis [00:10:44]:
And the reason why sharing a story like that is so effective and helpful is because again, the audience, again, remember, majority of your audience are not going to be people that have written a book. And they are. They're curious about it. They want to know. Maybe some of them have been part of that 87% of the population that wants to write a book. Then they're wondering, what is it like? Right. And so by you taking them on that journey of like, well, I'm going to tell you a little bit of what it's been like for me to write this book. And there are days that I can write 10 pages with ease, and there's days that I really struggle to get those two pages out.

April Adams Pertuis [00:11:18]:
Then you're showing them a little glimpse of, okay, so if I decide to write a book, at least I know not all the days are going to be easy. Because I think the reason why a lot of people don't end up writing the book book that they say they want to write is because they are really scared of how hard it might be. And so when you just kind of normalize, like, yeah, there are days that are hard, then our audience just connects to that because they viscerally, they're like, oh, that's what I thought. And so we're just creating connection with our stories. The audience can relate to us because we actually become human to them again. Right? Oh, I'm just like you? Yes. Or you're just like me. Even though you're the one that has gone on to publish the book, you're still just like me.

April Adams Pertuis [00:12:04]:
We're just people. And that is why that is really what storytelling is about, is it's humanizing our existence and our experiences. And when done well, storytelling does put you on the playing field with your audience. And that's what turns audiences into readers. And there you go, you're marketing your book.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:25]:
You're marketing a book. And from readers, you hopefully open doors to speaking engagements and your coaching opportunities, training, other products. I mean, yes, it's a door opener. It's a tool to help you do that. I love that. Many of our listeners, April, are probably wondering how they can fit AI into this whole storytelling. And they have seen ads where you can write a book in a weekend or in a few hours, you just plug it into AI and magically you're going to have a book. But there's something missing, that human connection.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:07]:
Talk to us about that. How can we use it as a tool? And yet it's still us yeah, Such

April Adams Pertuis [00:13:16]:
a great question and really a very important topic right now in the world of publishing and writing and for authors is because my standpoint on all of this is AI is great tool. It's a great tool. It can be a thought partner, it can help you organize things, maybe see some blind spots. That kind of stuff I don't subscribe to. You can write your book in the weekend using AI. I don't subscribe to that at all. I think that takes the joy out of writing and I think that takes the hard work out of writing. And I don't know that if again, because I'm writing a book right now, I would not be satisfied with myself if I used AI to write my book.

April Adams Pertuis [00:13:56]:
And I would feel really disingenuous if I went out there to promote a book that I did not write. That's my philosophy on that. But how do we use AI to help us now? There's a lot of things in terms of storytelling, specifically, since that's the topic of the hour today that I think AI could be really fun and helpful. Now that you have your book and you want to be out there marketing this book, a really fun way that you could use AI is to get AI to interview you. So I just gave you a prompt earlier of like talk about what made you decide to write this book to begin with. What was the impetus of all of this? You can ask AI Just feed it the information. I've written this book. This is on high level what it's about, and I need to now market this book.

April Adams Pertuis [00:14:46]:
But I want to come up with some really good stories that I can share either on my social media or in interviews or on book tours, or during my book signings or to my email list, whatever you might be using to communicate and market your book. And so I need some help pulling stories out that would be really, really good for me to share with my audience. Can you interview me and ask me a round of question questions that will help me extract some of these stories that I have? And then you let AI ask you a round of questions. You could tell it to ask you 25 questions, 100 questions, 5 questions, get started with that, however many you want. You can always go back for more. And what I love to do, and this is something I've teach my clients to do. I said, okay, great, now you've got some questions. I'm a journalist by trade, and so this is what I've done for a living, is ask people questions and they don't need me anymore.

April Adams Pertuis [00:15:39]:
They can Get AI to do that. It's a great tool to use because you can then pull out your phone or pull up a zoom line on your computer, hit the voice recorder on your phone and record yourself answering those questions. Not from a just a black and white how to kind of standpoint, but really think through storytelling. And of course, if you've prompted your AI well and you've told it that you want to extract stories, then it's going to prompt you in such a way that will necessitate you giving those stories out. So then you can record your answers. And it doesn't have to be fancy, you could just be top of mind rambling. These are not recordings that you're necessarily going to have to release. It's just for you to do an extraction.

April Adams Pertuis [00:16:27]:
And now you have a voice recorder or a zoom recording and you can use AI again and pull the transcript from that. And now you have words on a piece of paper, proverbial piece of paper, that are your words and they are your stories. Now you can use AI and say, okay, help me clean this up a little bit. Like, how can I just kind of package this up as a story and help me just kind of see the storytelling moments here? And it will do a lot of that for you. And now you have kind of stories in your back pocket that you have ready to go share, to go use, to go communicate. And they're fun and engaging stories that are straight from your mouth and they are straight from these interview questions that are very, very connected to the topic of your book. That's just a smart, efficient way to, to do this. Especially if you're someone that is going, well, I don't really know where to start.

April Adams Pertuis [00:17:27]:
Or there's someone, like you once said, Susan, then I don't know that I have any stories. I don't really know what my stories are. What would I talk about? Well, having a thought, thought partner, an interviewer, and you can turn your AI into an interviewer can help you come up with those stories. All of this is very authentic. It's from you. And AI doesn't know your stories. Kind of a fun thing about AI right now is as a storyteller, it's never going to be able to replace us because AI doesn't know our stories, it doesn't know our lived experience. Only we have that capability to communicate it.

April Adams Pertuis [00:18:09]:
But we can use AI to help us communicate it better. Does that make sense?

Susan Friedmann [00:18:13]:
That's brilliant. Oh my goodness, I can't wait to use that. Because I, I know there are Some people, when they sit down and write an article or a post, they start with the story. And I'm like, I know the principle that I want to convey, but I don't necessarily know the story that could go along with that principle that I want to convey. So I think this idea is brilliant because AI can help you pull that out too.

April Adams Pertuis [00:18:45]:
Yeah. And I think a really good exercise for everyone, including you, Susan, would be to start building a story bank. This is something that again, that I teach. To become a good storyteller, you have to practice, you have to be intentional. Storytelling can be something that will be a huge advantage for you as you market your books, as you communicate more about you and your brand and your thoughts and your ideas and your intellectual property. Storytelling can just be a workhorse for you in your business. But again, we need to spend time excavating those stories. So that's another great use for AI.

April Adams Pertuis [00:19:26]:
You could get it to interview you about lots of different topics and pull stories and have them kind of banked in a digital file somewhere, organize them in a place that you would have them. And a lot of times it's not that people don't have stories, they're just not sitting and giving themselves the time to think about it or to be prompted and then giving that a window of time to working on that story and building that story and having it ready. We live in a very fast paced world and you know, especially as leaders and business owners and authors, I mean, we are moving and shaking and the world is moving fast, AI is making things move fast. And we're all just trying to like holding on by the coattails and trying to keep up. The reality is we're not often giving us a gift of time on our calendar to just be creative and to think through stories and to practice storytelling. Really great storytellers are great storytellers because they have spent quite a bit of time practicing becoming one. As an example, just yesterday. True story.

April Adams Pertuis [00:20:34]:
I've been at this storytelling game for a very long time, 30 plus years. I'm probably pretty adept, right? But just yesterday I have also been feeling, I don't have time for this. I'm in goboat. I'm doing all these things. And I'm also writing a book that I've shared with you. And I've been in a state of kind of a lot of starts and stops with my book, like, oh, I'll write and then I won't write, then I'll write and then I won't write. I'm like, ah, I feel the clog in my system, if you will. Yesterday, I gave myself the gift of time to do a little creative writing workshop with a friend that brought a few of us together to do this.

April Adams Pertuis [00:21:14]:
And I have story prompts up the wazoo. I do this for my clients. I do this for other people. But, you know, when it's yourself, it's kind of hard to do it for yourself. She prompted us around some creative writings prompts, and I gave myself an hour and a half to take this workshop, to sit down and to just write stories for no other purpose than to just write stories. And it didn't matter if they were any good, didn't matter if they made sense, didn't matter if the writing was good, didn't matter if I could use this story later. It just was for the pure, Let me just write a story. And that's it.

April Adams Pertuis [00:21:50]:
That's the outcome. Just that that one little session that took a little over an hour of my time, that I dedicated the time for, really unlocked a lot of things for me. I woke up today going, oh, my gosh, I'm, like, free. I'm so ready to get back at it again. You know, just that one little session got me back into flow. And the reality is, if I asked most of you out there, how often are you doing that? I'm gonna guess you're probably not doing it very often. I only know because I have to also create the time and the space to do it. I just encourage people, set a timer on your phone.

April Adams Pertuis [00:22:26]:
You can Google story prompts. AI can give you story prompts. I can give you story prompts. I've got resources everywhere for you. That's not the issue. The issue is not that you don't know what to talk about or that you don't have stories. The issue is we're not making time and dedicating time to our craft. And as an author, you are a storyteller and spend a little time working on your craft.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:56]:
I love that. Yes, I've heard this many times about keeping a bank or a journal or some kind of file with your stories. And it's a good one, and I've tried it. And of course, then I don't know where I put it and when I need it, which is the right story to put there. How about personal stories? How personal do you feel? You know, is there a limit or are there any rules around that?

April Adams Pertuis [00:23:25]:
Now, this is such a good question, because I think especially authors in the nonfiction space are definitely trying to put their expertise out into the world. We do want to present this image that we are professionals and that we are experts and that we really know our content and we're really, really good at this thing that we're teaching other people, right? And we run the risk at that level of being robotic, of being very dry, to be really, really good teachers, but not really connect well with our audience. And we really run the risk of almost being above our audience in terms of knowing it all. And learning to weave in some personal stories is going to, again, humanize you. It's going to remind your audience, oh, they're just like me. So when we feel like we can be in the same room with people, we're more apt to want to learn from those people. If we feel like someone is just so out of our league, they become hard to learn from, right? Because we're like, oh, they don't know me. They don't understand my plight.

April Adams Pertuis [00:24:38]:
They're 10 miles ahead of me. Humanizing ourselves is going to require some personal storytelling. It's going to require a little bit of vulnerability. Now, how much is too much? The answer to that is really depending on the person. There are some of us that are very good at personal storytelling. And you will hear people say, I'm an open book. And they are. They're an open book.

April Adams Pertuis [00:24:59]:
And they come to that storytelling very authentically. They're very willing to share. And people like that don't, you know, like, some people might think they're over sharing, and if that's the case, that person just probably isn't for you, and that's okay. But there are going to be plenty of people that feel like the things that you are sharing are exactly what they needed to hear, and they really appreciate it. Not everyone is going to be someone that is willing to go that far with their storytelling. It has to be a personal preference. The question I would just pose is, are you finding your limit? If you're not pushing yourself up to that limit, you probably have some room to tell more personal stories.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:43]:
Thank you for being honest about the fact that even a storyteller sometimes runs dry of telling stories.

April Adams Pertuis [00:25:50]:
So that's cool.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:52]:
This is a great segue for us to ask you to share your details, how our listeners can get hold of you, and find out more about these great resources that you have.

April Adams Pertuis [00:26:05]:
Yes, I would love to share. My company's name is LIGHTbeamers, and you can find me. The best way is just on my website, Lightbeamers.com and from that, I have some free resources on that page. You can Also connect with me on my social media which is linked at the bottom of the page and just come say hello. There are resources that you want to know more about. You can ask me there in the DMs. I also have a beautiful community that I run on Facebook that is free for anyone to join. That community is linked on our website.

April Adams Pertuis [00:26:41]:
You can just go to the Community tab. And inside our community we do weekly story prompts and we are always prompting you and giving you a space to practice your story inside that community. So if you would like to become a better storyteller and you want to practice more authentic, vulnerable even, but also fun, all of our prompts are going to get you to tell your deep dark secrets, but they are going to prompt you to think of different ways you could be extricating that story bank. Then you can come play with us in our community and take advantage of our story prompts that we offer every week.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:17]:
Perfect. That's great. And I'll put all that information in the show notes. And April, as you know, we always have our guests leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's yours?

April Adams Pertuis [00:27:29]:
I would love to leave people with a philosophy that I believe in and it does happen to be our tagline at Light Beamers and it's foundational to what I believe. That is when you share your story, you shine a light. And what I mean by that is that as I've been talking about during this episode is stories allow us to connect with one another and there are people, you have a story that you can share that is going to enlighten someone else, that is going to lighten their load, that is going to light the path forward for them. When other people share their story, it often can make us go, oh, I feel so much better or oh, they're just like me. And we have that me too experience. And when we realize that we're not alone in our own experiences that are other people out there that have navigated these things that are similar to us, it really does light the way forward for us. It makes us feel better. It makes us feel more connected.

April Adams Pertuis [00:28:30]:
It makes us feel appreciate that person who shared their story. All of that is available to you as you go out there and share the story of your book and share your experiences and share your journey as you're going to shine a light for other people.

Susan Friedmann [00:28:44]:
Beautiful. And that always reminds me of a lighthouse, of course, because you're shining that light out there. So beautiful. Thank you. Oh my goodness, this has been so rich. Listeners go back and listen to this again, and maybe even another time, because April was kind enough to share some incredible strategies that you can put into practice and to help with your own storytelling. I'm definitely going to use some of them myself. And as you know, if your book isn't selling the way you want it or expect it to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:27]:
Because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. So go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Here's how to connect with April:

Website

Free gifts for listeners:

Your Story Formula: www.lightbeamers.com/formula

Your Story Formula Quiz: www.lightbeamers.com/quiz

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lightbeamers
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