We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Completely Booked Pr Bailey & Danielle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Completely Booked PR, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Personalized marketing, promotions and services for independently published authors.
After joining the vast growing social media book community known as Booktok & Bookstagram. We quickly realized that the authors and books we loved to read and talk about on our platforms didn’t always get the biggest exposure and they weren’t able to always reach the readers who would enjoy their stories. We decided to use our voices and platforms as well as our love of reading to help self-published authors market their work.
We decided early on that like every story, every author is unique, and we wanted to make a PR company just as unique. Therefore, all of our services are completely customizable. We sit down with each author to build marketing and promotional packages that fit their individual needs and most importantly their budget. We wanted to create services that would be available to all authors at all stages in their writing and publishing careers.
Completely Booked PR, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We’re Bailey and Danielle, two best friends who love books and reading and together we make Completely Booked PR.
We started out as content creators on the BookTok side of TikTok. The more that we connected with independently published authors, the more that we realized there wasn’t a lot of help out there for them that was affordable. So we decided that we would create a PR company that’s geared towards indie authors and their needs.
We help with everything from collecting ARC readers to book tours (promotional schedule for an upcoming release), to promoting already published books and helping you grow your social media accounts. Our goal is to allow authors to spend more time doing what they love, which is writing, while we take the stress of marketing off their shoulders.
What really sets us apart from other PR companies is that we are 100% customizable when it comes to what an author gets when signing up for our services. There is no set package that they have to choose from; whatever their needs are, we build a package specific to them. Since we are geared toward indie authors, we also work with their budgets. Our end goal is always with the author in mind and not having them dread working with a PR company. Another thing that sets apart is that we are extremely hands on and we read every book that we promote so we can properly represent it. The two of us handle everything from start to finish and at least one of us is always available at all times if an author has an issue of any sort.
We do have a masterlist of influencers that we send ARC sign ups and book tour releases to so we can get an author’s book out there as much as possible, but no one is obligated to sign up for anything.
What we’re most proud of is how diverse we are. We don’t represent just one genre or type of author, we represent them all. We’ve done extremely spicy romance to fluffy romance to thrillers. We’ve represented from best selling authors to first time authors.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
We were both book promoters and avid readers. We met during a TikTok live author interview. Quickly, we became best friends. We started talking daily and reading books together.
We created a book club and a small podcast to discuss the books we read. We had ideas for our growth in the book community, so we began promoting books as a team. Authors soon started expressing their love for our videos, suggesting we offer services to help authors who struggled with self-promotion.
Realizing this had always been our dream, to transform our passion for books and reading into a business, we took the leap, and with the support of some close authors and each other we created Completely Booked.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
A huge part of our business is connecting authors with readers. One specific kind is helping authors with creating ARC teams. This is a team of readers who read the book and provide feedback and reviews right before the book is published. We have worked really hard to find truly dedicated readers as well as build an inclusive and kind community. We saw during our reading experiences that sometimes PR companies were giving readers with larger online followings reading opportunities over readers who didn’t necessarily have largely followed social media pages but just loved to read. We made it clear early on that although we understand the benefits that come with large followings on social media, we were open to include everyone. If you love to read and review, you are welcome with us. We feel that this kind and accepting ideology has helped us grow and build a community of well over 500 readers to help support authors.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.completelybookedpr.com/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@completelybookedpr?_t=8rVjd0DI4uB&_r=1
Image Credits
The Cartoon Logo was created by @duckysbookishmerch