Publicity Neepery Part One: Overview, With a Sprinkling of Pragmatism


(Yesterday’s brief intro is here )

Book publicity/marketing is a tricky subject to talk about because every book is different and is promoted in different ways by its publisher, and authors tend to be sensitive about how their book is treated, how much attention it gets. There’s a wide perception among authors that publishers are not doing enough to promote books. It’s worth remembering that publishing is a business, and publishers will promote books in certain ways in order to make the best return on their investment. (It’s not quite so cut-and-dried as this because editors and publicity types do fall in love with books in unbusinesslike ways, but for the sake of this neep let’s say this is how it is).

Before I go any further, I should say that all of what follows is my perception of a process that is (I suspect) made intentionally opaque for authors by their publishers. For example, I hear anecdotally that editors often will not tell authors specific numbers about print runs. When asked about how many ARC’s Harper did for The Magic Thief, my editor told me, “Oh, a lot.” And really, I don’t need to know any more than that. Doing publicity/marketing for her books is generally not the author’s job. Her job is to write, and to work with her editor to make the book as good as it can be. Once they’re done with that, it is time to let go and stay out of the way while Publicity, Sales, and Marketing (more about them tomorrow) do the work they know how to do far better than the author does. At the center of the book publicity is the book, and, except in specific cases, like an author with a platform (some sort of pre-existing celebrity or a relevant and compelling personal story) or a particularly photogenic face, the author is antecedent to the publicity process. She might be called in by the publicity experts to serve the publicity process, but she is not in charge of it and not at the center of it.

[EDITed to add: see below for some comments on this, about the author's role in publicity/marketing. The can of worms!! More on this tomorrow, too]

So. Onward!

Books have specific audiences; not every book is going to appeal to every reader (duh, right!). Some books will work well for middle-school girls, and some will go after that elusive high school boy readership. Some are “quiet” books; some are Newbery award contenders; some are polished literary gems; some are “issue” books. Some books come out from small presses that have to choose very carefully which books to promote, some from giant publishing houses with enormous resources so they can throw lots of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Some books, for reasons having mostly to do with serendipity--timing, subject matter, the state of the market--have the potential to reach a wide readership and thus make the publisher a lot of money--they’re commercial books.

The job of the publicity/marketing team is to get each book into the hands of its “fit audience,” as Milton called it.

In doing this, each book is treated differently. My sense of it is that there are template publicity/marketing plans, and the book is categorized and slotted into that plan—what has worked best for that kind of book in the past--and I suspect each template is tweaked to better serve each book. So a good educational read might have publicity geared toward teachers, and the author needs to be ready to do school visits. Another book might be a great summer read so is pushed at librarians as they’re making up their summer reading lists. Another might be a perfect fit for Black History Month in January.

My other sense of this is that even before the book is purchased the publisher is starting to think about publicity/marketing, in that they’re thinking about potential audiences (hmmm, girl readers are tiring of “issue” books, but historical fantasy might be heating up... or Last fall’s XYZ did really well and this book might reach the same readers... or Us muz srsly do first buk writtun in LOLCat!!1!).

A lot of times the bare bones of a publicity/marketing plan is printed right on the back of the Advanced Review Copies of the book. You can get a good sense of what kind of promotional effort books are getting by taking a look at the back of an ARC or at a seasonal catalogue.

So there are some general thoughts to start with. Here’s the schedule for the rest of the week:

Tuesday: Defining terms (marketing/publicity/sales, guest post from a friend who works in the industry)
Wednesday: Prepublication (ARC's, ads, "buzz")
Thursday: Prepublication tour (possibly recent prepub tour author as guest poster).
Friday: Publicity on publication. Two parts. One, Dean Lorey on school visits, and part two, Melissa Marr on the book tour and/or on-publication publicity).

Throughout this week-long discussion, I hope you’ll share your experiences in the comments if they are different (or if they're the same!). Despite the opinions, this is really meant to be descriptive and informative.

Excelsior!