The Book Promotion Network

It seems reasonably clear to me that a publisher can go a long way to making a book a bestseller if the publisher decides to make it happen. Make the book a sales rep pick; announce a several-hundred thousand copy first print run; talk the book up at BEA and elsewhere; include a letter from the head of the house in the ARC; devote a few hundred thousand dollars to advertising and in-store promotion; send the author on a big tour. The publisher might lose money in the process -- I get the feeling that happens fairly often to first-time authors who get the treatment I just described -- but the book will hit the NYT and other lists.

I say all this to emphasize that your publisher can do much, much more to make your book big than you can. It stands to reason, then, that the primary goal of your self-promotion efforts should be to recruit your publisher -- that is, to persuade your publisher's people to promote you the way you want them to promote you.

The question is how. Start with attitude: if your publisher's people aren't doing all you want them to, it's not because they're stingy or stupid or mean. It's because you haven't yet fulfilled your responsibility to demonstrate to them that it's in their interest to do more. Look, if you knew a certain stock was going to go up ten percent tomorrow, you'd invest in it today, right? And if there were another stock that you knew would go up 15% tomorrow, you'd invest in that one instead, right?

The point is, everyone wants to invest in something that will give them the best possible return on that investment. If your publisher isn't investing much in you, it's because they don't know yet what a great return you'll offer them. It's your job to demonstrate to them that they'll get that return -- that you're that winning stock.

Most in-house publicists think it but would never say it, so I'll say it for them: there are those authors that it is a dream to work with, and there are those who you dread opening emails from. Having worked in publicity departments at a couple major houses, here are my top 5 recommendations for ensuring that you and your publicist are working more like Sonny and Cher (the early years) rather than Fleetwood Mac (the later years).

(1) Take your author questionnaire seriously. I know you're busy, and I know it can be very tempting to put this off for as long as possible. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of thinking that results in major missed opportunities. Publicity efforts for your book begin four to five months before publication, and this is when the crucial magazine coverage is booked. If you haven’t yet mentioned that you went to Penn, which has a great alumni magazine, or that your fiancée’s best friend writes features for Vogue, your publicist can’t be expected to send advance copies to these media resources.

Get it done, asap.

(2) Know the niche media that would be perfect for your book. In an ideal world (for publicists as well as authors), the subject matter of a book would match up with the interests of everyone working on it, but this isn’t always the case. In-house publicists don't always get to decide what books they work on. There is reason to take heart, though: most people in the publishing business really do love learning about new things and have even come to expect it as part of their job. You can help facilitate this learning process by making sure your publicist has all of the insider information on your book’s subject at her fingertips. This means filling out (yes, asap!) your author questionnaire as fully as possible, and communicating with her any important information that might be commonplace for a specialist but unknown to a beginner. Think of the advantage to you: if you tell her, ‘The rock-collecting market is essential to the success of this book!,’ she can spend a week researching magazines and newspapers to ensure that she has a solid list of all the best. If you provide her with a full AQ that contains a list of these magazines and newspapers, she can devote that week to actively pitching them.