Responses to a couple of posts I’ve made lately have got me to thinkin’ — what would I be willing to do to promote my book? I don’t have a book to sell (yet), but I dream about it a lot. Of course, in my dream my manuscript is immediately snapped up by Big Name Agent who sees its essential worthiness. BNA gives me incisive feedback that I use to turn my manuscript into Great Literature. The top six publishers engage in a bidding war and award me a record-high advance. A year later, my book appears in shiny stacks in the windows of Barnes & Nobleses and Borderses all over North America and is translated into 15 languages. (Also, I am gorgeous and have straight white teeth, suitable for dustjacket appearances.)
I can dream, can’t I? While some people are exceptionally lucky, exceptionally talented, or exceptionally connected, for the rest, just fighting our way out of an agent’s inbox could take months (see Miss Snark for details), assuming our manuscript is at all worthy of publication. Once the book is represented, and then sold, I’m told, we are not to expect the publisher to put much energy or money into promoting the book. That’s our job (though help is available).
I used to participate on an author/reader forum where there was a lot of discussion about book promotion. Some writers very quickly embraced email and web site promotions; others felt like they were being pressured (by their agent, or publisher, or just the zeitgeist) to do things to promote their books that just weren’t comfortable for them. Some advised holding contests or appearing at readings in costume; others said they just couldn’t imagine. Some felt promotion was just part of the job of being a published author, others thought it was demeaning to the art of literature to have to flog it like laundry detergent. Not that folks had strong feelings on the subject, you understand!
I’d love to hear more from published authors and hope-to-bes on how they feel or would feel about having to promote their own work. If you love to write because you love living in the solitary world of your imagination, how far are you willing to put yourself out there so that others can appreciate your work? Or do you find the challenge of promoting your work energizing and exciting? Would you hire your own publicist out of your advance? Would you enter or promote a contest? Is it a matter of personality, of how bad you want it, or just the facts of the market today? What do you think?
I don’t know how much an A- list publicist would cost. But if my publisher (and I’m not published either) wasn’t spending any money on advertising or P.R. a hiring a Publicist would probably be something I would at least look into.
I’ve heard the key to launching a book is to get the media hype going just before the publisher’s sales agents goes around to take those first orders as to how many the bookseller wants to stock- if there is press or P/R that build’s a little hype then those first sales numbers will be higher- and that first time is probably as large as the numbers will be. Unless your 2nd or 3rd book is the runaway bestseller and then all the previous stuff gets hauled out of storage and re-released.