Why should an author have a publicist?
It’s a numbers game. Generally a publisher, can be successful if only 1 out of every 10 books it buys makes money.
What about the other 9 authors and books? Most likely those authors won’t get another book bought by a publishing house if the first one tanks, or doesn’t break even.
Being a talented writer is not nearly enough to be a successful author, you have to be a marketer…or hire someone to get you the publicity you need to promote your book. As just about every author will admit a couple of months into the book promotion, “Writing the book is the easy part!”
What do major publishing houses think of outside publicists?
Make no mistake, publishing houses are in business to make money. If you are a savvy business person, the chance of your book succeeding and everybody winning increases dramatically. OFten in-house publicists have about 20 titles a year to launch and about two weeks to commit to each book. A real campaign takes months before and after the book is launched. To have an author care enough about the success of the book to contract with a publicist demostrates that the author is serious about selling books and breaking out of the pack of the 200,000+ books published annually in the US alone.
Oprah hasn’t called?!
Of course you want to have Oprah’s blessing on your upcoming book! But there are a whole lot of other ways to get great buzz going using sophisticated Web 2.0 viral networking on the internet as well as good-old fashion grassroots efforts that include book and media tours. There are certain purveyors of good taste in literature that have the attention of thousands of book-buying readers —
and you want to catch their attention.
Nearly 200,000 books are published each year in the United States alone. A sobering statistic.
Some of the best voices in fiction today are our clients.
We welcome and encourage authors and publishers to submit drafts of upcoming books scheduled to be published and we will evaluate whether we are able to provide publicity services that can improve sales.
Among the services we provide, depending on the publicity campaign:
- Book tour management
- Arc distribution
- Press kits
- Media relations
- Special promotions and contests
- Blog and web-based tracking and support
- Clipping service