“Dear publicist, My book just released and I’d like to promote it. How can you help?”
“Hi! My novel came out last fall and sales have been close to zero. Can we talk about what your firm can do to promote it?”
Ouch! These emails break my heart.
I typically get about two like this a day asking for help with a book that has already released. Or is releasing next week. Or tomorrow. Sadly, in those cases there’s a lot less I can do than I could have two or three months earlier.
That’s because the work of getting a book onto the radar screen of people in the media who will review it, blog about it or interview its author must absolutely begin well in advance of publication.
I know it sounds counterintuitive: at long last a book has hit the market, it’s time to tell the world! But in fact, this is a far cry from how things work on the back end.
To understand why, we need to get inside the minds of the people on the back end — those who will be writing those reviews, conducting those interviews or publishing your blog posts. In order to even consider a book for coverage, the person doing so usually needs to read first, and then craft a thoughtful news item about it — whether that’s a review, a feature story or an author Q&A. He or she will also have to get the news item approved and possibly revised by an editor, who’s equally swamped and running chronically behind. And chances are, said person already has a pile of about 20 other books to read or consider first. It’s not unlike the process agents go through where their slush piles just keep growing but there are only so many hours in a day.
Yet this is completely at odds with the imperatives of organizations offering coverage such as magazines, newspapers, radio stations and sites like The Huffington Post. These organizations are news outlets. So are may blogs, including book blogs. By definition, news is information about what’s new. Take a look at your daily newsfeed, or turn on the evening TV news: each article or story contains information or commentary relevant in some way to an event that has taken place that very day, or to one that took place very recently and is still being buzzed about. So news outlets have to give priority to what’s new or timely.
Your book is only new once: that’s on its publication date and for the 2 or 3 weeks surrounding it. In industry jargon, we call that date a “news peg:” it’s what makes the book relevant from a news perspective, thus “pegging it” to the news. So any news organization covering your book will only be able to justify doing so within that brief period on or around its publication date — unless you’re the guy who wrote the book Why Planes Crash published in 2011 and are invited to talk about its lessons on AC360 in 2014 in the context of the MH370 tragedy, which sadly provided a new news peg.
How, then, do reporters, reviewers, producers or others developing news stories about books balance the contradicting imperatives of needing time to prepare coverage, yet also needing to cover a book on or around its publication date? Simple: they prepare those reviews, those author Q&As or whatever else they have in mind in advance, and schedule the items to run later, during that crucial publication date period.
This even happens right here on WU. Authors and their publicists work with our beloved Teri many months before a book’s pub date to get a related blog post onto the very full schedule. I, for example, usually contact Teri about 3 months in advance about WU-worthy posts my clients might write. From a timing perspective, book review blogs function in a similar way.
To complicate matters, more broadly-focused news outlets like radio stations or consumer magazines must constantly negotiate between the imperative of focusing on timely, often critical, issues and events, and the luxury of adding in some stories that are of purely human interest with no inherent connection to current events. These are usually grouped generally under the category called “features.” Books fall into that category, even on the very date of their publication. Features coverage always takes back-burner to stories that are more relevant to what’s happening on a larger scale in the world around us. For example, I once had a client whose book interview on Boston’s NPR station, WBUR, was cancelled due to the breaking story about Occupy Boston. In other words: in the jungle that is the real-life news world, books are pretty low on the food chain.
This makes it all the more important for those reviews or author Q&As to be prepared in advance and get placed in the queue of news items scheduled to run when the right opportunity opens up within a given timeframe. That could happen earlier than expected, or much later. It all depends on the broader news environment. But if your item is not in the queue, it won’t happen at all.
Even at outlets like NPR’s Fresh Air that are focused exclusively on books and the arts, the same lead-time and advance scheduling principle applies. I can guarantee you that Terry Gross knows today what books she’ll be talking about in December. The only exception would be if a major news story broke between now and then that made her decide to swap out one book for another that’s more relevant to the news context. But even then, her staff will have already read and vetted that other book.
So what does this mean if you’re an author considering taking steps to promote your book?
First, bear in mind that books typically need to be sent out to the media 3 months in advance of their pub date date. And that the prep work for that process can take an additional month. So four months lead time is a good, safe horizon to work with.
Second, by all means, avoid the “wait-and-see” game. Before you know it, it’ll be too late!
Remember, too: on the flip side of a publication date’s short shelf life in the news world, it’s never too early to start.
About Sharon Bially
Sharon Bially (@SharonBially) is the founder and president of BookSavvy PR, a public relations firm devoted to authors and books. Author of the novel Veronica’s Nap, she’s a member of the Director's Circle at Grub Street, Inc., the nation’s largest independent writing center, and writes occasionally for the Grub Street Daily.
Thanks for this review of the process. Often we’re so immersed in writing the damn thing that we don’t think ahead to the aspect of publicizing it until we’re finished instead of doing advance planning as you outline. You laid it all out in an organized, coherent way that makes a lot of sense. Good advice.
Your advice is good I should have known that before I publish my books. I will take it on board. Ken
Thanks for the reminder, Sharon. I did a fair amount of promoting before my debut novel came out and it helped immensely. I have another ready to give birth. And though I’m anxious to get it published, I need to sit on myself and do all that you suggest.
Great tips, Sharon. As a former newspaper reporter, I’ve seen this from the other side. There are so many competing demands on reporters’ time that an author needs to do everything possible to make their job easy. That’s not to say reporters are lazy; they are incredibly busy. Giving as much advance notice and providing the information and resources the reporter needs to write a good story are necessary steps. Also, look to tie in your novel with a current news trend, though that involves a little luck. The news peg is the holy grail, as you point out. Thanks for the great advice for authors who are rolling out a new release.
Good information today! I was wondering, how do pre-orders figure into this time frame? Do they increase the time that a book may newsworthy? Or are they considered separately from the actual release day and the two-three weeks following? I’m sorry if my question is obtuse, I’ve only got the vaguest understanding of how pre-orders affect sales, and so I’m trying to figure out how they fit within the scope of the four months prior-to-release publicity plan.
Sharon, Nice piece. Went through a waste of time/$ publicizing my last book, Ads For God. Went cheap and got the expected. New one in the birthing canal. Tony
Thanks for the question, Lara: pre-orders really have nothing to do with a book’s news or PR cycles. Ideally, a publisher will have the book up and available for pre-order when publicity efforts begin; that way, the consumers out there reading or listening to the news who decide they absolutely must buy your book can do so immediately. So I do typically advise that the crux of promo efforts begin when a book’s pre-order page is up. Most publishers are pretty good about making that happen early, often as early as 5 – 6 months in advance.
Pre-orders are, in fact, sales, and only impact further sales to the extent that:
A) If we’re talking Amazon, the pre-order activity on the page triggers Amazon’s magic algorithms to start increasing its visibility in places like, “Customers who bought this also bought [your book’s title].
B) The numbers impress your publisher, who then decides to increase his or her own publicity and sales efforts.
Thanks, Sharon! :D
Hi Tony – nice to hear from you! So glad that Ads For God is out in the world. Looking forward to reading the next one!
As I gear up to self-publish my first novel, this is invaluable advice. Thanks, Sharon!
Sharon, belated thanks for covering this. Can’t tell you how frustrating it is on the coverage end of these things to have folks who don’t know the cycles for getting things to us. Ironically, I find that my contemporary classical music contacts (for my #MusicForWriters series http://tcat.tc/1smUOYk ) are among the very best at understanding and getting ahead with terrific press sites, background materials, images, downloads of a new album, everything. The composers I interview are among the most savvy in understanding all this, much more so than many books people. No idea how that is, but there you are. Nice piece, thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
When an author is working on a self-published book and doing the proofs etc. how does that author get books in print to send to prospective reviewers? Is an electronic copy the only option?
Hi! Usually the printer you’re working with can provide advance copies. If it’s CreateSpace, it’s probably under the same process as ordering proofs: you just order as many as you’d like rather than a single one for proofing. You can check with them about that.
Many thanks, Sharon. This is extremely helpful info for me as I get my novel to my Grub Street consultant, Steven Lee Beeber.
Jean, that’s wonderful to hear! Fingers crossed for you!
Thank you for your ‘nuts and bolts’ article. Your advice, and time frame, will be a great armature to build a marketing plan on. Appreciate your advice.