You publish a book. Great. But many thousands of books are published each year. How do you get your book into the hands of readers?
Marketing and publicity.
When my first book (Things that Sometimes Happen) was published in 1970, I didn’t have any idea about book marketing and publicity. It didn’t even occur to me that such existed. At the time, it was enough for me that I had a book published. Indeed, I would only see my book for the first time in the receiving room of the library in which I was working because a colleague approached me with, “Hey, Avi. Some book you seem to have written just came into the library.”
It had only taken three years, five editors, and two artists.
That book got fairly poor reviews (It would do very much better when it was reissued — with new art — years later), and in any case, the first publisher, or so they informed me, shortly canceled the book “by mistake” prematurely, quickly putting it out of print. (That has happened twice in my long career.) All in all, not a great introduction to publishing.
Publicity would increase with a new publisher and because my first novel, No More Magic, was nominated for a Best Mystery of the Year award. But I still wasn’t working with publicity people.
No wonder. My editor described the head of publicity as a “Neanderthal.” Not a good situation. And indeed, one of my books was not reviewed, because the publicity department forgot to send out review copies.
That changed when I started to work with HarperCollins and their legendary head of publicity, Bill Morris. Aside from being an unusually nice person, Bill brought me (and my books) into the world of serious marketing. There was publicity for my ongoing titles, conferences, and school visits, most of it generated by the HC marketing department.
When I started to work with Orchard Books (no longer in existence), I was informed that they, as a company, did not believe in marketing, and therefore did none. Whatever publicity was generated had to be done by the authors. That would shift when Orchard authors complained, and the company took on more traditional promotional ways. It helped that my editor became very involved in company publicity, and was further supported by my winning, in successive years, two Newbery Honor Book awards.
(Awards are great publicity.)
Moving on to Hyperion Books (also no longer in existence), I knew all the marketing people there, and they knew me, and I worked with them closely. That was the publisher who issued my Newbery Book (Crispin). I firmly believe that the interest they generated in the book helped it win the award.
Around then, the internet and social media took over. At that point, my publishers (at the time) stopped their publicity and marketing, at least as I had experienced it. Authors were now expected to do their own marketing. And pay for it. Social media, so I was informed, would be the place for publicity and marketing. My work with marketing departments — even as I continued to publish books — became minimal. But my own comfort with social media was (is) not good.
I turned to independent promotional people, for which I paid. That worked at first, but ended when I inquired about getting more conference assignments. When I was told, “That will cost you a thousand dollars for each effort we make,” I looked elsewhere,
Upon the urging of a fellow writer, I started working with a company called Winding Oak. The company provides promotional services which include social media, marketing ideas, print work, school visits, plus website design and maintenance. If you are reading this, you are reading my website, as designed by Vicki Palmquist, who runs Winding Oak. Vicki is smart, knowledgeable, resourceful, and engaging, always ready to help. I’ve been happily working with her for seventeen years. I hope those years are a testimony to my pleasure (and success) in working with Winding Oak.
Of late, I’ve been published by Scholastic Books, which, to my delight (and surprise), engages in publicity and marketing like the old companies.
Will I leave Winding Oak? Not a chance. I need to have independent promotional work. But I also very much need the publisher and its marketing.
What have I learned about all this? Publicity and Marketing are a necessary component of your book publishing. I suppose you could (and some do) manage it all alone, but working with good people is a gigantic asset. But you must work with them. And they with you.
Otherwise, the pages you wrote (and published) will be no more than leaves in the wind.