One book publicist’s
take on the book launch
The most important element of the Queens MFA Professional Development Weekend, the latest of which I attended in
mid-September, is the access one is afforded to agents, editors, and published
authors. In this year’s edition, a book publicist and a panel of published
Queens graduates offered thoughts and advice for aspiring authors.
In a seminar titled “How to Launch a Book,” Carrie Neill, an Assistant Director of Publicity at Penguin Random House and a
Queens graduate, provided an insider’s view of the process leading to
publication.
Carrie first helped us understand the difference, in the
publishing world, between marketing and publicity. In short,
marketing is reader-facing and publicity is industry-facing. Marketers promote
your book by placing ads and posting—and encouraging others to post—on social
media. For you, the author, marketing is doing all these things for yourself
and appearing in public whenever and wherever you can. A publicist like Carrie,
on the other hand, is the person with the industry contacts who arranges for
those personal appearances and promotes your book—and, more importantly, you—with
booksellers, industry reviewers, and the mainstream media.
Carrie stressed that the author always has a huge role in
publicity because the author is the central element of any publicity campaign.
She therefore recommends that you think deeply about your personal story and
provide as much of it as you can to the publicist so they can build a
connection between you and the very important people who will first accept,
then fall in love with and promote your book. To get at these details,
publishers and publicists ask authors to complete a detailed author
questionnaire, and Carrie advises you to take the process of filling it out
very seriously. (See below for links to some samples.) Memoirist and poet
Sandra Beasley describes the author questionnaire as an “incredibly helpful as way of
organizing one’s thoughts in preparing for publication.” She goes on:
I know so many folks who, after the jumping the hoops to editorial acceptance, are ambushed by the additional hoops it takes to sell the book. The author’s questionnaire is meant to help itemize your contacts, expand your market awareness, and rehears answers to likely questions.
Even if you’re self-publishing without retaining a
publicist, grabbing and filling out an author’s questionnaire could be a good
exercise in preparation for driving your own publicity.
Another method Carrie shared for driving publicity is to
do additional writing related to the book. For example. a novelist could write
and publish an essay connecting his or her personal experience with a central
event or theme in the novel. The somewhat idealized example Carrie gave was, “I
wrote a book about a character who lost someone—then I lost someone.”
Presumably, it you’re working with a publicist, he or she could help you get
the essay published, which would help drive awareness and give you something to
point or link to as you prepare for the launch.
Other actions authors can take to either support publicity
efforts or drive their own are developing a relationship with local bookstores
and looking into regional book fairs and trade shows. A publicist can make good
use of those existing bookseller relationships, and fairs and trade shows are a
standard method that is still available for promoting a launch. See below for a
few links to book fair and trade show listings. Enjoy!
Sample author questionnaires
Book fair and trade show listings
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