Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
Let’s say your relationship with your publisher has gone swimmingly through the editorial process. Your editor got you, and you got your editor. What a team!
Now your manuscript has been polished into a gleaming specimen, and it’s turned over to marketing where…no one seems to even know who you are. What to do, what to do…
First, I would suggest you be sure to bring your agent onto the scene to nose around and try to find what the disconnect might be. Hopefully that will solve the problem, and soon you’re at work with a marketing dream team.
But sometimes the agent can’t figure out why there’s a disconnect either. That means it’s time to begin your own marketing campaign–not to sell your book to readers but to sell you and your book to the marketing team.
Authors seldom seem to think of this as the solution, but if you know how to work at marketing your book and contributing to what the publisher has to offer, let the right folks know that you’re plugging away right along with them.
I took on a new client earlier this year who had published five books. One of my first tasks was to sit down with the editor and the head of marketing to find out what they thought of my client’s marketing skills. They thought she sucked at it.
Oops. So I asked the author what she had done to promote her last book. Wow, it was impressive. From calling on local bookstores and asking them to carry her book to online zany book contests that brought a good response, my client was out there, working every marketing angle I could think of.
“Sandy,” I asked, “how much of what you did was communicated to the marketing team?”
“Well, none I guess,” she responded. “I just thought they’d check my blog or my website and see what I was doing.”
Hello! Since when does a publishing team have time to regularly check what each author is doing to promote his or her book?
I gave my client an assignment: Every week, just drop a friendly email to her editor and the person in marketing who was running her campaign. List (no paragraphs with tons to read, but a list the reader could just scan) everything she had done in the past week to market her book.
What a change has occurred. The publisher is no longer grumbling that Sandy doesn’t contribute to the marketing of her books. Instead, the publisher is stepping up what is being done for Sandy because they realize she’s investing her own time and money.
So what’s the lesson to be learned from my client? You are the most important participant in your marketing. Put together a marketing plan for your next book and tell your publisher what that plan is. Then go for it!
Helpful tips! I like how you specified the difference between list-form and paragraphs. When talking to writers, this is never a bad idea. 🙂
Janet,
There seems to be somewhat of a disconnect if a marketing department doesn’t know about a project heading down the pike.
How helpful and how common are site visits and tours to meet the publishing team in person? At what point is it too early in the process to begin developing relationships with the marketing group.
Personally, as a writer who is a marketing professional, I would want to build working friendships at the beginning of the contract stage so the book comes out with a well timed splash. How would that come across?
Unless you are an uber best-selling author, you’re unlikely to meet the marketing team before the contract is signed. Visiting the publishing house is often welcomed by publishers, but of course, it’s best to have your agent ask about the feasibility of a visit, discuss timing, and create an agenda.
The author would pay for the trip (with some publishers offering to pick up meal tabs and hotel); so it’s an investment.
If every author visited the publishing house, soon the publishing staff would spend all their time hosting authors. So the publishers do have the option to say they just can’t fit a visit into the schedule.
Usually they like to have that visit when the complete manuscript has been turned in because that gives marketing and publicity a chance to read as much of it as they would like. And for editorial to have some thoughts on potential additional revisions.
I think I dropped the ball exactly where you said: at informing the publisher of all the marketing stuff I was doing… Good lesson learned. Thanks.
I’ve found it valuable to continue commuicating (brief e-mails) with the marketing team as long as your book is in print. My nonfiction book released five years ago. I let the new marketing manager and editor know when I’ve scheduled radio, tv, and blog interviews, speaking engagements, and book signings. I don’t know if this has helped keep my book “alive,” but I want the publisher to know I haven’t stopped my marketing efforts.
Judy, publishers do like to know that, even though they’ve moved onto promoting other books, that the author has stayed engaged with marketing already-published titles. But authors do need to keep in mind that once a title is older, you should lessen the number of reports you send. As Judy mentions, when she has a significant update, she lets the publisher know. But she isn’t sending in regular reports.
What great advice — thanks for helping draw some parameters this week for working with the editorial and marketing teams. Most things make perfect sense once we stop long enough to think about them. I love this weekly update idea and will keep it for future reference!
Wow! Great information and a good lesson. Thanks for the tips.