Where to find affordable and effective marketing for your book
I got an email recently which asked a perfectly sensible question: Does Jericho Writers keep a list of affordable but effective PR and marketing companies for books?
That question is one that gets asked by plenty of self-publishing authors who find – bizarrely – that just uploading a book to Amazon does not cause it to sell by the truckload.
It’s also asked by anyone with a micro-publisher that just doesn’t have the wellie to get the book at volume into bookstores.
It’s also asked, often enough, by authors whose traditional publishers don’t actually seem to do very much marketing at all. (A cover reveal? On Twitter? That’s your marketing?)
The answer, I’m afraid, is very simple:
There are no affordable yet effective PR & marketing companies for your books. Such companies don’t exist. And can’t.
Here’s why.
Let’s start with the way that traditional big publishers hope to market books. The effort starts, not in fact with marketing, but sales. The sales team will try and place your book with as many big, physical retailers as possible.
In the old days, you could come to Barnes & Noble or Waterstones in the UK waving a big chequebook. You’d buy space on the front tables, and you knew that your product would be highly visible to its core audience. These days, both firms (sisters now, with the same boss and the same owner) have done away with such practices. Local store managers choose what to display, which is great for readers, is better ethically – but was a real blow for publishers.
Instead, publishers today will focus heavily on the supermarkets (and, in the UK, WH Smith). Those retailers don’t stock a vast number of titles, but they love to sell at a discount and their footfall is huge. You could write a deeply mediocre book but, if it was selling at a good discount across all the supermarkets, it will sell well, for sure.
So let’s assume that your book has reasonable physical distribution nationwide. That’s the point at which publishers’ marketing and publicity teams will really get going. There’ll be campaigns on social media. Lots of work with bloggers. Lots of work with newspapers and magazines. Perhaps a bit of TV and radio if you’re lucky.
And what’s the point of all that press? You might think it’s this: ‘Inspire people to go out and buy that book.’ But it’s not. People aren’t inspired in that way, or not in anything like the volumes that matter. In fact, the purpose of that marketing is much more: ‘Plant a seed in someone’s mind so that, when they are in a bookshop or supermarket and happen to see your book, they think, Oh yes, I’ve heard about that …’
In other words, trad publishers’ marketing only works if the book already has decent distribution. That’s why you hear so many trad authors complaining that their publishers are doing no marketing at all. Those complaints are (mostly) perfectly justified. Publishers know that only a certain proportion of the books they buy will end up getting good physical distribution. Those lucky books will get all the marketing love. The others will be – politely, evasively – sidelined, because even the world’s biggest publishers can’t successfully promote a book which isn’t widely available for sale.
(And, by the way, self-publishers have a further disadvantage, namely that a lot of self-published books are crap. Newspapers and the like don’t want to promote a book that might be crap and they can’t be bothered to read your book to find out if it is or isn’t. So the easy call for them is to show interest in publicity calls from the big publishers but to ignore calls about anything self-published. That’s not really fair – you want a book to be judged on its merits – but that’s how it is.)
And, for a very long time, that was the only way that books could be marketed successfully. The rise of Amazon and the e-book has created two more:
1. You are signed up with a really good digital-first publisher
In that case, the publisher will have curated relationships with bloggers in your niche. They’ll have carefully tended mailing lists of readers in your niche. They’ll have extensive engagement with your target readers on social media. They’ll also have deep knowledge of such things as metadata, cover design, blurb writing, pricing strategies, and so on.
Those things will successfully win readers on Amazon, but the publisher isn’t going to start offering its resources to third-party books, because why would it? Those resources are needed for the publishers’ own authors. No marketing company can pay to create those resources, because they’d never generate enough income to repay the cost.
2. You are an effective self-publisher
Self-publishing is much the same as having a really good digital-first publisher – except you’re the publisher. And what you lose in scale (number of bloggers emailed, number of followers on Twitter), you can easily win back in laser-targeting and readers thrilled at direct connection to the author.
***
So those are the only three ways that books sell:
- Traditional PR and marketing running hand-in-hand with extensive physical distribution
- Digital marketing by firms with deep audiences in your niche
- Digital marketing by you (probably centred on your mailing list and topped up with nimble advertising on at least one ad platform.)
Third party marketing firms do exist. Many of them are ethical. I’m sure a lot of them try hard and do good things. But they can’t succeed. Not really. They may boost sales, for sure, but they are highly unlikely to boost them by enough to repay you for the cost of doing so.
My advice to authors remains the same, always.
Whether you work traditionally or self-pub or as a hybrid, work to build your own mailing list. Make sure the people are on it for the right reasons. (They love your books, not because you give away biscuits.) Stay in touch. Write more books. Rinse and repeat.
If you do that, you won’t need third-party marketing. It won’t matter Whether or not LoPrice Supermarkets Inc stocks your book or not. You’ll have your own reliable marketing tool that will grow stronger the more you use it.
That’s it from me.
The news is full of some weird story from America. Old guy in Washington moves house. Jeepers. You’d think they’d find something bigger to focus on.
It’s really good to have it set out, clear and unvarnished. Though somewhat dispiriting. I look at those simple words – ‘build your own mailing list ‘ (garnered through the books I haven’t already written). Better just write for fun then – because distribution is out of my hands and self-marketing probably too much of a challenge. Sigh. I’d reach for a beer if it wasn’t dry January.
While it is undoubtedly true that a mailing list, carefully curated, will eventually lead to people becoming familiar with your work, as well as your using a variety of magnets and bloggers et al, it is that first mailing list – or indeed, that first email which is the problem. If you live in a lighthouse in the furthest Hebrides and are not a naturally sociable type, it is difficult to drum up a relationship with strangers And while some authors can knock off a couple of books in an afternoon most of us have only the one or at the outside 2 which they would wish to put before a sceptical world and so don’t have a backlist which can be offered as loss-leaders. Either way, I think, we are unlikely to make any sort of splash with our first books and therefore a marketing firm which tries hard and manages to introduce our foot in the door might well be worth their wage in the long term.
If one needs, as Harry suggests, either a niche publisher who is prepared to help out or a reputable person who can advise us on how to use Amazon ads and other Google searchs etc to boost sales, even if by only a little, then a list of such people would be helpful. Just a thought.
Harry, I just now finished reading your Friday email. For an old fart like me, it is sometimes depressing to read your words of wisdom. True though they may be. With a near impossible task of finding an agent, compounded by them needing to find a publisher, the odds of being trad published seem close to zero regardless of the books quality. We all try to write the perfect book, JW helps. It’s impossible of course, but we love what we do which you well know.
Building email lists and online followings may be fine for younger folk, but most all older coves are well past that skill. Ebooks at least get the book on air. Perhaps with luck, some targeted marketing, and BookBub giving it a fly (slim but better chance than the slush pile), a chance exists. Throw in some good reviews, maintain reasonable sales for a period, and perhaps Amazon Publishing will pick it up.
Again, a long shot, but maybe a better chance than agents where it seems the query letter is more important than the book (I watch the Piers Blofeld videos, scary.. I pose a question. If Brad Thor wrote a great first book, but couldn’t get his query letter out of the slush pile, he’s doomed for trad, correct? Harry Potter is a screaming success, but agents turned it down. If a new author’s book is 95% on the mark with plot, editing, and the rest, what chance does it really have with trad? All the best, Harry.
I was re-watching an agent’s webinar on here. Laura. She says they read all query letters and unless that and the synopsis shout out bin-me, will then go on to start reading the first three chapters of MS. After all, they don’t want to miss out – perhaps they are gamblers at heart – and all gamblers live in fear of missing that one killer opportunity. . .take heart!
Thanks, RJ. As i mentioned, I looked at Piers Blofeld’s videos. Real eye openers from a reputable agency.
Piers Blofeld is only one agent and how he deals with his submission is not representative of all agents.
You didn’t mention guys like Nicholas Erik, Stephen Gaughran and I’m sure others (Mark Dawson?) who offer marketing to self-pubbers on a limited scale.
Robert Pearce (above) shouldn’t be so gloomy. I’m 71, and fairly farty, but have established a still-small but growing email list (350 approx). Book 3 out next month.
not ‘gloomy’, Stuart. Searching for some reasonable advice on which to build confidence. No I didn’t mention them. There are many others also. Good luck, Stuart. 350 is a good start on the way to thousands.
Here’s reasonable advice to build confidence: if a 78 year old man can become President of the USA on the third time of trying we can get a novel published! 😂
Too true! Onwards and upwards!
Absolutly! Thank you Georgina. Some of us can be late starters at the writers ball and may need to take the slow lane, and glean the magic piece by piece while following the golden ball.
Yes, this was the question that occurred to me, Stuart Doughty . Curious what harrybingham et al make of the people out there who (say they) can help with an Amazon launch or making the most of self-publishing platforms etc. Are there any circumstances when that is worth it?
(And I should add that I totally agree that a mailing list and a loyal following is the way to go, especially in the long term)
Perhaps there is something to be said for people with the same type of books sharing a marketing space.
Wise words. I’ve realised that as a relatively unknown author, if I don’t promote, nothing happens. Once I’ve saturated my mailing list, ‘promotion’ means advertising. PR and blogging has been almost useless for me; good for the ego and a few nice quotes, though not for sales. But advertising costs money; probably more money than I win back in royalties. So although I have a good agent I’m seriously considering self-pub as a hard business decision for my next book because that’s the only way I can generate the margin that will fund the marketing I need.
Great article, Harry. I’ve been writing and researching marketing long enough to know, no matter if you get picked up by an agent and major publishing house, or you publish yourself, you will more than likely have to do the marketing yourself. I read horror stories of people paying upwards of $10,000 for a marketing firm, only to have no real change in sales and it was for the most part, things they could do themselves.
That being said, Harry’s article got me thinking, what if we compiled a list of ways to market our books. One that we could all add to, but also turn to for ideas. Maybe it could be a permanent page here in Jericho. I apologize if there is already such a spot here and I’ve missed it, but please tell me where to find it if there is! 🙂
cheers,
Jane