Hiring An Outside Book Publicist
By Jerry D. Simmons | December 12th, 2005 | 2 Comments » (Click to add yours!)
If your book is being published and you want to use an outside public relations agency or book publicist, there are two things you need to keep in mind:
(1) Before you hire anyone you need to know the budget for your book. You must know what your publisher plans to spend on advertising, promotion, marketing, and publicity.
(2) Make certain the outside agency has experience in books and will work with your publisher without asking for their assistance.
If your book were positioned where you are receiving little or no support from your publisher, then hiring an outside agency or publicist to work with you in a local or regional market would be a good idea. If your publisher is offering little in the way of budget for promoting your book, it can still be a good idea to use an outside agency or publicist to fill in the gaps in your advertising, promotion, marketing, and publicity plans.
Publishers are uncomfortable with outside people who want to use in-house resources for their own purposes under the pretense that they are “for the author.” Departments will not share contact names with any outside agency or publicist regardless of the author, yet many agencies or publicists make the request. Publishers have been known to slash or eliminate budgets when they find out an author has hired an outside agency.
If you read my book you will find out how to work with the in-house departments to allocate resources toward what you want in terms of advertising, promotion, marketing, and publicity.
Make certain whomever you hire has experience with books and publishers. Ask for references of the authors with whom they have worked and the titles of the books they have promoted. You want to see copies of the articles in newspapers and magazines they have arranged and you want to view television clips and listen to radio recordings of their author clients.
Hiring an outside agency that is not experienced with books or publishers is a bad idea. Hiring an outside agency or publicist before knowing what your publisher plans to spend on you and your book is placing the cart before the horse and can result in your entire budget being cut or eliminated. Why promote your book on your dime when you can use your publishers?
Tags: Book Marketing, Book Sales, Booksellers
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