Publicity Not to Expect From Your Publisher

By Rick Frishman - Dec 14 , 2007

Unpublished writers frequently assume that publishing companies employ large, in-house publicity departments that create extensive campaigns, lavish attention on their authors, and send them on glamorous, high-profile, national tours where they’re shuttled around in limos and feted at the best restaurants. They get this impression from constantly seeing celebrities and well-known authors plugging their books on TV and other media outlets.

So when these novices sign on with publishers, they often expect to receive the same treatment.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Unfortunately, for most writers, that’s no longer how it works. Today, publishers usually earmark the bulk of their promotional budgets for their biggest, most highly recognized authors, those who pull down the biggest advances, not for the rest of the pack. Writers who are not yet established or don’t have big names usually have to fend for themselves.

Six huge, multinational corporations now control about 80 percent of the book-publishing industry and a seventh is Disney Publishing Worldwide, a subsidiary of the giant Walt Disney Company. Their publishing divisions must adhere to strict corporate guidelines and no longer operate as looser, less formal businesses. Every facet of each publishing entity is now required to contribute to corporate profits.

To achieve this objective, cost-cutting measures have been imposed and in-house publicity departments have been trimmed drastically. The dynamic publicity machines that houses once maintained are now skeletons of their former selves, so they don’t have the staff or the budgets to promote lots of books. Publicists still on staff are greatly overworked, overstressed, underpaid, and spread too thin—so their results, at best, are mixed.

Publishers understand these realities, so they concentrate on putting their in-house promotional resources on a select group of books and authors, not on all of their titles and writers. They may announce each of their new publications in their catalogs, mention them in other releases, seek endorsements and blurbs, and send out advanced reader copies, but often, that’s all they do, and many don’t even do that.

Publishers expect authors to be their “publicity partners,” Jamie Brickhouse,
vice president and executive director of publicity at the Perseus Books Group, tells us. “They expect authors to be actively involved in promoting their books.”

If you want to go on a national book publicity tour, your publisher won’t stop you. It may even suggest bookstores and venues where you could appear, help you plan your route, and give you names of local contacts. It may also arrange to have books on hand wherever you appear, but it usually won’t foot the bill. It won’t underwrite or reimburse the cost of your transportation; meals; lodging; and handouts such as announcements, display pieces, bookmarks, postcards, or fact sheets. Usually, you must pay all those expenses.

Robyn Says

If you want your book to be successful:

• Understand that the publicity burden falls on you.
• Accept that your publisher probably won’t promote your book.
• Create a book-promotion plan.
• Incorporate your promotion plan in your book proposal.
• Keep your promotion plan in mind as you write your book.
• Think beyond this book and shape your promotional efforts to lay the groundwork for sales of books you may subsequently write.

Publishing houses have shifted the responsibility of providing publicity from themselves to their authors. If, prior to or upon its release, a book shows promise, publishers may decide to crank up their publicity machines and put greater effort into promoting the book.