Publicity Guide

Publishers and agents want books that sell. It is critical to develop a strategy of how to publicize your book before you release it or even shop your manuscript to publishers. MindBuck Media Book Publicity looks holistically at the experience your book can provide, and develops a targeted campaign to attract agents, publishers and readers.

We set a high bar for the books we work on. They must be compelling, professionally edited, professionally designed, and have a distribution plan in place. Our publicity campaign minimum is $5500, billed at $110/hour. This amount is determined by the minimum of input out of which we can expect good results.

Publicity Timeline

• 4-12 months before release create full publicity plan, press kit, press release, and send out copies of ARCs (Advanced Readers Copy) to long lead reviews such as Library Journal and Kirkus.
• 3-4 months in advance plan book tour and events and schedule radio/tv
• 1-3 months before release send queries to bloggers and book reviewers, create book trailers and personalized campaign elements
• 1 month - release follow up on all leads, continue to send out ARCs, keep all reviewers up to date on developing news, follow up with reviewers, create weekly PR Reports for author and publisher.
• During the week of the release, track sales and rankings, hand hold with the author, promote positive reviews, re-pitch reviewers with high sales, supervise release events to ensure they run smoothly and are promoted.
• Three weeks after release continue weekly PR reports, sales and ranking info.
• 1 month after release, PR wrap up unless there is an additional publicity story.
• After PR campaign completion, authors may request follow up such as book awards submissions, Wikki pages, and ongoing events.

Who Needs a Book Publicist?

Basically, everyone who releases a book needs a book publicist. Many large publishers have internal publicists, but they don't have the time and resources to focus on more than one or two of their highest grossing authors. Due to many things including the changing economics of the publishing world, publishing companies expect authors to contribute to publicity. Authors are expected to promote and interact with their readers. It can be tough, but a good publicist is a buffer and cushion.

Cash advances are most often a publishing company's contribution to publicity. MindBuck Media is happy to negotiate with authors and publishers to get the best publicity bang for the buck for the target market and project. We work with many publishing companies: small, medium and large.

Publicity After Self Publishing

This is a common issue for self-publishing authors. They work very hard to get their book out, put it on Amazon, sell a few and then... nothing. Without publicity, statistically, authors are unlikely to sell more than 50-150 copies of their book regardless of the sweat equity they put in. For some authors this is fine. They published their book in order to give it to family and friends. For authors who want larger sales, or who are interested in being part of a larger literary conversation, this can be deeply frustrating.

For authors who have sales and exposure as a goal, our first advice is to pull the book, start on a formal publicity plan and re-release the book in four months. This works as long as you have not already submitted (and been rejected) by reviewers already. This can be tough on authors because they feel they have waited a long time to get the book in print but this is how publishing works: slowly. If you want to keep your book up and start publicity after a release, this is possible though not preferable. Contact a publicist as soon as possible to mitigate the time issue.