Your Publicity Campaign

So now that you understand the components of a press kit, lets talk briefly about working with your publicist.

Based on your target audience, galleys are going to be mailed to media sources. This might include: magazine, newspapers, book reviewers, television stations, radio, websites and bloggers.

So how can you help?

Keep in mind that at any given time, a publicist might be working between 40-100+ campaigns. Best-sellers, of course, are going to be where a publicist is pressured to show results. Even then you are not guaranteed to have one-on-one time with your publicist. I had lunch with a best-selling author and was shocked to discover that in her ten years of writing, she had yet to even speak to a publicist who was working on her campaign.

So be of the mindset that you need to be active with publicity.

Here are some tips:

~Ask your publicist for a list of the outlets that your galleys went to. (They will not give you contact names, but they might give you the outlet names.)

~Determine the five most important outlets (and most likely to review your book) and ask your publicist if they've had any response on those.

~Ask about sending books and / or press kits to other sources. Most likely, they are going to tell you "as long as you keep me up to date" so you don't cross paths.
Find magazines that cater to your target audience and send them galleys and your press kit.

~Go to your local bookstores and introduce yourself, set up local book signings and make certain that the local news is aware of those signings.

~At your local library you can learn what book club and groups are in your area. Work with them.

~Work with other writers in your genre to combine efforts.


Again, I will stress that you need to be in contact with your publicist as you do this. For example we've had an author who contacted local media and had a 2-page story in a large city paper months before his/her book hit the shelf. While we love authors who are active in their publicity efforts, a campaign also relies on timing. When there is a local media hit, we prefer for their product to be on the shelf.

Ha! Here's a chance to plug Rebeca's company. If my authors are reading this, it is GRPR's policy that a full-time publicist works no more than 30 campaigns a year, allowing us to place our full focus on those campaigns. You should already know that you can pick up the phone and call me.