Launching Your Book

Everything you’ve done up to this point has been preparation for this singular moment: the launch of your book.

An incredible amount of time, energy, money, and attention has been invested by many different people. The foundation has been laid for sales of your book to reach thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of copies.

You will have 6-12 months from the time you submit your final manuscript to seeing it appear on store (and digital_ shelves. That gives you plenty of time to work on the items below. And you’ll need that much time!

The launch meeting

Once the book is ready to be released, it’s time for the launch meeting. This is a grand gathering of everyone involved in the publication and promotion of your book, including:

• Your publisher
• Your editor
• Your publicist
• The head of publicity
• The head of marketing
• A representative from online marketing
• The head of sales (along with divisional heads for certain markets)
• A representative from special sales
• Sub-rights representatives for first serial and foreign sales (if relevant)

The only person related to the book who won’t be there is you. This is why it’s so important to make a favorable impression on all these people beforehand. Their level of excitement and enthusiasm for your work directly impacts its success.

Marketing vs. publicity vs. sales

The difference between these departments can be blurry, but here is a rule of thumb: Publicity is what you get for free, and marketing is what you have to pay for.

An article in The New York Times is publicity, while an ad on their website is marketing. Being on Good Morning America is publicity, while sending pamphlets to their staff is marketing. Having your book on the nightstand in a primetime TV show is publicity, while paying for it to be there is product placement, or marketing.

You’ll generally have much more contact with the publicity department than with marketing. In fact, you’ll probably have your very own publicist. This is because publicity depends on you as a speaker or interviewee, whereas marketing is in charge of ads, postcards, and search engine optimization across many authors.

Large publishing houses have their own internal sales departments that sell to independent bookstores, large chains like Barnes & Noble, online merchants such as Amazon, mass merchandisers, and more. Another department for “special sales” is in charge of making deals with corporations and other non-bookselling retailers. Regional sales reps cover sales to specific regions. The sub rights department focuses on excerpts in magazines and newspapers. And the person who handles foreign rights will reach out to subagents with contacts at foreign publishers.

Your publicity and marketing budget

The size of your budget for marketing and publicity largely depends on how the launch meeting goes. This is why you want to have prepped your editor and other publisher contacts with as much supporting information as possible.

Here are some things you can do to maximize your publisher’s ability to promote you and your work:

• Get blurbs: Especially from well-known people, blurbs (or endorsements) have a remarkable impact on people’s willingness to look at your book more closely, from salespeople all the way to buyers. If you know someone influential, try to get an early blurb and include it with the proposal.
• Make a Top 10 list of desired endorsers: In case anyone in the room knows anyone on the list or knows someone who knows one of them.
• Share ideas for reading/speaking/events: Book tours are quickly becoming a thing of the past, but if you have ideas or opportunities for in-person events, share these with your editor to open up the possibility of getting a budget for those engagements (especially if you have ways of getting lots of people to show up).
• Present creative marketing techniques: Make a case for the marketing efforts you believe will be most effective based on your audience, experience, and network. Frame these efforts in terms of return-on-investment.
• Give your editor a list of book chapters you think could be excerpted and publications and websites most likely to excerpt you: This will show you’ve done your homework and make the people handling first serial rights very happy.
• Identify specific countries that might be fertile markets: If your book has a connection to a certain country or region, let the sales reps know.
• Tell your editor about communities or groups you’re a part of: If you are part of a professional networking group, a club or membership organization, a linguistic or cultural group, or something else, this will give the publisher’s staff favorable channels to go after.
• Provide positioning: One of the best tools you can provide to the sales force is proper positioning. By laying out the bestselling lineage of your book, along with successful but not directly competitive titles, you help them connect your book to existing audiences.
• Summaries: Salespeople don’t have time to read every book they represent, which means anything you can do to help them understand it saves them time and increases your chances for exposure. This could include slides, digests, cheat sheets, bullet points with the main takeaways, or a short trailer video.
• Provide a list of places or companies where your book stands a good chance of selling: This could include places mentioned in the book, companies who are favorable to its message, or groups that are likely to be interested in the topic.