Your book launch looms. There’s a faint prickle of sweat in the palms. It’s time to think about publicity.
Definitions:
- Publicity: there’s no budget. The book gets sent to all the press, media, influencers etc that you and your publisher can think of and you hope some of them read it and some of those then say something about it;
- Marketing: there is budget, which gets spent on social media ads, tube ads (if you’re lucky), promotional table space in book shop chains (if you’re amazingly lucky) and generally has as much effect as burning banknotes in the street.
In this case we are talking about publicity.
Maybe your publishers already know what they need to know about you. They know it will be an uphill battle getting the attention of the harrassed trade press. It’s always an uphill battle, but they know the gradient.
However, if you are new to the publicity folks, you may face the Publicity Inquisition. Thus:
PUBLICITY PERSON (Bright, brisk, smiley and almost certainly female); Tell us something interesting about yourself. Something we can shout about to the trade.
AUTHOR (In this case, tall, white, bespectacled and with a horrible posh accent); Can’t they just read the book?
PUB: Yes of course. They’ll LOVE the book. But tell us something we can tell them when we send it to them – something about you that will make them sit up and take notice.
AUTH: Umm, well, born in London, educated at public school and Oxford, seventeen years in the civil service and then became a writer.
PUB: Really we need something a bit more dramatic. You against the odds. Deprived childhood? Battling cancer? Life ruined by alcohol? Jail sentence?
AUTH: No, no, not yet and no. I am having a bit of trouble making ends meet on that advance…
PUB: Celebrity lifestyle? Drugs? Divorce?
AUTH: You make me feel hopelessly adequate.
PUB: Well, lots of authors find this part difficult, but we really should try to think of something. Something to give you a bit of a star appeal.
AUTH: Like – sex orgies, style, sunglasses, implants?
PUB: Not necessarily…
AUTH. Wouldn’t say no to the implants, but, um, the advance won’t really go that far. Can’t they just read the book?
PUB: Oh, we ALL love the book. What about your writing? What inspired you to become an author?
AUTH: My father was an author.
PUB: Aha! Of course he was. (Reaching for pad and pen) What was the relationship like – creatively? Something in the Kingsley/Martin Amis line would be good. Jealousy, oppression… Can we tell them he fed your manuscript to the dog?
AUTH: He was always very supportive, I’m afraid.
PUB: Let’s try something else.
AUTH: I could tell you a funny story about the time he was teaching me to drive a car…
PUB: Something else, I think. You said you were in government?
AUTH: In the MOD, mostly.
PUB: That’s it! Yes!!! Were you in the SAS?
AUTH: No.
PUB: MI6?
AUTH: No. And we call them the SIS now. At least we did in my day. And they don’t…
PUB: Did you kill anyone with your bare hands?
AUTH: I had a near-death experience with a spreadsheet once. You know, I’d have thought not being SAS and not being MI6 would put me into quite a small minority of writers.
PUB: Yes, but it’s not an interesting minority. Anything else?
AUTH: Look, why does it have to be about me? Why can’t they just read the book?
PUB: Oh, WE all love the book… (etc)