Marketing, for the pros

Hey guys! Happy Tuesday. I don’t know if that’s a thing, but maybe it should be. Be happy, have a happy day. No matter what day it is.

Last week, we talked about the reality behind traditional publishing and self-publishing, while focusing only on the good parts of the deal. So, traditional is great if you’re looking for someone to back you, someone to really point you in the right direction. And if you’re not that great of a business person, then definitely traditional publishing is the way you want to go.

But what does marketing look like, in publishing houses?

That’s what we’re going to look at today.

How Traditional Publishers Market Books

Like we talked about last Tuesday, traditional houses usually have a lot more money to put toward marketing a book. They also usually have a whole team of people devoted to getting your book on as many shelves as possible. That’s a lot of what they’ll do for you, if you publish through them.

They take a lot of the hard work out of your hands.

They’ll run ads for your books, for you as an author, and even for future releases. They’ll contact bookstores and set up events wherever they can. They’ll get you into events that you wouldn’t regularly be able to get into on your own. And they’ll do all of this without batting an eye, because that’s what they do.

What I like with traditional publishers, is that if I have an idea for marketing my book, I can take it to them. They have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t, so they know whether my idea is pure genius or sheer idiocy (let’s face it, we all have our moments). If I have a certain event that I want to get into, I can ask my publisher to get me into it. Sure, I’ll have to give them a good reason why they should stick their neck out for me, but their presence holds a lot more weight than mine does. When my editor contacts an event to book me, people pay attention. When I’ve tried to do it on my own, people just wonder who I am.

See what I mean?

Publishers carry a lot more weight, simply by being a business. They know what they’re doing, they’ve been in it for a while, and they don’t shy away from asking big events for a seat for one of their authors.

If a first time author tried to reach out to a big event for their first book, without a publisher to back them… sometimes it’s just not as appealing to the event coordinators.

That’s what’s great about traditional publishers. They do all the legwork, while I sit back and do what they tell me to do. I go to events, I sign books, and I write more books—which is what I really want to be doing, to begin with.

[love]

{Rani Divine}