Trigger Warning: What I am about to say will not be popular with some in the book industry.
Book publicists don’t have a great reputation. A book promoter is seen as being a liar for hire. You pay, they say. Many will hype anything as long as the check clears. But they don’t care about you. They may not even like you.
They seemingly charge too much and deliver too little. They don’t always do what they say they will do and what they say they will do usually comes without firm guarantees or even useful metrics to measure their impact.
The book publicity industry feeds off of author egos and dream-chasing. The model is broken because no one challenges it. Authors need help in selling their books, marketing their brand, and promoting their message— but most publicists fail on their end. Yet, the monthly bills keep coming.
Many publicists work off of a monthly retainer approach. They guarantee they get paid, regardless of success. They just need to show up. And even when they deliver some publicity for a book, author, or event, there is no guarantee it will profit the author. There is not always a clear correlation between publicity results and book sales.
How can I trash the very industry I have been a part of for decades?
Easy, I understand from the inside how all of this works and am as frustrated as authors.
I used to head up the marketing of what was then the nation’s largest book publicity firm. I saw how much money authors and publishers were shelling out. But we were unique in that we were one of the first ones to charge for results.
We had radio tours and TV tours that one did from a single studio on a single day. It was not unusual to have an author to do 20 radio interviews over a five-hour morning stretch and 15-20 local television interviews over four hours on another single morning.
For national media campaigns, we charged an attempt fee to reach out to newspapers, magazines, trade journals, news wires, book review publications, national TV, and leading websites, but then charged bonus fees based on results.
Many clients liked that we had skin in the game and they valued the money-back guarantees.
But the media landscape changed with the Internet’s explosion, leaving fewer quality opportunities for media exposure, and many additional smaller sites that lacked influence.
Meanwhile, the number of competing publicists ballooned, making it harder to win a media outlet over.
Further, social media exploded and became a Wild West for expensive influencers to run.
We became victims of our own success. Book publishers started to copy what we did and as they hired us less often, we leaned heavily on the swelling ranks of self-published authors to hire us. The quality of the books dropped, as did the author name recognition. Budgets declined because many authors could not pay corporate rates nor have as big a campaign.
The company went into severe decline and now only bills about 25 percent of what it did at its peak. The lesson here?
Most book promoters simply can’t afford to get paid based on producing guaranteed amounts of publicity, and they certainly can’t rely on compensation based on book sales. Big companies have lots of overhead and layers of overpaid management, and that gets factored into what authors pay.
Many book publicists are not con artists, though some are, and many book promoters try real hard under limiting circumstances to produce for their authors, though some are lazy, dumb, and lack vision or passion. The main imbalance in book publicity is the money.
Books simply are not the best product to sell. They require large investments to promote and there is no firm assurance that for every dollar spent that you will generate at least a dollar back.
Physical books cost money to print and ship. Digital books are often sold for peanuts. Authors can give away more books than they sell. The amount of time, money, and energy spent to establish an author brand and market a book is on par with more expensive goods and services. Those more profitable products and services can use the PR to make money, whereas many authors just can’t sell enough books to justify the spend.
However, many authors see the PR campaign as useful in other respects, not just to sell a specific book.
Who gets the most out of a PR campaign?
Authors who:
* have a book series to launch
* have a backlist of titles to sell
* have other services to champion where a new
client pays you well
* have other content to sell, like courses and
webinars
* have a business or non-book products to sell
* want to get a message out, regardless of
book sales
* seek a film deal
* hope to be a paid spokesperson or influencer
* seek to get picked up by a publisher
* hope to get a new job, promotion, or substantial raise
Those who can afford to invest in a book publicity campaign are the following:
* Wealthy people with money to burn on a
passion project
* People who borrow from retirement
funds
* Those who take a second mortgage
* Writers who delay retirement a little longer
* Those who crowdfund
* Anyone who gets a sponsor, investor, or business partner
So, how do we reform the book publicity industry? It won’t happen overnight, but as authors become savvier consumers and invest more wisely, good things will come. Authors must realize that the best combination is for them to learn and do things that can complement what a hired gun will do for them. It is hard for an author to do all that is needed and to do it well, and it is often not financially viable to outsource everything.
The book publicity industry does not offer any company with one-stop-shopping, where there are cost-effective services, and where compensation is tied to sales results. That trifecta is a unicorn.
So, dear author, listen to what I shared, and
act wisely. Invest in yourself and others but do understand the limits of
today’s book marketing industry.
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Need PR Help?
Brian
Feinblum, the founder of this award-winning blog, with over 3.9 million page
views, can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com He is available to help authors promote their story,
sell their book, and grow their brand. He has over 30 years of experience in
successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your
advocate, teacher, and motivator!
About Brian
Feinblum
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