Let the publizity begin!

With my first two books, marketing and publicity was hands-down the thing I hated doing the most and also was the worst at. On the other hand, I had a lot more time to devote to things like querying book bloggers and doing guest interviews back then, too. This time around I was not only resolved to let a professional handle all that stuff I suck at for me, I also had a nice list of referrals for good publicists from my publisher.

I queried four of them and had phone meetings with two of them. I would have had three meetings, but they all fell during the week of the freak winter storm we had down here in Austin. I dismissed one of them almost immediately because they put off a very “Publizity” from Kroll Show vibe. What stuck out to me, and ultimately solidified my decision to go with the publicist I did, was that only one of the companies asked to see my manuscript. I know a lot of busy marketing people don’t have time to read everything that comes across their desk, but how do you know if you’re the right person to market the book if you don’t know the book? How do you know who you’re going to sell it to?

After reading horror stories of authors hiring multiple publicists to do multiple things, I was really resolved to only do this once and find someone who really wanted to work with me and wanted to represent my work. And I didn’t want a Liz. So when I talked to potential publicists to represent me, these were the 3 most important questions I asked, and made my decision easier (taken from the larger list from BookBub):

1. What kind of experience do you have marketing books like mine? This not only leaves room to answer the obvious question, but also lets you know how much effort they put into learning about your book before talking to you.
2. What kind of promotions would you envision running for my book? This gives you an opportunity to make sure you’re not going to get cookie-cutter promos that don’t fit your book well.
3. What media contacts do you have that would be interested in my book? One, you get to know what kind of media contacts they have and how many, and two, you can get a good feel of how comfortable they feel about promoting your book where it fits.

Of course the hope is that by June of 2022 I can have a real in-person book launch and sign books face to face after poorly reading from my own novel. But more than anything I am happy that I have someone to handle all the promotional logistics of it for me! Looking forward to a long relationship with Caitlin Hamilton Marketing.