20 Feb Do I Really Need to Hire an Outside Literary Publicist?

Hi friends, it’s been a minute. We’ve had an incredibly busy season here at Page One which I can’t complain about…but whew! Lots happening. Go check out our Instagram or BlueSky or connect with us on LinkedIn if you’re curious what our authors and publicists have been up to. And it was our 5th anniversary in December and we were very excited to celebrate the nearly 100 projects we’ve worked on in five years! But on to the question that is the reason for this post. 

Are you wondering if you really need to hire a literary publicist? Are you unsure and maybe dragging your feet a bit? Do you have a large, well-known publisher and think that’s bound to be enough? Do you have a small but highly reputable indie publisher with a lot of enthusiasm for your book? Is your publisher under-resourced and encouraging you to get outside support? Is this your first book? Is this your fifth book? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may very well need an outside book publicist. 

But why, Sarah? My publisher is enthusiastic, well-resourced, paid me a six-figures for my manuscript… you could tell me any of these things and I would still tell you to consider getting outside help for yourself and your book. So many authors come to us in the months and weeks directly before their book publishes or even worse, right after their book is published, desperate for help. If you think this can’t possibly happen to you, you may very well be right, but you also risk being wrong. I won’t name names, but we had a journalist get in touch who was paid $600,000 by their publisher. They emailed us about a month before their publication date having felt largely abandoned by a very notable, big-5 imprint. There was nothing we could do for their book at that stage of the game and we’re not in the business of taking authors’ money when we can’t turn out a stellar campaign. So, they went on their way and I’m pretty sure you’ve never heard of their book. 

Why does this happen? Why would a publisher basically walk away from a huge investment like that advance? There are many possible reasons. Maybe another excellent book on the same subject came out before yours and they felt they couldn’t compete. Rather than invest more money in marketing and staffing resources, they cut their losses. Other viable reasons why support for your book might falter: internal budget issues (end of the budget year is always hard for many publishers), staff turnover, the publisher acquired another book in the same subject area or genre that they feel has a better shot at achieving market dominance, there are layoffs or a union strike, or your editor or publicist left so you’ve lost your in-house champion. 

I mentioned staff turnover and as the former head of trade marketing, publicity, social media, and corporate communications for a large publisher, I can tell you, this is a huge challenge. We never had a full roster of team members—not for one day in nearly five years. And backfilling a position in publishing is often encountered with hiring freezes, that dreaded end of the budget year, a generally slow hiring process because HR is under-resourced, and a multitude of other problems. Publishing employees are notoriously underpaid and having been the person on both sides of this equation, I can tell you, the way to get a promotion and a raise is usually to move publishing houses. It’s a vicious cycle. 

Whether or not you need to hire an outside publicist depends on how comfortable you are with some risk. An outside publicist works for you, your publisher does not. Depending on who you hire and what their specialty is, their goal may be to primarily support and promote you, as the creator behind your book—to create not only a publicity strategy but to think about you as a thought leader and resource to the media, general readers, and other consumers of information. Your publisher’s primary goal is always to make money, to sell your book but also to sell other books. Resources are finite at publishing houses, and they are always going to resource the books that have the most potential of making them money.  

An outside publicist should have a very limited number of projects (yes, this is why we’re so expensive—you’re not just paying for expertise and media relationships and know-how, you’re also paying for creative space—you’re paying for devoted attention and hundreds of hours of effort). I’ve worked at publishing houses both large and small. There is one thing I can guarantee across all of them—the in-house publicist working on your book is stretched way too thin. There was a time when I was working at a widely celebrated publishing house, that you would probably recognize, and I was booking seven author tours at once. And that was just the books that had tours. I had another 18 books on my roster for that season as well. We don’t work on that many projects at Page One in an entire year, across four publicists. You can do the math. 

All of this doesn’t make the investment any less costly or hard for an author to bear. I genuinely get it; I couldn’t afford us. To be frank, I’m still paying off my car on a five-year, zero APR loan and it cost less than one of our campaigns. It’s not fair, I know it. But our work is valuable, and we do a consistently outstanding job for our clients and we compensate our brilliant team fairly. The question remains, do you need an outside literary publicist for your book? I think it’s a good investment if you have the funds to support it. I would never recommend going into debt to hire support for the publication of your book, because aside from that car loan, I’m pretty debt-averse. I would recommend answering these questions to help you decide: 

1. Have you received a publicity and marketing plan from your publisher? If yes, how do you feel about what they are planning for the launch of your book? 

1. Do you know any other authors published by your publisher/imprint? If yes, ask them how it went for them and what you can expect. 

1. Talk to your agent and ask how the launches of their other authors’ books, at the same imprint/publisher, have gone in the last year? 

1. Do you have some disposable income that you feel could be best used to support your writing career? 

1. How important is it that this book succeeds? 

1. How well connected are you in the literary sphere? Are you willing to use those connections to help the launch of your book? 

1. Where do you want your writing or career to go from here? 

1. When does your book publish? (you should start talking to outside publicists a year in advance, if possible, but no less than 6 months before publication) 

How do you feel after answering those questions? Do you feel like you’re on solid ground and happy with where you are with your publisher and your writing career? If yes, carry on, my friend, you’re in good shape. If you’re feeling a little uncomfortable and like you need more support, I hope you’ll get in touch with us.  

On that note, I’ll leave you with another blog post called “Five Things to Consider Before You Hire a Freelance Literary Publicist” and wish you the very best in launching your book! 

Sarah Russo is the founder of Page One Media and a publishing professional for over twenty years. You can connect with her on BlueSky @sarahrusso.bsky.social, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can follow the work of Page One Media on LinkedIn, @pageonem.bsky.social on BlueSky and @pageonem on Instagram.