27 May Five Things to Consider Before You Hire a Freelance Literary Publicist
If you were heading out to buy a car or a new house, you would have a list of your non-negotiables, as well as a budget, and maybe also a timeline for your purchase or a move-in date. Hiring a freelance literary publicist should involve some similar thought and planning. We see a fair number of people come our way who haven’t thought about what they need or want and are mostly just here kicking the tires with us.
You might be able to figure it all out in a phone call with a publicist, but we would like to give you five things to consider before you decide to invest in a freelance literary publicist for your work and try to save everyone involved some time. Your future publicist will thank you!
One: What Are Your Goals?
We encourage you to put substantial thought into this part, if you haven’t already. Is your goal securing tenure, landing your next book deal, hitting the bestseller list, growing your social media following, selling your work, elevating your platform, being seen as a speaker or the go-to expert in your field, being a thoughtleader, or a combination of several of these? Get specific. Your publicist can’t guarantee you a TED Talk (and you should be wary of anyone who promises they can), but they certainly can help you in tangible ways on the road to achieving your goals.
The first step is to write those goals down and be sure to communicate them to the publicists you speak with. Some will excel at book publicity or thought leadership, some only do publicity, some are full service with marketing and social media, and others have specific specialties. Your goals should drive the conversation and you will want to find someone who can support those goals with bite sized, actionable steps and recommendations.
Two: What Is Your Budget?
Literary publicity and marketing are like many other things: you get what you pay for. You can buy a Yugo or you can buy an Audi. It helps to define your budget in advance of your first conversations. Talk with a trusted colleague, your partner, accountant (our work is a tax write off for most people), agent or financial planner, whoever helps you make financial decisions, and define a budget. For more help framing this discussion around budget, see our post on “What Does a Book Publicist Cost?”
Once you have a budget, be transparent about it. You’ll save yourself and the publicists you speak with a lot of time and frustration if you’re clear about this from the start.
Three: When Does Your Book Publish?
Depending on your goals, when your book publishes could be more or less important. If you are looking for a publicist to support you around expert positioning the lead time can be a little shorter but publication date can still impact the campaign in big ways. Most book campaigns start a minimum of six months in advance of publication so if you have less time than that you may need to be creative or find a publicist who is willing to support you in alternative ways.
Your publisher is selling your book into key accounts six or seven months in advance. Publicity work should be starting then as well. Thought leadership work and platform building should happen at least a year in advance of your book publishing and optimally even earlier. These are large and long-term endeavors for authors, journalists, and experts, beware any publicists who claim they can do this work on a short timeline.
Four: When Do You Need to Start Looking for a Publicist?
A year in advance of publication. Yes, really. The best publicists book up very far in advance, some of them more than a year ahead. If you have the budget to hire one of these literary PR superstars, you should start talking to them as soon as you reasonably can. The best publicists also read your book before they will even consider working on it. If they have a backlog of manuscripts to read—like we often do here at Page One Media—you may need to give them several weeks to read before they will be willing to schedule a call with you to discuss a campaign.
Five: How Does Your Publisher Feel about It?
Most publishers are happy to have the extra help on board, but some are distinctly not happy about it. You should check with your editor or publisher before you go to the trouble of talking with freelance publicists. It’s great to have your publisher’s buy-in and understanding around what you are hoping to achieve with your book. Your publisher will be squarely focused on doing the things that sell your book. If your goals are broader than just book sales, a freelance publicist is a huge asset to have in your corner.
A publicity campaign is a significant investment and doing a little advance thinking will help you gain insight into what you are hoping to achieve and the ability to gauge who can best help you reach those goals. As the saying goes, fail to plan, plan to fail! If we can help you explore the best publicity and marketing supports for your book, I hope you’ll be in touch.
Sarah Russo is the founder of Page One Media. She’s been working in publishing for twenty-two years. You can connect with her on Twitter @sarahrusso, Instagram, and Linkedin. You can follow the work of our company on Linkedin, @pageonem on Twitter and @pageonem on Instagram.