2. What this guide is for
This guide explains what marketing is – how it works in general, and its particular application within publishing – and provides guidelines on how to market your own work, whether to an agent or publisher before publication, or to the wider reading public afterwards. It’s important to understand that or reading this guide (or purchasing it) does not replace the need to produce a well-crafted and readable book, of whatever sort you are planning. It simply helps you to present your writing with the best chance of positive attention from those who are making key decisions about whether or not they should publish or read you.
WHY I AM WRITING THIS GUIDE
This is a second edition of a title that did well when first published five years ago (with excerpts now published on this site). Since first publication, however, a number of important things have changed, and new opportunities arisen. For example, it now costs vastly less for authors to create and maintain their own websites, and there has been a huge rise in the number of reading and writing festivals. Both of these increase the market for books, and create more competition to get published. A new edition was called for.
In the meantime, I had published this guide’s prequel – a serious look at the resources you need if you are going to get a book published. Called Is there a book in you?, it came out in July 2006 (also from A&C Black). The guide you are reading now follows on from where that title left off. It makes an assumption that if you are reading this, you are serious about trying to get your work published; that you have something ready (even if unfinished) to show publishers and agents; and that you feel compelled to continue with your work. In other words, it assumes that you really do want to get published. It will give advice on how to format, whom to approach and what to send. The guidelines included here will also be of great assistance if you have already published a book or books, and want to help your work get wider attention – whether from your agent, publisher, bookseller or the reading public.
I feel qualified to write this book because, as an author and publisher, I have been on both sides of the fence. I left university for the publishing industry, and worked in marketing on all kinds of published products, from high-level journals to educational books, from novels to children’s titles. And whilst I now mostly write, I still work freelance within the industry, offering training and consultancy. I have seen how particular authors help or hinder their chances of getting published because of their attitude and/or the way they behave. I have seen how authors’ careers as promoted writers are affected by their own pro-activity and ideas, both positively and negatively.
Both sides of the story
I have been the publisher who wishes that authors would consolidate their requests into a single communication, rather than interrupt my working day with sequential phone calls: most authors have little understanding that there are books other than their own which need attention. But I have also been the author, feeling isolated at home and wondering if anyone really cares about my book apart from me. I have asked myself if publishers really appreciate just how hard it is to keep going as a writer, and how deflating their lack of apparent interest can be.
The approach I offer in this book is pragmatic and informed. I don’t expect you to turn overnight into a 24/7 savvy provider of media-friendly sound-bites; rather, I aim to help you understand how books get noticed, and to equip you to use the media that offer the most positive opportunities for the wider promotion of your particular talents. My hope is that once provided with the information in this book, you will be better able to present your writing idea, in its most attractive form, to those with a serious interest in representing, publishing or reading it.
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On camera: Julie Myerson
The novelist and journalist Julie Myerson tells us how she writes, what inspires her, and how she got that all-important lucky break. Click here to view the video » 