A note to future book creators from a friendly book publicist

It has recently come to my attention that not everybody is familiar with what a book publicist does. On paper, a book publicist’s main responsibilities include, but are not limited to securing earned (i.e. “unpaid”) media and impressions through pitching and follow-up, arranging appearances such as tours and readings, and acting as an advocate for titles and their creators while providing great creator care. (I say creators, rather than authors, because I’m lucky enough to work with illustrators and poets, too.) As such, I often describe a book publicist’s role as part nag, part armchair-therapist, and part hype-person. While priorities and duties shift daily, I feel this description encapsulates most of what a book publicist does on a regular basis.

A book publicist often works as the liaison between creators and media. We craft original press releases and innovative pitches, which we then use to reach out to journalists, producers, event organizers, etc. Where the nagging comes in is when you let someone know about a great upcoming book and the response is radio silence. So you follow up to remind them. And you remind them. And then you likely have to remind them again. You will find all sorts of social media subtweets and think pieces making fun of publicists for the extensive follow-up that we do. (There certainly are ways to craft a pitch that feel less like screaming into a void, but follow-up is unavoidable and never feels very glamorous.) But the truth is that your book publicist believes in your project — we don’t always hear back from media, and we don’t always succeed when we pitch, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t try hard to get them to pay attention. There are countless reasons why publicists don’t hear back when pitching: bad timing, overworked journalists, rotten luck, or sixteen million other possibilities; however, so much of the nagging and shameless following up is invisible to the promotional process. I can say with confidence that your book publicist is out there hustling and yelling, politely, about your book to make as many people as possible sit up and pay attention.

It’s also helpful to keep the lines of communication open between creator and publicist. Book publicists are generally a friendly bunch, and I’m certainly not alone in wanting to keep the channels of communication open for honest dialogue, especially in the months leading up to book publication. We do genuinely want to know what your thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams are for your book, and we want to work with you to do what might be possible on that list and fulfil what can be reasonably expected in promoting your book. For example, if you have a great personal contact of someone who might be interested to review your book, please tell us. We would love to add that to the list of contacts we will already be pitching. We also generally have a sense of the avenues that work best for a book: not all outlets and possibilities will be appropriate for every title, and that should be part of the conversation between publicist and creator as well. But we also want to know when you’re anxious about the process, or if you have misgivings about a publicity ask or opportunity. Clear communication is also helpful to ensure a judgement-free relationship that is built on trust, which will hopefully empower the creators to go to the publicist first if something should, unfortunately, go wrong, and we can work on fixing the problem together. The creator and the publicist are on the same team with a common goal of ensuring the success of the book: communication between the two parties can only make this process run more smoothly. 

As for the hype-person, I think that’s self-explanatory. We’re excited to share your books with media and fans, and we are eager to look for interesting opportunities for your book to be featured, whether that’s in the form of reviews, interviews, or something else entirely. If needed, we can help with media training and talking points before interviews. We are proud advocates of you and your work, and we want everyone to know about it: we just want to be excited about it from behind the scenes.

The promotional process of a book can be daunting: you’re putting yourself and your work out into the world to be read and shared, and that can be a very scary thing. But your nag/armchair-therapist/hype-person of a book publicist is there to help you navigate it, by looking for opportunities to promote your book, by keeping the lines of communication open to ensure that you are both comfortable with the promotional process, and by acting as your book’s biggest and loudest cheerleader. We are enthusiastic about working with you to spread the good word of you book in any way we can, and we hope that you will enjoy working with us, too.

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Cindy Ma was a senior publicist at House of Anansi Press and Groundwood Books. She has over half a decade of publicity and publishing experience, specializing in promoting poetry and children's books. Cindy enjoys matching books with readers and drinking excessive amounts of coffee. She lives in Toronto.

*author illustration by Patrick Gray