CHAPTER II -- GETTING READY, Post # 7

GETTING READY

Chapter II

The Keystone to a Strong Promotional Campaign Begins Now



When are you going start?
Today. Hopefully you have nine months to a year before the publication date of your book. No matter how long it is to your publication date you can begin your promotion but at the nine month mark you should have a business plan and the other basic foundations of your promotion campaign in hand. Here is what you should do,

Twelve Months Prior to Publication
A year out start to formulate the conceptual stage of your promotion campaign. Read books on publicity and promotion. I have included a partial list below in resources. Read this manual through. Talk to other authors about their publicity campaigns. Authors love to swap war stories and complain about their publisher. Educate yourself.

Nine Months Prior to Publication At the nine month mark begin building the foundation of your campaign. Why so early? For the next nine months your publisher is going to keep you busy. If you are like most authors, there will be rewrites of your manuscript, there will be editing, copying editing, line editing, and galleys to read. Along with your duties as a ‘soon to be published author’ you will need a full nine months to give birth to a healthy, vigorous publicity campaign.

Set aside time to begin the basic building blocks for your publicity campaign. You will form a company, design a business plan, fashion a press kit, create a web page, plan a book tour, construct a mailing list, and learn. You won’t have time to do it all a few months before publication.

Advance planning is the keystone to a successful publicity campaign. The core reason is lead time. All media outlets have different lead times. Magazines, for example, generally have the longest lead time. Depending on the publication they may be gathering material for an issue four to six months in the future. You want to be ready to jump in with your pitch at the right moment. Chances are you will only have one initial shot. You must be ready with any information they want, a press kit or references, and you should sound like a practiced professional or you will be brushed off. There is too much competition for them to waste their time with someone who is not prepared.

Say your book is about gardening and is scheduled to come out in time for April plantings and you want the gardening magazines to run articles on your book or you in their April or May issues. You will have to contact them in September or October (Your pitch might take a month to make).

Timing in promotion is everything.