What Marketing Support Looks Like at a Big 5 Publisher

image by Mace Ojala | via Flickr
by Mace Ojala | via Flickr

Today’s guest post is by author Todd Moss (@toddjmoss).


Cover of The Golden Hour, by Todd MossOne of the unexpected surprises of being a new author is how much goes into promoting your books. I was lucky to be published by Penguin’s Putnam imprint for my debut novel, The Golden Hour. Yet even with the backing of a hefty Big Five publisher, I discovered that delivering the manuscript is just the beginning.

In 2013, Putnam offered me a generous multi-book contract for a thriller series about Judd Ryker, a crisis manager in the State Department inspired in part by my experiences working inside the U.S. Government. In the first installment, Ryker is sent to the West African nation of Mali to try to rescue an American ally who has been overthrown in a coup d’état.

During the sixteen (long!) months between signing the contract and the actual release of the first book in September 2014, Penguin provided an enthusiastic marketing team and two professional publicists. I couldn’t have asked for more support from Putnam, and I’m exceedingly grateful for all they did to help propel The Golden Hour to the Washington Post bestseller list.

The book’s success helped turn a fun, mostly weekend project into a second career. I still love my day job running a Washington DC think tank, so I tightly plan my schedule to allow me to do both. Yet, even with Penguin’s mighty PR machine, there’s still plenty the author is expected to do to create visibility and connect with readers.

Social Media

Putnam helps me by crafting graphics and giving advice when I ask, but I built and manage my own website, created a Facebook author page, and was already fairly active on Twitter. I’m on Twitter nearly every day in short bursts and try to post on Facebook about once per week. I’m taking the long view on social media, as I’m not yet convinced the hours I spend on it greatly impact sales, but I find it energizing to engage directly with fans and other writers. I also created an email database of some five hundred friends and colleagues who want to know the latest and support my writing life. I’m still trying to figure out the right frequency for communicating with this list (how to keep friends in the loop without annoying them), so for now I’m hitting them only once or twice per year.

Print, Radio, and TV

Putnam’s publicists created a press kit and helped me to place articles in USA Today, the Daily Beast, and on NPR’s Goats and Soda. They booked me on MSNBC’s The Cycle and the Diane Rehm Show on NPR, and arranged nearly fifty (!) back-to-back radio interviews over two days. This was tremendous. Yet I’m still tapping my own networks to get in the newspapers or on radio and TV, especially outside of the immediate weeks surrounding a launch.

Public Appearances

I’d heard that traditional book tours are becoming a thing of the past, so I wasn’t expecting much. Still, Putnam arranged a book launch at Politics & Prose (a humbling rite of passage for any Washington DC author) and a brief but exhilarating tour to bookshops in Phoenix and Houston. Turnout at each was mostly friends (and friends of friends!) since, by definition, no one knows debut authors. I hope turnout will growCover of Minute Zero, by Todd Moss over time as my fan base expands. With encouragement from the publisher, I also organized a further seventeen public appearances at schools and professional organizations, plus several private events with book clubs, arranged by friends.

I recently delivered the third manuscript in the series and am starting on the outline for the fourth. But mostly I’m now gearing up to promote book two, Minute Zero, for its release September 15. This time, Ryker is headed to Zimbabwe, where an aging dictator is trying to cling to power through force and fraud. Again, Putnam is doing the heavy lifting on marketing and publicity. But this time around, I’m more prepared to do my part, since I’ve realized that being an author is so much more than just writing books.

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vweisfeld.com

The other thing Todd Moss did, which he didn’t mention, was write a really terrific book! It has the authenticity thrillers so often lack. (My review here: vweisfeld.com/?p=2883.) I first heard about it from a feature article in The Washington Post–a coup for his publicists, probably, but a natural for the DC audience.

Todd

Thanks Victoria – very kind. Yes, I think the WashPost profile was a coup 🙂

Holly Robinson

This is a fascinating post. I am also with Penguin, but with a different imprint, and I think a lot of what happens with you at a traditional publisher has to do with 1)the size of your advance and 2) the genre you write and 3) your editor’s status. Because I got a modest advance and write fiction that is not political, but more about family secrets and women in conflict, the marketing wheels turned in slightly smaller circles for me: I got one publicist, no book tour, no TV, only a couple of radio shows. The publicist did pitch my book to book bloggers and mail ARCs of the novel to the standard reviewers (Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly,), but I was on my own when it came to arranging bookstore events, signings at libraries, book clubs, social media, etc. This is true even though I am about to publish my fourth novel with this imprint. I am NOT complaining: I feel very lucky to be in this position, and I certainly like it better than when I had to do every ounce of my promotions myself as a self-published author several years ago. However, aspiring writers should know that there is a lot of variety in the sort of support you’ll get at a traditional house, even at one of the biggest, and that Todd’s experience is unusual. Good for him, I say! But, for the rest of us, we must make the business end of publishing part of our daily work, along with writing the best books we can.

Jane Friedman

Thanks so much for sharing your story, Holly. Excellent points and insight. The most accurate title for this post would actually be “What Marketing Support CAN Look Like …”

Ned Hayes - Writer (@nedwriting)

From my perspective, what’s interesting about Todd’s post is that I received next to no marketing dollars from the tiny publisher I landed for my historical novel. Yet thru my own efforts over the past year, I’ve landed 30 radio interviews, features on Huffington Post and Brain Pickings and a variety of other publicity.

I worked to get over 10K followers on various media sites, and I’ve had multiple readers tell me they picked up the book because of my posts on Pinterest or Tumblr or Twitter. Landed starred reviews on BookList, Historical Novel Reviews, etc.

I also did a small in-person book tour and received print articles in local newspapers and radio interviews which I targeted with press releases timed to the book tour.

Out of this work, my book managed to get to a (brief) number one position on Amazon in my genre, and has done decently in print, e-book and audiobook sales this past year. The book continues to sell thru at a steady pace.

Of course, I’m helped in all of this by the fact that I have run marketing teams and I know how to create and manage a publicity campaign — only this time, it was for my own book, not a third party product. I hired a publicist briefly, but their work wasn’t particularly beyond what I was doing, so we parted ways.

So to me, the lesson I take away from Todd’s post is that an author who knows what he or she is doing can adequately replace everything a publisher can do for you. This requires quite a bit of shoe-leather and actual work, but if you have an interest in doing it, it’s possible.

Todd

On the other opposite end, I wrote a (nonfiction) book back in 2003 published by Palgrave MacMillan and I got absolutely zero marketing – not even a flyer when I requested one. And then they set the price at >$100.

Alexis

This is fascinating – thank you so much for sharing your details! I would be curious (if you care to share) about your perceptions of the impact of the media coverage. Do radio interviews sell books? I think for many authors, media coverage is the most daunting part of the process, the ones that self-published authors are most likely to skip or do poorly. And I always wonder – how much are we missing out on if we fail on that front? What is the opportunity?

Todd

Thanks, Alexis, It’s a little hard to tell. I had expected that when I did a radio interview in, say, northern Arizona, that we’d be able to see if there were any sales in that area. If my publisher has that info, I don’t know about it (a good reminder for me to ask). Anecdotally, most people who have contacted me directly seem to have first heard of my book via a radio interview or one of my articles in newspapers/websites. But I don’t have a good sense of how these relate to overall sales. I wish I had a better answer!

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authorpamelabeason

Wow, are you lucky, Todd! Enjoy the ride, and I wish you fantastic sales. I have to say, though, that the title of this post is misleading; I’d hate for readers to think this happens to every author who signs with a traditional publisher. I have worked with several “Big 5” publishers, and never got even a hint of marketing. I’m happy for you and so glad it still can happen for a new author somewhere, but in my experience and that of most other authors I know, your story is definitely the exception instead of the norm.

Jane Friedman

Hi Pam, I apologize for the misleading title. I suppose the most accurate title would’ve been something like “What ACTUAL Marketing Support Looks Like at a Big 5 Publisher” or “What Marketing Support CAN Look Like at a Big 5 Publisher.” Mainly, I was thinking about how many authors say they get no support at all, so this is what it looks like when support is actually and meaningfully given to an author or title.

J. R. Tomlin

And if you’re not a “top American diplomat” but just a regular Joe Blow writer what does marketing support look like? I can tell you, it looks NOTHING like what Mr. Moss describes.

Debbie A. McClure

This is terrific sharing of information, Todd and Jane! I’ve just started a small writers’ group in my town because we didn’t have one. I’ve been going around for at least five years now thinking I might be the only writer in town. 🙂

One of the things I hope writers in my group who, like me are seeking traditional publication, can understand is that they will be expected to do some of the heavy lifting when it comes to marketing and promotion of their work. Too many writers just want to write, and not delve into things like social media, blogging, public appearances (scares the beejeezes out of most writers), and so on. For writers who opt for small presses, when it comes to m + p, the work can be virtually identical to self-publishing, which is often a shock. My understanding is that publishing contracts often come with clauses addressing these issues up front and lay out the writer’s obligations in this area, is that correct? Thanks for opening this conversation.

Todd

Thanks Debbie. I don’t think there were any specific marketing commitments in the contract, but my editor at Putnam was pretty clear upfront that they’d want me to be active on promotion. I view it less as contractual obligation and more as relationship-building. I know my publisher has a limited PR budget and capacity so if I want them to spend time, money, and effort on me, I owe them at least to do whatever I can too. Fortunately, I find the interviews and public appearances to be fun and invigorating. I know many writers don’t share that view.

Paula Cappa

Wow, golden hour for sure! Practically fairyland here. I like the comments because they sound more realistic than Todd’s post. His experience reads more like that one in a million type of thing. Like Debbie above, I started a small authors group in my home town and we all chat about how publishers (indie or big traditional pubs) leave the author to their own devices to promote their books. Holly Robinson’s comment is a familiar story I’ve heard many times. It seems that the “campaign style” of blasting the book through all the right media outlets at the same time is the key to wide publicity and fast massive sales, but that takes mega dollars and knowing all the right professional people. We indie authors don’t have lit agents or PR people to do any heavy lifting or even open a door. We operate in small communities and with limited readerships and we struggle for every single sale, every single day. If we don’t keep promoting our books on inexpensive and free media options, keep writing, keep polishing our craft, we’ll be dead in the water in a blink. I am curious, Todd, can you give us some background on how you got into Putnam? I assume you had a literary agent? What were your early steps to your golden hour?

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[…] Thriller author Todd Moss describes his own marketing efforts and the marketing efforts of his Big Five publisher, Putnam, for his book The Golden Hour.  […]

Todd

Thanks Paula. How I got to Putnam was a series of lucky accidents. I left government in 2008 (itself the result of a random act tied to me working on Nigerian debt in 2004) and then took 3 years to write the first draft of a thriller about a American diplomats during a fictional coup in Mali. Once I thought I was finished, I sent the manuscript around to agents and got some serious responses but nothing concrete. Then Mali had a real coup (!) and reignited my vigor to publish the book. I sent it to another agent (Josh Getzler at HSG) who I met through my cousin’s husband’s client (got that? Random networking works sometimes…). Josh was watching BBC News one night soon after receiving my manuscript and the news story was about French troops battling al-Qaeda in Mali. Josh realized he had an unread manuscript on his desk about that very same issue. He read it and a few days later, we agreed he’d represent me. Three weeks after that, he sold it to Putnam in a two-book deal, which Putnam then extended to four books. That’s how it happened. Lessons I draw are: (1) to find an agent ask anyone you know in New York for an introduction, (2) if you are writing thrillers, it helps to be timely and (3) a healthy dollop of good luck.