Guest blog: do’s and don’t’s for debut authors

For our publicity month, Katy Darby has kindly written the following guest blog for LWC on the do’s and don’t’s for debut authors.

Katy Darby is the author of the historical novel The Whores’ Asylum (“A truly Gothic little gem” – Independent on Sunday), which is a Victorian drama set in Oxford, published by Fig Tree (Penguin). Follow her on Twitter at @katydarbywriter

Promoting your first book – debut author do’s and don’ts

Katy Darby

It doesn’t matter if you’re with a giant multinational conglomerate, or a tiny indie press just sending its first publications out into the world; promoting your first book, whether novel or short story collection, is a tough and sometimes confusing business. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up on my debut author’s journey so far (six weeks and counting).

1)      DO – say yes as much as possible. When stand-up comedians first go on the circuit, they’re told never to refuse a gig. Doesn’t matter if it’s a hundred miles away, on a Monday night, in a tiny club you’ve never heard of – never say no, because first of all it’s all excellent practice, secondly the promoter is less likely to ask you again if you say no once, and thirdly … it’s all good publicity. Don’t like reading your own work? Learn to: it’s one of the best possible ways to make people buy your book. Talk to an actor or author friend, or your publisher, to pick up tips on how to read aloud well; listen to Radio 4 Book at Bedtime; go to other authors’ readings and watch what they do. Who knows, you may even start to have fun!

Getting your name and your book out there is Publicity 101: it’s the first step to letting people know that your novel exists, where they can buy it and why they should. Whatever it is – readings, signings, live literary nights, extracts on websites/in magazines, judging writing contests, writing articles like this one – your first response, unless you absolutely have to be at that wedding, barmitzvah or industrial tribunal – should be “Yes please!”

2)      but DON’T – overcommit. We all have other stuff to do in our lives, aside from promoting a book – families, jobs, friends, sleep and writing itself will all steal precious time from your important publicity work. Don’t worry about it: be realistic in terms of what you accept and where you promise to go. Doing readings in both Edinburgh and London on the same day, while technically possible, is expensive, tiring, and not advised.

So prioritise – do the events you think will help you most, make sure you can fit them all in, and try your best never to disappoint anyone to whom you have said “yes please!”. And if you must say no, say it politely and graciously and make sure they know the door is open for them to ask you again another time …

3)      DO – network, especially via social media. I have four very important words for anyone wanting to promote their first book, and they are: Friends, Website, Facebook, and Twitter. Use them wisely, often and well.

Friends speak for themselves – invite them to the launch and ask them to buy and review your book (assuming they like it!) to get the word out. A website is often the first port of call for someone interested in you or your book – so get one, or at the very least make your publisher give you a page on their website, where potential readers can find an author biography, a headshot (if you like), a book cover image and basic info about the book (back cover blurb, price, reviews, and a link to somewhere they can buy it).

Your own website could also include a blog, events dates (where you will be reading etc.), videos or MP3s of your readings, extracts and more. Twitter and a Facebook fan page offer people a chance to follow and interact with you as an author, as well as good networking opportunities.

4)      but DON’T push it. Don’t harass your friends or exhaust their patience. Don’t constantly update your Facebook status with nothing but book-related stuff (your personal Facebook I mean – your fan page should be book-related). If people want to write reviews on Amazon – which are really important, by the way – wonderful, but make that a gentle suggestion rather than an obligation. Be a pushy parent on behalf of your work, but not a nightmare stage-school momma.

5)      DO – be proactive. Even those of us lucky enough to have publicists should not lie back on our laurels and expect them to do everything: they will have dozens of other books besides yours to promote, and at the end of the day, who cares more profoundly about your novel that you wrote, which you think is the best thing since the invention of the printing press …? Correct: you.

More to the point, local bookshops, literary festivals etc. often prefer being approached by the author in person to offer readings, signings, talks etc. Go to your local indie bookshop and Waterstones, talk to them, offer to read and sign your work, make yourself available to local book clubs etc. It’s amazing how happy they often are to help a new, local author. And if a bookshop you wander into has your novel in stock, sign the lot – it will help the bookseller shift copies, and means they cannot return them to the publisher 🙂

6)      but DON’T take the spam approach. Research your target market or event carefully: is there a geographical connection (local bookshops are often very supportive of local authors)? Do they do readings? Do they even sell or promote the sort of stuff you write? Don’t approach a science-fiction festival if your novel is a bodice-ripping romance; don’t offer to read your pagan erotica at a Christian bookshop. Sounds obvious, but for goodness’ sake do also check your enquiry (or should that be inquiry?) email for spelling mistakes, and make sure the right person’s name is at the top.

And think creatively, too: sure, your bee-keeping murder mystery Death, Where Is Thy Sting? will go down well at Murder One crime bookshop – but how about sending it off for review to Apiarist’s Monthly, too? Their subscribers will be interested in the subject matter, and a rave never hurts, however small the readership.

7)      DO – buy extra copies of your book, and bring them to readings, talks etc. (unless these are in bookshops, which will stock and sell copies for you). As the author you ought to be able to buy copies of your own work back from your publisher at a heavily discounted rate – usually 50%. You are then free to sell them on to other people at whatever price you like and keep the rest of the money.

My novel, The Whores’ Asylum, retails in trade paperback at £12.99, but I buy it from Penguin for £6.50 and sell it at readings etc. for a tenner. This is not just because I don’t tend to carry multiples of £7.01 change around with me, it’s also because people who have showed up to see me, sometimes having paid for their ticket to hear me talk or read, deserve a special discount, in my opinion. And I’d much rather they bought my book from me directly, talked to me and got it signed, than from Amazon (though of course any sale is a good sale).

8)      But DON’T – give people the hard sell. Sometimes folk just want to come up and talk to you about novels in general, your writing – or even their own. They may have no intention of buying your book, but don’t therefore dismiss them rudely: politeness costs nothing, and at the very least, they will remember you as that nice author who chatted to them about their poetry. They may not buy the book right now, but they will remember it, you, and your name – and that’s worth plenty, especially if you plan on writing more books.

9)      DO – keep track of your publicity. Search Google, Twitter and Facebook for mentions of your name and book title. Set up Google alerts, and keep an eye on the papers to which review copies have been sent. Keep a log of who has covered the book and who has yet to review it. To give you an example: the trade paperback (first edition) of The Whores’ Asylum has been reviewed in four major papers (Sunday Times, Independent on Sunday, Metro and Daily Express). This is really great, but more to the point it means that my publicist and I can specifically target the Guardian, Times, Indie, Observer, Telegraph, Time Out and others when the paperback comes out in September …

10)  But DON’T – take negative comments to heart. Writers – unless they have led an unbelievably charmed life, or have the frailties often associated with the profession (alcoholism, precarious sanity) are psychologically tough. Why? Because they have to be. There are very few people who never experience rejection or discouragement in their lives; why should writers, who constantly put themselves on the line by sending stories, poems, novels etc. out into a largely indifferent, if not actively hostile, publishing world, be any different?

It is a hard and statistically very rare thing to get a book published, particularly in these penny-pinched post-recession times: only those who have been through the process (i.e. you) know how hard, and how rare. A lot of people have loved your work enough to lavish time, attention, energy and even sometimes money on it to get it to this stage. So one critic hates it – so what? Concentrate on the ones who like it, and tell everyone about the good reviews, not the bad ones. (If they’re all bad … well, word of mouth and Amazon write-ups are both wonderful shifters of units).

Good luck and good PR!