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I asked what writing/publishing advice could help people right now, so I'm going to tackle this (BOTH PARTS!) today! First up: book publicity/marketing. I am not only an author, but I have a marketing degree and have worked in marketing (mainly theatrical film) for 15+ years! https://twitter.com/malindalo/status/1246212474334044162
There are so many parts to book publicity and marketing, so first of all I want to say what I am NOT tackling and what I am NOT the best at knowing about: schools, libraries, book bloggers/'stagrammers/etc., i.e. trade/b2b/etc. Your publisher is likely a genius about this stuff!
Everything I'm going to talk about in this thread is about marketing/publicizing your book to the general public. If you follow book bloggers, if you are a heavy Goodreads user, if you are using Libby to grab those 7-day new releases, I am NOT talking about you. Here we go!
The reason I focus as many efforts for book marketing and publicity only after the book is released is simple: people like to buy a book as soon as they hear about it. Again, NOT YOU! You load up your preorders, your OverDrive recs, etc. But many readers don't want to wait!
If the average reader hears about your incredible thriller but realizes it's not out for a month, they likely won't preorder - they will get a different thriller instead. They wanna read now! So if I have ANY control over when something hits, I prefer it week of release or later.
I am hardly saying no one will preorder. People will! If an opportunity is only available before your book comes out, take it! But if you can synch an appearance/article/etc. when the book is available, you increase ordering potential.
Also, at this point, schools/libraries/bloggers/etc. have been (HOPEFULLY) hearing about your book for awhile from your publisher, maybe also at ALA or NCTE or another trade event. So THEN when you get this post-release publicity burst, it does a double duty of reminding them!
In short, if you get a choice, give people the instant gratification of hearing about your book/immediately being able to purchase your book. (This gets a little weird to say the least in the age of COVID19 but I still think people prefer clicking "buy" to "preorder".)
Another exception is if you are a very famous author, you don't need to worry about this as much. The new Hunger Games book can do a huge preorder campaign and it'll work because even if people don't preorder, when it comes out they'll be hearing about it!
Attention spans are so short now. There's a reason a lot of film marketing plans (ha ha remember when people saw movies in theatres!) start the week the film opens. If you can't buy tix yet, we don't always want to spare any impressions!
NONE of this is absolute, by the way. I am but a midlist author with mainly movie experience in marketing. This is what's worked best for me! Mutuals, feel free to DM me for more; I could talk marketing/publicity ALL DAY LONG (I mean I...do, for part of my living.)
