The Word Cloud

I wonder if anyone could give me a ballpark figure on size of a marketing budget for a book from a mainstream publisher by a relatively well-known author to cover stuff like website for the book, trailer, printed publicity material.

I suppose that's an intrinsic problem with spy networks, Sectrets - not much help when it come to arranging mass publicity.

Are you thinking of marketing, or publicity? Paying an independent publicist to do everything possible to push your book at the media would apparently be about £8k plus VAT.

With marketing, cash would go on getting it into promotions in the bookshops, and entering it for prizes if it's that kind of book. A big publisher would spend (I'm rather guessing here) between £10k and £50k, depending on how high up the bestseller lists they were hoping to get.

You could find prices for hosting and designing a website, SEO, printing leaflets (how would you distribute them?) and so on with a bit of nosing around on the net. Lots of it you can do yourself, of course, as you can publicity.

But it is easy to go about it the wrong way, and spend lots of time/money without getting very far, or even shooting yourself in the foot (with, say, a badly-build press release). Small presses also vary very much in how good they are - some people with a passion for books are not good at writing press releases, say.

The classic guide to all this stuff is Marketing Your Book, by Alison Baverstock, and Jane Wenham Jones's Wanna Be A Writer We've Heard Of? is very good too, very recent, and also very funny. Maria McCarthy is a journalist turned writer of books who gives excellent seminars on publicity too, so you could see if she's doing one near you.

Tony - yes, you have hit that particular nail on the head!

Is your publisher a member of the Independent Publishers' Guild? It occurs to me that that should be a mine of experience for how to set about marketing from a small-publisher base. The Society of Authors also has a members' section where you could ask - it too includes some self-publishers who are in effect small presses. Essentially, you're marketing to booksellers, not readers, and as we all know, the book trade is like no other industry.

I know that publicity for fiction is notoriously hit-or-miss: even experienced publicists will tell you that it's impossible to predict how much coverage they can get - they can do everything right, and still find they're ramming their head into a brick wall much of the time, and then something completely left-field takes off for no apparent reason. With non-fic it's easier, because the story you're peddling - the hook - is whatever topic the book's talking about, rather than the author, IYSWIM.

Those are all good leads - thanks v.much. My publisher also has quite a collection of ideas and experiences from other books via the other authors which is very useful.

SS, have you read the blogs of Catherine Ryan Howard? She's self-published very successfully, I understand. Yes, I know you've got a trad publishing deal (hooray!) but since you say you need to participate a lot in getting it out there, her tips on self-publicity may be useful?
She's also written a book called 'Self-printed' which I haven't read, but sounds helpful in the marketing department.
She blogs as Catherine, Caffeinated, and her latest post is apposite: http://catherineryanhoward.com/2011/11/04/bring-your-book-to-market-3-day-course-at-faber-academy-london-featuring-me/

That's a very relevant site - I have book-marked. "Bringing your book to market" sounds rather quaint in this world of Facebook and Twitter...