Do authours have to promote their own books?

[JR]

This seems a little funny if you're signed with a major publishing company. I've heard that the advances they give you, they encourage you to take that sum and spend it on promotion. Does this mean you go to a popular magazine, drop some cash on the table to get it reviewed? It just doesn't sound right. It would just seem that the promotional issue would be a position within the publishing company.

[RedStar]

First, plenty of authors don't get any advance at all when they get their first book deal, and most of them are lucky to get £1,000, which leaves little to spend on promotion. Most major publishing companies do have a marketing and PR department, and would not leave promotion up to the author. The publisher loses out just as much as the author if the book isn't properly promoted - more, in fact, if they've already paid the author an advance, because an advance is usually offset against royalties, and the company won't make any money from you unless you sell more copies than are required to pay back the advance.

They would encourage to have a website or blog, do signings, possibly do things like give talks and do interviews etc, but there is very little cost associated with this. You can set up a blog for free, for instance.

However, it is possible that a publishing company might take the PR budget out of the author's royalties, although most agents would dissuade an author from signing up to that kind of contract.

And no, you absolutely do NOT pay to get your book reviewed. Magazines and newspapers do not accept payment for review, ever.

[Joss]

Here are some links to help you understand this. These are from literary agents and they explain how authors help promote their books and you'll get their opinion on this. Nathan Bransford is also an author and his book is coming out in 2011 and he uses his blog to promote his book, so that's just one form of promotion authors are expected to do - have a website, blog, facebook, myspace page, or twitter account so that people who want more info about the author and book can find that info. They link to other literary agents and publishers and you can search those other sites for more opinions about it. Promotion is usually doing signing, readings, interviews, having a website for your book, etc. Yes, you have to buy any domain name and pay for any web design if you can't do it yourself. But, I haven't heard of large or legitimate publishers doing what you seem to be describing and I hang around writer communities. I've heard of smaller presses doing this, and the presses that do this aren't recommended to any writer.

Also, don't confuse promotion with marketing. Your publisher will handle the marketing of your book. They'll be responsible for getting your book on bookstore shelves and making the public aware of its existence. They'll get ARCs (Advanced reader copies) out to reviewers before your books release. They'll give you many free books to help with your promotion and, what I've heard from published authors, you'll be able to buy more at a steep discount if you need it, but you can't sell any of the free copies they give you, but you can give them away in contests or whatever to help promote the book. How much in marketing and promotion your publisher helps you with depends on how well they think your book will sell. Some books get full-page ads in large newspapers and TV commercials (ala Ban Brown), but most books aren't going to be promoted that way. Your publisher's marketing department will decide how much money it'll spend promoting and marketing your book by how well they think it'll sell. This is what I've heard from literary agents and published authors.

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/08/...uthor.html
http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2009/11/pub...-help.html
http://pubrants.blogspot.com/search/label/promotion

HTH.