I want to write a non-fiction book - part 7 - Publicity (and extra earnings)

By Brian Clegg

In the next in my series on writing a non-fiction book (see outline at the end), I’ve skipped a rather big part: actually writing the book. The reason is it’s such a big part, I think it’s worth a series of posts in its own right. But our assumption here is you’ve written the book and it has been published. Between finishing your manuscript and this key moment will have been a lengthy period – typically 6 to 18 months – when the book will have been edited, proof read, typeset (obviously, not literally involving type setting anymore) and produced.

You might hope that the publisher would deal with the hands-dirty business of marketing your book. You’re a writer (or a professional doing a bit of writing on the side). It’s not your job. But the reality is that most publishers will only pull out the stops for a handful of books each year. You aren’t going to get posters on the Tube or adverts in the newspapers. In fact these days, it’s quite hard even to get a review, because books are not reviewed as much as they used to be. So if you want your book to have the best chance of selling well (which also means the best chance of getting lucrative translations), and you contract is of the advance and royalties type (see part 6) it’s in your best interest to do what you can within reason to help.

There are broadly four contributions you can make. You can give interviews, give talks, write pieces accompanying the book for, say, newspapers, magazines and websites, and you can do a couple of the things that publishers ought to do, but some aren’t very good at.

We’ll come back to that last bit, but of the other three, personally speaking I feel that if I’m going to put in the time to give a good talk or write an article, I expect to be paid for it. I’m a professional; writing is my job. We’ll start with talks. All too often, literary or science festivals will expect you to do a talk for the ‘exposure’. Strangely, they don’t expect their venues or caterers or sound people to do the job for ‘exposure’. Because they know it won’t work. But authors – the only reason they can have the festival or event – can feel embarrassed to ask for payment. If you are going to give a good talk you will typically spend several days preparing for it, plus the time to get to the venue and give the talk. 

At the very least they should offer travel expenses and overnight accommodation if necessary. But I think either a percentage of the take or at least a £100 fee is a fair minimum to ensure that you are being treated professionally. Like all such rules, there are exceptions. For example, in the UK science writing world there are no venues more prestigious than the Royal Institution. They don’t pay a fee – but I would never turn them down. The same may well apply, for example, to the Hay Festival, the UK’s biggest book festival, which only pays celebrities. There’s a balance to be struck.

In the same way as being asked to be a public speaker for nothing, if you are asked to write, say, a 1,000 word article about the same topic of your book, you are being asked to act as a freelance journalist. Most newspaper and magazines will pay for this if asked – while you might argue there’s a small benefit of publicity, it’s only fair that they pay a reasonable fee. 

Interviews are different, though. You can’t expect to be paid for these, but they don’t require a lot of preparation or effort, so personally I’m happy to do them.

Some will enjoy this stuff. I love giving talks – arguably more so than writing books. But I know that others consider the whole business a horrible chore. It’s a matter of achieving a balance of what you are prepared to do. Some contracts specify that you are to be able for, say, a week after publication, in which case that’s a minimum you should go along with (though in practice it’s rare that all the publicity fits in the specified period).

Finally we get to the ‘what can I do that publishers probably ought to do.’ If you’d like to do local publicity, publishers often don’t bother with your local radio/newspaper, which will almost always be prepared to do a quick interview or a piece mentioning your book. Because newspapers run very few reviews these days, you can increase your visibility by getting your book onto a book review blog, like my own www.popularscience.co.uk – while some publishers will do this, you can probably find more opportunities than the publisher, as they will just use whatever their ‘usual suspects’ are.

Some authors go even further and pay for a publicist on top of the publisher’s publicity efforts. I know of at least one author who spent his entire five figure advance on a publicist. The book certainly did well, though of course it may have done so without the money being spent. If you are trying to make a living as an author, unless you are independently wealthy, this is off limits. You need that advance to put bread on the table. But if you have a day job and are an author on the side, it may be worth trying. The main thing is to really research your publicist – there are plenty of people out there who will take your money and give you nothing of great value in return. Make sure the publisher is in the loop on this.

One last point. Many publishers give you a lengthy author questionnaire to fill in ahead of publication. This is a totally tedious task. But they do give your publisher’s publicity people a strong foundation to build on. So face the pain and do a good job with them.

To finish, here’s an outline of the topics this series of posts will cover.

1. Is my idea a book?
2. Outlining
3. Other parts of a proposal
4. The pitch letter
5. Finding a publisher (or agent)
6. The contract
7. Publicity (and extra earnings)
8. Self-publishing

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.