Doing it all?

What exactly is the role of an author?

Photo by Anthony Rae on Unsplash

The photo above is how I imagine most authors feel around book publication time. Exhausted, wanting to curl up into a ball and sleep. Even if you’ve not physically had to do a lot, it can be a draining time. You don’t want to have too many expectations but you have to be doing something to help the book. What should you be doing? Are you doing enough? If the book doesn’t do well, is it your fault or the publisher’s?

Last night I went to a housewarming and got talking to a friend I haven’t seen in person in several years. Her first non-fiction book comes out next year and she’s just handed in the final version so now it’s time to panic about what happens when the book is out there. She asked me what she should expect from marketing (she’s with a Big 5 publisher) and what she needed to do. And I didn’t have a good answer because there isn’t, in my experience, one answer to her questions. Which is frustrating.

Partly this is because of the time it takes for a book to come out. Even more so with non-fiction, where you usually get offered a contract based on a few chapters and a proposal and then go off and write the rest. It can often be three or four years before agreeing a deal and the finished book being on bookstore shelves. Even for fiction, where often there is a completed manuscript before signing a contract, there will usually be at least a year to eighteen months before the book is published. Plans that were discussed with much enthusiasm before the ink was dry may have naturally had to move on by the time it comes to put them into action. For example, if you wrote a Greek feminist retelling at the end of that trend, you may have snuck in to get the book deal but by the time your book is coming out, the publisher can see that those readers are now mostly buying romantasy so they don’t want to spend big money on advertising a book that isn’t a guaranteed bestseller.

Publishing loves a sure thing. If you look around at the books getting posters at Tube and train stations, in newspapers, etc, they’re pretty much all ST or NYT bestselling authors. It’s easy to get a marketing budget signed off based on the high chances of a return on investment. I do know quite a few authors, traditionally published, who pay for their own Facebook or Amazon advertising, something that self-published authors have been doing for years. Anecdotally, this works to a certain extent, though so far I haven’t tried it myself. I do think there are tricks that traditionally published authors can learn about promoting their own books. It can be hard to weigh up spending personal money on these things, but for authors further down the food chain, it is an option if you can afford it.

What I did tell my friend was to actually think about things from a personal perspective. Going into indie bookshops, speaking to local librarians. Word of mouth is still a fantastic way to sell books. A supportive bookseller can shift a heck of a lot of copies if they’re trusted within their community and are happy to place the book on a prominent table. I’m really pleased when I get invited back to places for events, libraries, festivals, bookshops, radio shows - not only does it mean that they must like you (who doesn’t love being liked!) but you hopefully will have a receptive audience of people who may have read your previous work.

For me, the jury’s out on social media. I used to be active on Twitter (RIP) but Instagram is a different beast. I’m too lazy to take good photos and spend an age putting reels together. I tend to post sporadically or just do Stories. A couple of years ago there seemed to be a rash of publishers offering contracts to BookTokkers who had millions of followers. The rationale seemed to be that if you can talk on video about someone else’s book then you can write a novel, and because you have so many followers, they’ll all buy that book. As far as I can see, results have been mixed.

Certainly, there’s no guarantee of a bestseller based on follower numbers. Also, the beauty of TikTok, which I appreciate because I don’t have to get involved with it, is that the bookselling success only works when it’s organic. Real readers talking about books they genuinely love. Yes, publishers do have a presence on there, but they can’t manipulate it. There’s something quite special about that, though if anyone on TikTok with a million plus followers wants a copy of my book to show their audience, just let me know!

All of this is to say, I don’t know what works in terms of selling your book, unless you’re on TV almost every day (Richard Osman, I’m looking at you). My only advice is to say yes to things if you can, to be nice to people, and to not be too tough on yourself if things don’t go the way you hope.