"Should I hire a book publicist?"
This is one of the most common questions I get from clients...and here comes my big, fat wet blanket of an answer.
“Should I hire a book publicist?”
More and more authors are asking me this question these days, usually about 4-6 months before their book publishes. They’re freaked out by the odds. They’re hearing “everyone does it” from other authors they know. They think maybe this is the only way they have a decent shot at sales success.
Look: I get it.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s rull hard out there for authors right now—particularly authors who aren’t celebrities.
Which is, you know…pretty much all of you.1
Being a debut author is hard. Unless you have not one but multiple previous national bestsellers under your belt, being a sophomore or junior or senior author is also hard.
If you don’t believe me, look no further than the current New York Times bestseller lists.
They speak to the market’s, ah, fundamental resistance to newcomers and one-offs.
On Hardcover Fiction, you’ll find mostly the usual suspects—King, Roberts, Baldacci, even the long-deceased Tom Clancy—plus TikTok franchises (Henry, Hoover, Yarros). Kevin Kwan—an author who is wildly well-established, just not quite at the “has his own dedicated in-house staff” level—is the only one who even sort of breaks the mold.
On Hardcover Nonfiction, we have a combination of celebrities writing autobiography, celebrities writing history, and decades-deep powerhouse author-celebrities notching bestseller number, oh, 16? 17? in a row.
Here, the only real exception is Once Upon a Time, Elizabeth Beller’s biography of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, debuting this week at #6. Beller is more of a one-off: a not a known quantity in the books world; not a celebrity in her own right. I believe she cracked the list on the strength of a Good Morning America hit she got on her pub day. (I doubt Louis Bayard’s bored review in the NYTBR helped much, but you never know—all publicity is good publicity, etc. etc.) Morning show hits seem to be working for authors right now in a way they haven’t in years; we do love to see it.
At least in nonfiction, there are one or two Elizabeth Bellers on the list most weeks: i.e., fellow one-offs. Don’t get me wrong: these people generally have excellent platforms, top-tier publishers, and everything else going for them except preexisting national celebrity. This is why I like working so much in nonfiction: in nonfiction, there’s a real chance at the bestseller list for people like this.
In fiction? Ehhhh. It is really REALLY hard for fiction’s Elizabeth Beller equivalents to hit the NYT. Like winning-the-national-lottery hard.
Kate Dwyer published an excellent piece about this in Esquire the other day, and I’m going to come back to this piece in a minute. Most novels just plain do not sell that much.
Once they understand how hard things are, many authors ask themselves, what on Earth can I do to help my poor little book succeed?
Sure, being a New York Times bestseller is by no means a requirement for a successful book launch, let alone a writing career.
Still, the NYT lists signify a much larger, depressing reality: in this market, precious few books take up the vast, vast majority of the oxygen.
How on Earth do you secure breathable air for yourself and your work in an atmosphere like this?
THROUGH HEROIC PERSONAL EFFORT AND SACRIFICE, THAT’S HOW!
…That’s how most authors want to answer that question, at least in my experience. That’s because there’s significant Boolean overlap between authors as a population and those who’ve fashioned entire lives out of finding oxygen in Smogsville, metaphorically speaking.
Hypervigilant observation; impressive execution; self-annihilating work ethic; insistent curiosity; almost-creepy intuition: these are the skills of the people-pleaser, the caretaker, the trauma survivor. They also make for a pretty good writer.
Combine this with the fact that being a good writer is one of the fastest ways to receive industrial-grade validation from adults when you are a child, and voila: a lot of people with codependency issues become professional writers.
Authors tend to want to do whatever they can—and then some—to ensure their own survival.
And their books’. And their loved ones’. And the planet’s. They tend to assume a lot of responsibility for saving, like, everything.
Which, again, is why I believe so many of them ask me, “should I hire a book publicist?” Hiring a publicist is something they can do. And they are generally doers.
My job as their agent is not to say “yes” or “no.” I’m not any author’s boss, after all. I’m a thought partner, an expert on the landscape of my industry. I offer my clients horizontal expertise to complement their vertical self-knowledge, then step back and let them make their own choices.
This is my poetic way of saying “I just ask questions.” Questions that in the great majority of cases designed to guide them toward “no.” No, they shouldn’t hire a publicist. Pfft. Like I could ever withhold my opinions!
Here’s why.