Don’t Count on Your Publisher’s Publicist! Building Your OWN Platform By Rich Mintzer
Trying to get a book deal? Trying to sell copies of your book? It’s not easy. Most publishing houses, even before the economic crisis, began minimizing their publicity departments. While in-house publicists still play a vital role in generating initial attention for the product, they can no longer set the wheels in motion for big marketing campaigns on a budget that typically consists largely of whatever they can pull from under the cushions of the office couch. In essence, unless you’re quite famous, you will need to go out and do your own promotion if you want a successful book. And promotion today begins with the latest buzzwords in publishing, “a platform.” Yes, you need an area in which you excel and in which people want to read what you have to say – and hear about it.