5 authors get real about hiring a book publicist

Is it worth it? Let's discuss.

Last week, I shared a Word With (Author) Friends interview with A.H. Kim, in which she mentioned working with a freelance publicist for her new novel, Relative Strangers. Laura Leffler (whose debut thriller comes out in January!) left a very smart question in the comments:

Wondering what criteria Ann used to choose an outside publicist. There are so many out there, and it’s hard to know what Qs to ask (esp for a debut author who knows nothing!)

So I started asking around!

Here’s my huuuuge caveat: I used a biased sample. These are all folks who (a) have talked publicly about hiring a publicist, (b) have told enough friends that a mutual introduced us for this post, and/or (c) were passed along to me by publicists themselves. Which generally means they didn’t feel like hiring one was a huge disaster or waste of money and they never want to talk about it at all, let alone for my Substack.

Indeed, I reached out to a few friends (and friends’ friends) who said no to talking with me. They didn’t give specific reasons, but I can imagine feeling self-conscious about paying for this service, like, my book should be so good it pops off of its own accord.

Which is BS! There is no room for author shame in the Get It Write extended universe©. Publishing is not a true meritocracy, and the books that get the most buzz are the ones most fervently shoved into the right hands (in addition to, we hope, being great books). Obviously, and unfortunately, not everyone can drop tens of thousands of dollars on a rep. I neither condone nor condemn hiring one; I am book-publicist Switzerland. At the very end, though, I’ll share some of my own random reflections on why I haven’t hired one myself.

Without further throat-clearing (ugh I would totally write “tighten this section. NEED? CUT??” if this were a manuscript), here’s what some authors had to say about their experiences…