After the often many-year process of writing your book, submitting the proposal, revising and preparing the manuscript for production, and then working with the copyeditor, you’ll end up with the final, exciting result of all that hard work — the finished, published book!
Yet it’s important to remember at this point that the book publishing process is not over. The last stage is promoting the book and getting it into the hands of readers. After all the work you put in, you want to make sure people are hearing about and picking up your book.
This is where book publicity comes in. Publicity is all about announcing your book in a targeted way to the right outlets and readers, whether that’s academic journals, mainstream news outlets, or podcast listeners. It’s also a joint effort between the publisher, who will have their established contacts and expertise, and the author, who will have their own contacts within their field and will also need to work on building their platform and potentially fielding interviews.
In the video below, our Associate Publicity Director Emily Grandstaff provides a brief overview of what to expect when it comes to book publicity, including what publicity is, what kinds of tasks a book publicist typically handles, and what authors can do to support publicity efforts.
Emily’s presentation offers a brief summary of how UC Press approaches book publicity, but note that other presses may follow slightly different processes or combine marketing and publicity responsibilities. It’s always a good idea to check with the press you’re publishing with on the specifics. If you’d like to learn more about how UC Press handles book promotions, you can also check out our Author Promotions Toolkit.