Charlotte Bush and Rob Waddington of Random House gave an insider’s guide to sales & publicity

Rob, Head of Marketing, says thousands of books are all competing for a small amount of space in the bookstores so they only publish books they reckon they can sell. There are no magic answers, except you must always tell a good story.

Random House has three Katies, all mega-stars -  Katie Fforde, Katie Flynn and Katie Price.  The important thing from a marketing point of view is to understand your readership, and the Katies know exactly who they are writing for.

Charlotte, head of a Publicity team of eight, says her job is to secure media coverage that will drive sales. She would like to know anything, anything at all, that’s interesting about her authors at least six months’ ahead of publication so she can place articles in the long-lead magazines.

As far as commercial fiction is concerned, reviews in women’s magazines are more important that in the nationals.  She needs to have good relations with journalists.  It’s difficult to get authors on TV, but we shouldn’t ignore radio, including local radio, and short stories in women’s magazines are also good PR for novels.  Library talks may not sell many books directly but again they are good for PR.  As far as social media are concerned, go on twitter and tweet your book event, blog about it and go on Facebook. 

The more you and your book are out there the better.

Written by Susie Vereker