Writers and Editors

Apr 21, 2009 7:33 AM EDT

The first part of the paragraph quoted goes like this:"Pay authors to market their workWe all know that one of the big functions of today's in-house marketing professional is to explain why the publisher can't afford to do much marketing. So who has the money? Authors, from the advances we pay them. Publishers should contractually require that a part of the advance be allocated to marketing and promotional efforts supervised by the author. Publishers, of course, must also do their important marketing work. But authors usually write the best promotional copy (they're writers, after all), and they certainly know their readership best. Yet they are underutilized in the publishing process. Empower them."To which I would add from the author's side: If the advances are tiny (e.g., $12,000 or less), that doesn't cover the time it takes to write the book, and as authors know doing the promotion often seems to take almost as much time as the writing, if it's done well. We know that only we can promote the book successfully. But most of us are scrambling to keep up with the cost of living. We're willing to promote a book and can do so far more successfully if we have the publisher's support (get books to the bookstores near where we're speaking, before our speaking engagement, for example). If the publisher expects everything to happen in the first six weeks of the book's life, and then it's over, we don't have a chance. Building the book's audience takes time. Sustain that support over a slightly longer stretch of time. And support promotion of back list titles, too.

- A nonfiction writer