How does this affect my book?

You may be wondering what all of this has to do with publicizing you book. The way your book is published is going to affect the results you get from your publicity and whether you need to hire someone to do your publicity or if the publisher will be doing all of that work.

A large publisher will have in-house publicity experts that handle setting up the events schedules, submitting your book to newspapers, magazines, radio and television. If you have a small publisher, they will still do most of this but on a smaller scale. A POD, self-publisher, vanity press or subsidy publisher does little to nothing for your publicity.

Once you know what is being done, you can then concentrate on what you are responsible for. Typically, you aren't going to be able to sit back and watch the big checks start pouring in. Be active in promoting your book to anyone and everyone you meet.

How do you know if you need to hire someone and what is the window for hiring someone?

If your publisher asks you for a list of names so they can send a post card, you can pretty much bet you are on your own for publicity. The benefits of hiring someone else to do your publicity for you is the time it takes, the names and addresses they can access and the established relationships they have established. the draw back is you are going to be paying anywhere from $2,000-20,000 for your publicity.

You should always hire a publicist as soon as humanly possible. There are many media that will not look at a book if it is past the publication date. There are some who will not look at a galley if the publication date is within 3 months. Also, some authors try to do their own publicity and figure they can hire someone later. This is crippling to your publicity campaign because of redoubled efforts and good leads gone cold because the author did not know how to promote their own book.

Can you hire a publicist if your book is already out? Yes. The idea is depressing though because you simply aren't going to get the results you are looking for.

Plan early and decide if you want to publicize on your own or if you want to hire a professional.