Grow your readership
Book marketing services built around one real reader
A launch plan with dates and owners, retailer advertising you can see the numbers on, and review outreach done by hand. No promises about sales, because nobody can keep them.
What it is
Marketing starts with who the book is for
Not "readers of literary fiction". One person, specific enough that you could describe their last three books.
Almost every failed launch we are shown failed at this step. The author wanted everyone to read the book, so the advertising spoke to nobody in particular, and the cover and blurb hedged. Narrowing the reader is what makes every later decision easy: which categories, which keywords, which podcasts, which five bookshops.
From there it is unglamorous work with measurable parts: metadata, a launch sequence, a modest advertising test, and outreach to people who review books like yours. If your category is well defined, it is easier again — there is more on how we approach business book publishing, and on the single biggest conversion factor in what makes a book cover sell.
- A written launch plan with dates, owners and a budget
- Advertising run in your own retailer accounts, not ours
- Review outreach by name, not a mail-merge
- Monthly reporting with the actual numbers, good or bad
What's included
What a launch campaign includes
Four pieces of work, all of which produce something you keep.
Reader and category research
Who the book is for, which categories they browse, what they already buy.
A dated launch plan
Twelve weeks mapped: pre-orders, review copies, launch week, the month after.
Retailer advertising
Set up and managed in your own accounts, starting small enough to learn from.
Review outreach
A researched list of reviewers, bloggers and podcasts, approached individually.
How it works
How a campaign runs
Five stages across about four months, starting before publication.
- 01
Positioning
Weeks 1–2The reader defined, comparable titles analysed, categories and keywords chosen, and the blurb rewritten if it is hedging.
Your part: Be honest about who the book is really for, not who you hope reads it.
- 02
Launch plan
Week 3A twelve-week plan with dates, owners and a budget, covering pre-orders, review copies, launch week and the follow-through most launches skip.
Your part: Tell us what you are willing to do. A plan you will not follow is useless.
- 03
Pre-launch
Weeks 4–8Review copies out to a researched list, pre-orders enabled, your author pages and website updated, and advertising creative prepared.
Your part: The personal outreach. Your name on the email works better than ours.
- 04
Launch week
Week 9Advertising live at a small daily budget, listings checked across every retailer, and the launch sequence executed to the plan.
Your part: Be available. Launch week is when opportunities need an answer the same day.
- 05
Ninety days of iteration
Weeks 10–20Advertising adjusted on what the numbers show, categories revisited, and a monthly report with the real figures and a recommendation.
Your part: Read the report and decide whether to keep spending.
Portfolio
Books we have produced and launched
Cover and production work from author projects, each shown with its real title and author.
The Lighthouse Cat
Marnie Delacroix
The Reef at Night
Helena Voss
Saltwater Country
Jenny Harlow
The Quiet Advantage
David Ngata
Small Repairs
Anna Reith
Ash and Ochre
Tom Varela
Related services
What usually comes next
Packages
Where marketing sits in our packages
The first ninety days of marketing are part of the Publish and launch package. Advertising spend is separate and goes to the retailer, not to us — we will recommend a starting budget and a ceiling.
Manuscript
Get the writing right before you spend anything on design.
for a 60,000-word manuscript
- Written manuscript assessment
- One round of structural editing
- Line edit and final proofread
- Australian spelling and style sheet
- A call with your editor at each stage
Publish
Everything needed to turn a finished manuscript into a book on sale.
for a 60,000-word manuscript
- Everything in Manuscript
- Original cover design, print and ebook
- Typeset interior for paperback and ebook
- ISBN registration and legal deposit
- Retailer and print-on-demand setup
- A printed proof copy before you sign off
- You keep the rights and the royalties
Publish and launch
For authors who want readers to find the book in its first month.
for a 60,000-word manuscript
- Everything in Publish
- A launch plan with dates and owners
- Author website with an email sign-up
- Retailer advertising for the first 90 days
- Review and bookshop outreach
- Monthly sales reporting for six months
Every quote is confirmed after we read your manuscript. Prices in Australian dollars and include GST. Longer books and illustrated books cost more, and we will say so before you commit.
Questions authors ask
Book marketing: questions authors ask
No, and anyone who does is lying to you. What marketing can do is make sure the right readers see the book, that the listing converts when they do, and that money is spent where there is evidence it works. Sales depend on the book itself more than on any campaign, and we will tell you if we think the book is the problem.
Start small enough that a failed test does not hurt — a few dollars a day for a few weeks is enough to learn whether your categories and keywords are right. Scale only what shows a return. Authors who begin with a large budget usually spend most of it learning what a small budget would have taught them.
Yours. We set up and manage campaigns inside your own retailer accounts, so you can see every figure and you keep the account history when the engagement ends. Agencies that run ads through their own accounts keep the data, which makes it impossible to judge what you actually bought.
Six to eight weeks before publication for the positioning and review outreach, because review copies need lead time and pre-orders need something to point at. Marketing a book that came out two years ago is still possible, but a launch window is a real advantage and it only happens once.
Not as a managed service, and we will usually advise against paying anyone for it. An account written by someone else sounds like it, and readers notice. What we will do is help you decide which one platform is worth your time, and what to post in launch week.
You will know early, because the reporting shows real numbers monthly. If advertising is not returning, our recommendation will be to stop spending rather than to spend more, and sometimes the honest conclusion is that the cover or the blurb is the limiting factor. We would rather say that than keep billing.
Still have a question? A real publisher will answer it.
Start your publishing journeyA clear way forward
Get a launch plan for your book
Tell us about the book and the reader you have in mind. We will come back with a view on positioning, what a campaign would involve and what it would cost.
- 1
Tell us where your book is now
- 2
We read it and recommend the next step
- 3
You decide with a written quote in hand