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MARKETING FAQs

How do you determine the marketing plan for my book?

Every book we publish is unique, and so are our marketing plans. Ultimately, the goal of every marketing campaign is to reach readers and create enthusiasm for the book. But who those readers are, how to best reach them and what excites them is very specific to each book—and therefore no two marketing plans are the same.

Marketing a book is a highly collaborative effort and involves expertise from many departments within Hachette Book Group. It all begins with the passion and commitment of the editor and publisher, who will represent your book within HBG. In collaboration with editorial, marketing, publicity, and sales, we research and determine the target audience for your book as well as the most suitable comparative titles. This information shapes our strategy for pitching your book to retailers, our jacket design, media outreach and publicity plan, and marketing approach.

Given the prevalence of online media and retail, marketing has become a complex interplay between online and offline tactics. Our sales department will pitch your book for inclusion in retail promotions (in stores and online), while our social media marketers will reach out to influencers and develop an engaging content strategy to promote your book through our social channels and yours. The metadata team will optimize the title’s metadata for online search and optimal retailer placement, while the advertising team will support organic search through a paid-search strategy, back up our organic social media efforts with social media advertising, and look for other ways to expand audience reach.

Marketing is at its most impactful when various tactics play off one another. We keep our eyes focused on our analytics tools to get a read on what’s working and what would benefit from further amplification.

Your support, in the form of additional content we can incorporate into our marketing, your social media posts, and your participation in events, are critical to the success of the marketing campaign. We’ll be looking to leverage your expertise in your subject area and authority with your audience to ensure that your book is being published with maximum impact.

What is the difference between publicity and marketing?

The publicity team develops the media strategy for your book. We will reach out to the appropriate media outlets to secure reviews for your book, interviews (TV, radio, podcasts, print, online), and explore opportunities for placing excerpts or other related writing in major publications. Your publicist will also look into opportunities for events and book tours and help you prepare for your various public appearances. Our publicity department liaises often with the sales department, as the media lineup for the book is instrumental in securing support from our retailers and getting great placements in stores.

The marketing team promotes your book to booksellers, librarians, and directly to consumers. They create sales and marketing materials, including galleys and digital catalogs. They work with the sales team to secure in-store promotions and merchandising, and they develop consumer-facing campaigns to drive awareness of your book.

Given the complexity of online and offline marketing channels, a typical marketing campaign will involve a mix of tactics, all tailored toward your specific audience. It may include email promotion through our newsletters, social media marketing, influencer outreach, early giveaways to encourage consumer reviews, academic marketing and educator outreach, metadata optimization, promotion through our websites, book club outreach, advertising, the production of promotional items, in-store promotions, and inclusion in our catalogs, for example.

Publishing a book is a highly collaborative process, and all our departments meet regularly to review the details of a campaign and discuss ways to elevate one another’s efforts. Your participation and partnership in the process are critical to the success of our campaign.

What is academic marketing?

Where appropriate, we will promote your book to educators for course adoption and for inclusion in first-year experience and common reading programs. These efforts may include displaying the book at relevant conferences, email promotions, and inclusion in print and online catalogs. College and university instructors can request complimentary examination and desk copies of books for courses through the Hachette Academic website.

What is metadata?

Metadata is all the information about your book that we send to retailers, libraries, and websites like Goodreads. It includes the book jacket, author biography, book description, title and subtitle, series information, reviews and quotes, page count, categories (BISACS, or Book Industry Subjects and Categories), on-sale date, price, and much more. This information determines how your book is shelved in physical bookstores, where it appears within the taxonomy of online stores and library catalogs, and how it ranks in searches. For potential readers who encounter your book on sites like Amazon, BN.com, Bookshop.org or Goodreads, metadata is key to persuading them that this is the book they want to buy.

Recognizing the critical importance of metadata, Hachette Book Group has a dedicated team of metadata experts who work closely with the editorial teams to optimize the metadata for every title. This work begins as soon as we acquire a book and set it up within our bibliographic systems, and it continues well past the publication of the book. We regularly revisit metadata for backlist titles to add new information about the book and refresh the keywords based on new search trends.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO in short, is what we do to make sure that your book is easily found online. This starts with optimizing your book page on our websites so that it ranks high in online searches. Our web technology team makes sure that our website is ideally structured for search engines like Google to find and index our page content.

Our editorial and metadata teams work together to develop the best description for your book. They research and analyze search trends and make sure to work the most impactful keywords into the descriptive copy. The selection of category, or BISAC, or series and edition information, are also critical in ensuring that your book appears in all relevant searches.

SEO extends well beyond our website. The strength of our descriptions and metadata determines how your book will be found and featured on retailer sites and in library catalogs. Our video production team ensures that all our video content is tagged with important keywords. And we’re keeping abreast of trends in voice search to make sure that your book can also be found through devices like Alexa or Google Home.

If you have your own website and would like guidance on SEO, our web team would be glad to make recommendations.

Do I need my own website?

Every author published by Hachette Book Group has dedicated author and book pages on our corporate website, hachettebookgroup.com. Our web development team ensures that our book and author pages rank high in searches, are optimized for viewing on different screen sizes, and offer easy navigation and purchase options. We regularly analyze our web traffic to ensure that our pages are delivering optimal performance.

Your book and author pages on hachettebookgroup.com contain all the important information relating to you and your book that a consumer would look for, such as title and subtitle, book description, your author biography, retailer links, praise and reviews, publication date, page count, ISBN, the book jacket, and your author photo. Furthermore, these pages can be enhanced through special content, such as videos, text and audio excerpts, reading guides, and tour information. We can also link back to your social media accounts.

Many of our authors decide that their pages on our corporate website are sufficient. Developing your own website requires some effort in the initial set up as well as ongoing upkeep. While WordPress and other platforms have made it much easier and cheaper to create a professional-looking website, you may still need to hire a web designer to create a more customized experience.

If you would like to explore options for creating your own website, or are thinking about upgrading an older website, we’re happy to provide advice, recommend online tools, or connect you with designers. We can also participate in the development of your personal site by contributing platform and design advice or by providing content such as book jackets and excerpts.

How can I engage my readers?

Engaging directly with readers can be a very enriching experience and can help drive sales for your book. In addition to pursuing media appearances and interviews, your publicist will actively seek out opportunities to put you in front of an audience, whether it’s at a bookstore, library, festival, or convention. Often, libraries and bookstores in your hometown will be a great place to meet and hear from some of your readers.

In addition, there are many ways to connect with your readers online. We encourage all of our authors to participate in social media as a way of establishing a direct line of communication to readers. Building a profile on social media not only allows you to speak directly to interested readers, but it also can provide valuable audience insights that we can then use to refine your marketing campaign.

Once you have a social profile established, there are many ways in which you can engage your audience. You can post about your day-to-day as a writer; ask questions; post polls or quizzes; host sweepstakes; or run a live video Q&A. Refer to our Social Media Guide for more tips and best practices.

In addition to your own audience outreach, we will leverage our newsletters, social media profiles, websites and blogs to bring your book to the right audience. Our content marketing specialists are always on the lookout for engaging content from the author, such as video interviews, book club material, signed copies for sweepstakes, and more. It’s a great way to engage your readers by taking advantage of our extensive audience reach.

Do I need to be active on social media?

While many of our authors have learned to leverage social media as a powerful audience development and marketing tool, we recognize that social media can be time-consuming and sometimes intimidating. Don’t spread yourself too thin; start by focusing on the network that feels most intuitive to you. Try to find a way to have fun with the medium and be authentic, while keeping in mind that everything you post on social media is very public and will be shared beyond your circle of followers. Our Social Media Guide for authors provides more detailed best practices.

If you’re still on the fence about joining social media, check out some of your own favorite authors and see if their use of social media provides a blueprint you might want to follow.

It’s a good idea to follow and engage with other authors, your publisher, your agent, and other industry contacts. By sharing and commenting on their content, you will extend your own reach, be part of the community, and will have more to share with your own followers.

We’re here to help you weigh the pros and cons and determine a good strategy if you need further advice.

I finished my manuscript. Now what?

Congratulations! All of us who work in book publishing know how much commitment, vision and hard work it takes to write a book, and we’re excited to work with you through the next steps of getting your book into the hands of readers. Our Guide for Authors provides a comprehensive overview of the publication process and timeline, along with helpful tips and resources.

If you have not done so already, please fill out Hachette’s Author Questionnaire as thoroughly as possible. The information you provide helps publicity and marketing shape their plans and develop new pitches, and it opens up new avenues to pursue as your book continues on the road to publication. You can access the questionnaire through the HBG Author Portal.

Once the manuscript is finalized, marketing and publicity swing into full gear. We will produce advance reading copies (ARCs), or galleys, and send those out to reviewers and influencers. Our publicity department will discuss media strategy with you and seek your advice on key media targets. It is important that you plan to actively participate in the media roll-out of your book. The most effective marketing is authentic and unique to you as the author. In other words, your readers want to hear from you! The most critical times in terms of your availability for publicity are typically the month before and six weeks after the on-sale date.

Social media has become a key component in the successful launch of a book. We encourage you to keep your followers engaged by posting about major milestones in the publication of your book: the completion of your manuscript is one of those great moments to share with your readers. Please refer to our Social Media Guide for authors for more advice on how to leverage social media to support the marketing of your book. We will use our own social media channels to amplify your posts and run social media ads to expand the reach of our campaign.

The marketing team will finalize their advertising and promotional plans and begin working with you to finalize the creative direction of our marketing. We welcome your feedback and participation in the process.

How do I update my profiles on Amazon and Goodreads?

Many readers will want to learn more about their favorite authors by checking out their profiles on Amazon and Goodreads. Those profiles are controlled by the author, not the publisher, and we strongly encourage you to set up your access to those pages and keep information about you and your books up to date.

For Goodreads, you will first need to sign up for the Goodreads Author Program. Once you have access, you can update your author bio, upload a photo, and make sure that your books are all listed correctly. You can also use your profile to create lists of your favorite books, post blog content and book excerpts or other writing, share details about upcoming events, and take questions from readers using the Ask the Author feature. Reach out to your marketing manager for advice on how to best leverage the platform.

You can claim your Amazon author page by registering on Amazon Author Central. Similarly to Goodreads, you have the ability to change your bio, upload an author photo, add additional content to the page, and make sure that all of your books are listed correctly.

Amazon’s author portal also provides a sales snapshot for your titles. What’s important for you to know is that Amazon sources sales information from NPD Bookscan, which captures approximately 85 percent of print sales through retailers. These numbers do not include ebook sales, audio sales, sales to libraries and wholesalers, or used book sales. All preorders for a book are included in the first week of sales.

Given the specific limitations of the Bookscan data, it is likely that it will not match sales numbers provided to you by your publisher.

What do you know about my audience?

Our marketing departments use data from many sources to research the audience for your book and optimize our campaign with those insights in hand. Tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights allow us to analyze the demographic and geographic information of audiences who follow a specific profile or visit specific pages on our website. We research affinity interests of your readers: what other authors, media or brands are they interested in? Social listening tools allow us to analyze conversations about specific topics and identify influencers.

We often break down digital ad campaigns into different subsets, each targeting a different audience segment, to get a better read on which audiences are most responsive and which marketing message resonates most with specific groups. We may survey an audience to determine the best marketing creative or jacket design.

But audience insight is not all about data and tools. Our publishing teams have many direct touchpoints with readers. We meet readers at conventions, book signings, media events, and school and library events. We interact with them via our social channels and our blogs. We talk frequently with our retailers and other industry partners to find out what they are learning about readers and their preferences.

Our authors are another invaluable source of information about specific readers, because most likely you will have written your book with a specific reader in mind. The more we know about your intended audience, the better we can work this into our marketing approach.

All of these sources of insight come together and form a rich view of who your readers are.

What can I do to increase sales for my books?

There is a lot you can do in support of our marketing and publicity activities that will benefit your book. The more we can partner with you on the marketing and publicity rollout, the more authentic and specific the campaign will feel—and this will often be reflected in sales.

As a start, we want to hear from you about your intended audience. Which kind of reader did you have in mind when you wrote your book? What other books may appeal to a similar audience and can serve as a comparative title for our campaign? If you have social media accounts, consider giving us access so that we can analyze the demographic and geographic concentration and affinity interests of your social media followers.

We encourage all of our authors to be active on social media, engage with their followers regularly, and share all the milestones in the publishing process.

Your publicist will discuss a media strategy with you. It’s important for you to be available to participate in book signings, media appearances and other events, in particular during the month before on-sale and the six weeks after. Engage with your readers and share your enthusiasm as much as your schedule permits. It is also a good idea to network with other authors and influencers. In some cases, you may want to ask your contacts to share a social media post about your book with their followers or participate in an event.

Oftentimes, the most successful marketing leverages interesting content. To that end, we are always keen to have additional content from you to help promote the book. We often leverage the excerpt of the book, but we may also ask you to do a Q&A with us, provide book club material, or come into the office for a video or audio recording. If you have additional materials relating to your book that we could leverage as part of the campaign, let us know!

The more content we can work into our campaign that comes directly from you, the more authentic it will feel to your readers and the more impact it will have.