Self-Promotion for Authors: What the Publisher Does
All our authors ask at some point “how can I promote my book?” A lot of our authors—well, a lot of authors in general—are quite shy and don’t know where to begin with talking about their books to the public. We think a lot about how to promote books to eager readers without totally burning out. We’ll share some of what we’ve learned in the next few posts.
This is the first of a series of posts that outlines how Microcosm promotes books, what authors can do, and some tips for tying your book in with your other work, past and future. 
These posts are written for Microcosm’s authors and artists, and are geared towards our processes, but they should still be useful for anyone who is figuring out how to promote any book, whether you’re publishing it yourself or have a contract with a major house.
The first post is our side of the bargain.
What we do
Microcosm is a traditional-format publishing house. We solicit books from authors, and occasionally accept submissions, work with authors to produce the best possible book, have large quantities of books manufactured (in the USA!), and work hard to get those books into the hands of the right readers. Here are the basic steps:
– Marketing and development: This is the hardest part of the process to describe, but probably the most important. We spend hours researching the market for each book and figuring out a title, subtitle, cover design, and description. Sometimes this process is immediate and obvious, other times it takes months of back-and-forth and doubt. The end goal is to make sure that your book is accurately described and also that it fills a wanted and empty niche in the world of books out there so that excited readers are able to discover it.
– Editing: This is the part that you’ll see the most, in which we make sure that your book is what it says it is, is awesome to read, and has as few typos as possible.
– Production: When your book is ready, we design it and send it off to the printer. The development process informs your book’s size, color, design, paper type, how many we print, when it is printed, when it is released, and where all the copies are warehoused. We pay for the production and budget our promotional activities around selling enough books so that we recoup the investment quickly and begin paying you royalties.
– Publicity: We promote your book via printed catalogs and fliers that we distribute internationally, occasionally in targeted advertisements, and in every creative way we can possibly think of. Before your book comes out, we create digitally printed ARCs (Advance Review Copies) and both we and you distribute them to potential reviewers and interviewers. We work with book reviewers and media outlets that we have relationships with and create new connections with people whose readers we think would like your book. Sometimes we’ll run a Kickstarter campaign. We work closely with authors every step of the way to help you talk about your book and the bigger ideas behind it.
– Sales and distribution: We do our darnedest to sell the heck out of your book through many, many channels including directly to readers and fans—online, at events, and in our bookstore, to wholesalers, to distributors of various types, and more.
This is only a very brief summary of what we do in putting out a book. Hopefully it’ll help put the rest of the series into perspective!
Next in the series: Psyching yourself up to promote your book when that seems like the most terrifying thing ever.
Feel free to request topics in the comments, or by email. Read in more depth about what a publisher does in Joe Biel’s book, A People’s Guide to Publishing.