Sometimes publishing can seem like a grand old mystery when you don’t work in the industry. Have you ever wondered how the publicity and marketing departments of publishing houses operate? Have you spent time thinking about how campaigns are created and how they then decide to involve the blogging community? Do you sometimes wonder why some publishers may seem more elusive than others?
*raises hand*
I know I have.
So here’s something cool: I have the opportunity to visit a few publishers next week, along with Hannah from The Irish Banana Review and Stephanie from No BS Book Reviews, and meet up with peeps in publicity and marketing. The goal is simple: to chat about publisher/blogger relations, make new connections, strengthen existing ones and get a better understanding of how things work on their end in hopes of improving communication and efficiency. Also, shenanigans in NYC!
Hannah has done trips like this before with her Pub Crawl feature and it’s always looked tons of fun from afar. Stephanie and I have done something like this earlier this year when we attended the Outlander premiere in April, but it was on a much smaller scale and very impromptu. Pubby Love is a feature Stephanie started to promote some of the books she received from publishers. This trip is a mash up of the two.
However, this is the first time we’re all going together and visiting a lot of different publishers. So we decided to make this a little interactive experiment and get questions from our readers and friends. Do you have questions about publishing or publicity or blogger relations that you want answered? Tell us what we should ask during our pow-wow sessions!
Here are the deets
Who:
Steph Sinclair (Superman is not invited this time)
[one_half]
Hannah of The Irish Banana Review
Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube[/one_half]
[one_half_last]
Stephanie of No BS Book Reviews
Twitter | Instagram | Facebook[/one_half_last]
What: Visiting various publishers
When: July 23-24 (next week)
Where:
[one_third]Thursday
Harlequin
HarperCollins
Macmillan
St. Martins
Tor
Hachette
Bloomsbury[/one_third]
[one_third_last]Friday
Penguin Teen
Alloy Entertainment
Simon Teen
Atria[/one_third_last]
Why: To improve blogger/publisher relations, learn new things and share this knowledge
Along the way, we’ll be posting a lot of pictures on twitter and instagram, and live tweeting our experience using the #PubbyLoveLive hashtag. Feel free to follow along and tweet questions for us to ask. After the trip is said and done, we’ll each do write ups with answers and (hopefully!) have new insight and perspective.
So ask your questions in the comments here or tweet me (@Cuddlebuggery), Hannah (@Irish_Banana) and Stephanie (@NoBSbrBlog) all the things!
Kat C
What an amazing opportunity, I hope you all have a fun trip !
I would like to know more about the ways the YA publishers are planning on / currently promoting diverse titles in their social media, group tours and other events.
Tammy @ Books, Bones & Buffy
This is awesome! I have a question. Why do some publishers seem to ignore specific book requests, but then they will send you unsolicited ARCs of other titles instead?
Anya @ On Starships and Dragonwings
Yey this sounds like such fun! My main question would be what can I do to make publicists lives easier. We hear so much about how busy they are so I’d love to know when is ideal to send them the review and link to it, what information is most useful in an arc request, etc, anything that bloggers often don’t get right and we could do a little different to make things go smoother!
Liza @ Reading with ABC
Have fun and don’t forget about those of us left behind (you can’t see me, but I’m pouting right now 🙁 )
Just kidding! Go forth and conquer!
Shannelle
This sounds like a great idea! I don’t really have any questions, but I will be awaiting that recap. 😀
Carina Olsen
Okay, this is all kinds of awesome 🙂 I cannot wait to read about your visits. <3 Have lots of fun 😀
Holly J
Ooh, I’m excited to see how it goes! Have all the fun! 🙂