Publisher marketing strategies

[I, Brian]

I'd like to get a better idea on how publishers set up marketing as a whole for a genre they published.

Do they generally have an overall marketing budget, which is then simply allocated to individual titles over the year?

If so, do publishers generally handle all aspects of the marketing themselves, or do they tend to outsource this work, either in part or in whole, to third party marketing companies?

Simply because I've had a couple of small third-party marketing companies approach chronicles about help promoting individual titles.

But it seems to make more sense to connect with the publisher marketing depts, and work in a more co-ordinated manner across a range of titles.

However, I'm not quite sure at present how big publishing companies organise their marketing, so a couple of pointers could be most helpful.

[John Jarrold]

It varies between publishers. Often an imprint's marketing budget will be set in September of the previous year, together with all that publisher's other imprints, and it can be a (small) percentage of the imprint's turnover. Sometimes, you have to juggle it, if a major new book comes into the imprint after that, but many publishers will have an outline of the entire year's marketing in Janaury, and will then confirm month by month as the books come up for pre-publication meetings, which can take place six months before publication.

In most cases, mainstream publishers have marketing departments and will either have one marketing person who deals specifically with SFF, or will dole the books out around the department. Darren Nash did all the marketing for Earthlight when I was running it.

It might be worthwhile talking to Ariel, who runs The Alien Online, and has a tie-in with Orbit...

[I, Brian]

Thanks for the info - will look into contacting them more directly then.

[John Jarrold]

The only time I've known publishers outsource marketing strategy is for a huge international bestseller - and certainly Robert Jordan, Tad Williams and so forth are done in-house, as is Iain Banks as far as I'm aware...

[I, Brian]

The only one I could put a name to was Raymond E Feist - what appeared to be a third party marketing company contacted me about the September launch of a new book. Can't recall the name of the company, though, I'm afraid.

ADDED: Of course, it could always have been a fake email from some other third-party.

[John Jarrold]

Worth checking - Feist is the sort of name for whom Voyager might use an outside agency...