Book publicity, without the agency
Market the book you actually wrote.
Whether a house took you or you took yourself, the work after ‘The End’ is the same: a clear promise, a press letter, a few rooms that will have you, and a way to be found beside the famous names you cannot become overnight.
By Stewart Ferris — author of more than fifty books, co-founder of Summersdale Publishers, screenwriter and script editor.
A famous name sells the first thousand copies. Everything after that is earned the same way a debut is earned: one reader at a time, with a book that does what it promised.
Stewart Ferris
Four drawers
Open the one you need today.
Press release studio
A letter a journalist can steal from. Headline, dateline, book facts, and a contact who answers.
Open
Where the readers are
BookBub, NetGalley, Ingram, ALLi and the rest — not a dump of URLs, but when each one is worth the fee.
Open
Local marketing
The shops, libraries, papers and rooms within a bus ride. A checklist you can actually finish.
Open
Against household names
You will not out-brand Lee Child. You can out-specify, out-local, and out-reply him.
OpenFrom the publisher’s chair
I have sat on both sides of the table.
I co-founded Summersdale Publishers and have written more than fifty books of my own — mysteries, humour, travel, and the how-to titles writers actually used, including How to Be a Writer and How to Publish Your Own Book. The Ballashiels Mysteries still wander around bookshops with my name on them. I have also written for children’s television and sat in the editor’s chair.
Traditional and self-publishing are not moral positions. They are routes. Both still need a book that can be described in one breath, a letter a journalist can run, and a plan for the mile around your house. That is what this desk is for.
More books, credits and the rest of the work live at stewartferris.com.