by R.S. Mellette

When last we left, I had set aside $20,000 to spend on the promotion of my next book, Kiya And The Morian Treasure, which hits streets April 26^th, 2022. So, let’s look at the heat I’m getting from the money I’ve set on fire.

Summer 2021: After a COVID delay of a year-and-a-half, my publisher, Elephant’s Bookshelf Press, was eager to get the ball rolling again, but our original cover artist gracefully bowed out to concentrate on her picture book/lower MG work. Matt at EBP found a new artist who promised to deliver in November. As that was the only big thing holding up publication, I reached out again to Books Forward saying, “We were a go in 2019. How about 2021?” They honored their 2019 bid. Contracts were signed in August for a November start to a six-month campaign ending with a launch sometime in the Spring of 2022. I was also sent an Author’s Questionnaire to complete before November.

Think of the most thorough, exposed medical procedure you can imagine. The questionnaire is a lot like that — but I’ll mix metaphors for everyone’s sake.

Your publicist is your sherpa. They will guide you up the PR mountain, but you have to climb it together. The questionnaire gives them an idea of the easiest path to take. We’ve all heard of platforms, finding your audience or your niche, etc. This is where that is revealed.

Also over the summer, Merritt Hicks finished recording the audiobook, but the editor we’d lined up bowed out. Since I have a working knowledge of dialogue editing — but not much experience — I decided to do the work myself, which is something I do not recommend. The finished book will run about 8 hours. It takes me 2-3 hours to edit ten minutes. You can do the math.

November 1^st came around and I got my first invoice from Books Forward. I also had a phone call with my assigned publicist, Jennifer Vance — Jenn. We had a nice chat, and she introduced me to my Publicity and Digital Report, which is a shared Google Sheet that includes a detailed breakdown of what to expect each month, and various tabs for progress reports. By the end of November, Jenn had read my book and turned my questionnaire answers into this Press Release. We also had about 100 media targets and submitted to Forward Reviews and Kirkus Reviews. These are pay-to-play critiques, so I hesitated quite a bit, but eventually, I figured if I’m in for a penny I’m in for a pound or in this case, over $900. We got a draft of the cover toward the end of the month. Publisher-Matt sent the first draft to me for notes. I included Jenn for her feedback. We were all on the same page about what needed changing — mostly that there are two main characters, but only one on the cover. 

December was slow, which was expected. Jenn got me a couple of New Year’s Resolution guest articles, which was nice. A new draft of the cover came in but was disappointing. Still only one character included. Again we gave our notes, hoping to get it back in a week or two.

January 1^st started with this tiny blurb from Hasty Book List followed shortly thereafter by a nice piece in Teen Ink. Of course, I shared both links on Facebook. The Teen Ink article got a fantastic re-post from someone in Houston with five-thousand friends, so that’s kind of cool. I got to promote myself, jokingly, as a teen idol.

For the rest of early January I did what we’ve all learned to do so well. I waited. Kirkus and Foreword reviews were due in soon, which I wasn’t really worried about. It was all about the cover. On January 10^th, Jenn expressed her concern as well. She wrote that, if it’s not ready by the end of the month, she won’t be able to get physical books into the hands of critics — and if that’s the case, we should consider pushing back the release date…

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series, coming next month!

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R.S. Mellette is on the board of the LA Region of SCBWI as the PAL Liaison.

Images provided by the author.