Book Girls Don't Cry - Dealing With Publishers

Hello!

When I first posted the kick off post for Book Girls the most popular topic that readers suggested to us was how to deal with publishers.  I remember when I first started blogging branching out and sending emails seemed very daunting and I wasn't sure when the right time to start was.  I don't think there is any defined rule that goes for all publishers but I have found some things that appear to be pretty general so I am going to share with you how I went about getting my foot in the door.

When I had first started blogging everyone told me to wait until 6 months before I started contacting anybody but I have to admit that I ended up starting around 4 months and it went pretty well.  Sure there were some big pubs that I never heard back from and had to email again but some replied and were very nice.  I don't think the most important thing is how long you have been blogging, I think it's what you have accomplished.  If you are not gaining any followers and are posting mostly meme's of course the person you email is going to check out your blog and see that.  But if you are posting good, strong content and getting a response from readers that's great and exactly what the pubs are looking for.

So what did I send to them you ask, well I start off with each publisher pretty generally.  I know that there are catalogs out there that are full of titles that you want to get your hands on, but I feel that upon first contact putting all the titles of books you want in the email is pretty presumptuous so I always ask about a mailing list.  In the subject field I'll put "Mailing List Inquiry" and then in the body of the email I include a recap of myself that I have come up with. In the recap you can find:

• I start off with a little about myself. Where I am from, how old I am, how long I have been blogging.
• In the middle I include my blog stats which includes: # of followers, # of RSS feed subscribers, #of facebook likes, # of twitter followers, # of weekly page views (and how many of those are unique), where else I post my reviews (such as Goodreads & Amazon.) 
• I also include that I like to participate in blog tours and host authors on my blog in any way that I can.
• And finally I close off with a little more about myself and why blogging is important to me.
• Following all of this I always make sure to include my shipping address because that's something they will definitely be looking for.

As you can see, I think it's important to make it about the stats, yes, but also to make it personal.  The publishers are going to be working with me, not a machine, so I like to put myself out there a bit and let them know what they are in for.  This email that you write up isn't just what I send to publishers but it's always what I use for requests on Edelweiss and Netgalley so make sure you polish it up because one simple write up can get you a long way and then you just have to change the numbers as you go.

At this point you might be wondering who to send it to and my only advice for that is to peruse the publishers websites. Some publishing sites have a special tab for bloggers but often times you will use the media or publicity contact email that they have listed.

And then what? One commenter on the kick-off post was wondering what happens after all of this? So at this point you are on with the publisher and then when do you contact them again? Well, here in Canada there are a few publishers who work with a newsletter system and I have to say that is something that I really appreciate.  Every month these publishers (Hachette Canada, Raincoast books and Hachette UK) send out a newsletter and you simply respond to the email with which books you would like for review.  But for the pubs who don't do that I usually only contact them when a new catalog is released.  I'll go through it and find which ones I want and then send that list to my contact at that publishing house. It may be tempting to email them every time there is a cover reveal for a book that you can't wait for but until the catalog comes out they usually don't have the book anyway so try your hardest to resist constant annoyances.

This is the road I have taken when dealing with publishers and I have found it to be quite successful.  Sure I am not on with every publisher and am still making contact but it all takes time and I don't think it's a process that you can rush in any way.  I have found that all the people I have had contact me back are really sweet and easy to deal with.  I remember being so scared because I was contacting huge publishing houses and I was just a little blogger but most of the time these pubs have certain people who deal with the blogger outreach and they are great.

So do you have anything to add? What has your experience with publishers been like? Any tricks of the trade you would like to share?

There was also another topic that caught our eye this week so we thought we would make it a two-fer and include that one as well.  In our suggestion form last week we got a very simple anonymous suggestion that simply read "monkeys" so here is my post for that topic:

Oh, and this because YUM!