Marketing Your Book

Marketing your book is probably the hardest part of successfully publishing a book. For many people, getting out there and “selling” a book is not something that appeals. Partly in recognition of this, and partly because the books trade in particular is complex and difficult to crack, Matador offers a full marketing service to authors whose books we feel stand a chance of selling to a wider audience.

Once your manuscript has been accepted for publication with Matador, and you have decided that you’d like to publish your book with us, you can also take advantage of our comprehensive marketing service (which is described below in more depth).

For some titles there is little point in undertaking marketing, which can be an expensive activity. We will be realistic about the chances of your book reaching a wider market before we agree to undertake any marketing. But for books that we feel have a good chance of being taken up by such outlets, you can choose for us to market your book to the book chains, online stores and independent shops, and to notify the relevant media.

For authors who enter into a marketing agreement with us, we prepare an Advance Information (AI) sheet and a Press Release (PR). The AI is sent to wholesalers, chain store book buyers and specialist outlets, as well as local and online bookshops. We have a good relationship with such organizations, which generally have established procedures for deciding what products to sell. (Most of the book sales made on behalf of our authors are made through the books trade, rather than through authors selling their own books.)

The PR is targeted at the relevant national and specialist press, as well as the author’s local media and other organisations that may be interested. The PR is accompanied by review copies of the book where relevant.

All of our self published titles are submitted to The Self Publishing Magazine, which is the UK’s only magazine carrying only independent reviews of self published titles. We cannot guarantee, however, that a book will be reviewed in this or any other publication.

Our books are all listed in The Bookseller magazine’s weekly online listing (read by all bookshops), and are available through most online bookstores, including Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones.co.uk and WHSmith.co.uk. In addition, your book will become available through any bookshop in the UK, either from stock or on overnight order.

To help authors promote themselves and their work, all Matador authors are given a free author web page on our web site. This has proved to be most valuable to many authors, as it gives a focus to self-promote their work. The author web page can contain photos, a biography and other information about your writing, and it can be updated at any time to reflect any news or reviews on your book.

Your book may also be featured in our twice-yearly catalogue, or other promotional material produced by us, and we can arrange for book cover adverts to appear in trade catalogues, produced by the UK’s main book wholesalers.

We'll tell you of any response to the marketing as it happens. We (or anyone else) can’t guarantee sales of your book, and make no promises for numbers of copies that will sell through marketing activities, but by the same measure, without any marketing at all – either by you or us – sales of your book will certainly be diminished.

Matador carries out all activities under its Marketing Contract for a flat fee of £350 plus postage costs (generally not more than £80). There are no other marketing costs incurred by our authors, unless they have specifically requested us to carry out some other activity on their behalf, such as placing advertisements in trade catalogues or production of marketing materials in addition to the AI and PR, in which case a fee would be agreed in advance of any work being carried out.