I am assuming you have gone with a self-publishing company, and this sounds like a horrible deal. In fact, it sounds like a scam to me. I strongly advocate doing more research about your publisher, and, frankly, doing more research about self-publishing option (and traditional publishing options).

If marketing is not a writers niche , he must spend time learning and that changes the entire scenario. Publishers should at least provide a list of contacts for media comments, and along with the author should prepare an announcement that canbe sent to approprioate reviewers. Getting a book reviewed is mindboggling and may take a year even if you pay a reviewer. A book signing tour is out of the question for 99% of writers.Doing local and immediate surrounding areas is also expensive, . What all the comments lacked or refused to say is that the one and probably only way to get publicity is to hire an agent. If that is what publishers expect an author to do, most of us will just fade away.Internet publicity is also oversold. You may get lots of hits by people who scan for no other purpose than curiosity. I believe there is a market for most books and the publisher and author should concentrate on that market rather than reaching for the stars.
Thank you for listening. Roger Neetz

So ultimately you’re your own best PR. Taking part in booksignings and interviews, selling copies to your friends, carrying copies in your trunk to sell in case you meet random individuals who may be interested, leaving business cards, etc, are all useful tools. These are all things that can have a direct impact because if you meet a potential reader, you can tell them as much as you can about the book without it sounding like corporate hard-sell. You can discuss it with people individually. A publisher doesn’t have the time to do that. You also have the opportunity to tap into an important market: your own friends, colleagues and family; your local community; people whose expertise or interests are similar to your own.

Ergo, you need to market if you want to maximise the results. If you don’t, you’re leaving your destiny in the hands of a publishing company which has twenty or a hundred other titles to publicise and whose authors are far more helpful. Make it easier for themselves and for you.

Imagine this: one in ten people who find your book will be interested in it (this is being generous); one in two of those will buy it straight away. But let’s say you’re listed alongside 1,000 other books and your potential customer only has 10 minutes to find a book and buy it. They can only look at three or so books before they log off the PC. That gives you maybe a 1/300 chance of them finding your book. Factor in the figures above (10% like the sound of your book; 50% of those buy), you have a 1/6,000 chance of selling a single copy. It would take everyone in the world to log onto Lulu before you’d become a millionaire, and I’m sure that, in the real world, the figure of 1/6,000 is still way too optimistic.

Every time you tell someone from your target audience about your book, you’re marketing it. You’re publicising it whenever you tell _anyone_ about it. Even if you tell 100 people about your book, how many do you seriously think will pick up a copy? That’s why marketing is essential. Telling 100 nuns to buy a book about Satanism would be a waste of time. It’s publicity, but not the right kind. If you sat down and planned things a bit (this is the difference between marketing and publicising, BTW), it then becomes marketing. Don’t tell the nuns when you could be with the local infernalists’ cabal, helping them sacrifice a bull so that when they all take off their robes and have dinner, you can mention your book.

Marketing isn’t as difficult as you’d think; it’s just time consuming. Most marketing is common sense. You need to get your book into the right hands at the right time. Publishers will help with this, and do everything they can, but if you don’t play along with them, you shouldn’t expect wonders. Whether you like it or not, you are your book. You’re part of your brand value as much as your book is. No one can be more enthusiastic about your own book than you can. You know it inside out (or you should do).

In 2003 my co-author and I had a very compelling (well, that’s what lots of people said when they heard the idea!) book in mind, based on our pretty unique work experience ( http://www.tkassociatesllc.com/HUNTING_THE_AMERICAN_TERRORIST.html ). We got a draft together, and busy bee me went to the San Francisco Writer’s Conference that Fall, where I Paid $25. to queue up at “Speed Dating For Agents.” There were several interested parties, but one young agent in particular was very smitten with the idea, and in subsequent meetings with us he said he was “thinking in the high six figures” where a publisher’s advance was concerned. (!)

Well, this was more than musical to our ears, and since he was also an attorney we were very happy to sign a contract with him to represent us. We started running drafts by him, and he put lots of effort into making them better, whereupon he began making his rounds of publishers and pitching the book (non-fiction, so we’d developed a full proposal, chapter outline and several finished chapters – which I’d learned how to do by buying every book I could find on the subject and researching endlessly online).

We assumed he knew what he was doing, and we also assumed publishers would be eager for the chance to publish us. . The idea of an advance put me into furnishing a dream cottage on a cliffside at the edge of the Pacific, the cries of seagulls sounding faintly above the thunderous waves surging below. (This was after I paid off all my debts and had returned from a month in an Italian villa during the harvest.)

Often we didn’t hear from our young agent for months. Then he’d call and we’d have a meeting with him at his law office in San Francisco, where he’d go on just as enthusiastically as ever about the book – and perhaps even a second book, had we thought about that? He’d make some calls and we’d brainstorm some changes about the developing manuscript, and we’d take our leave of him just as starry eyed as we’d been at the outset. Then we wouldn’t hear from him again for a long time. He’d be traveling, busy with other things (he was also a new father), had a few new contacts he was developing, including some film folks in LA (imagine our wide eyes at this prospective development!), etc.

Long story short: After about a year and half of this, I was vacationing with friends at a B&B on Martha’s Vineyard, which was run by the wonderful mystery novelist Cynthia Riggs ( http://cynthiariggs.com/ ) – related to one of our number by marriage. She loved what I told her about the book, and I emailed the proposal to her when I got home. When I told her we had an agent – and that we’d had one for well over a year with no results – she arched an eyebrow at me and said, “No, he won’t do – go ahead and terminate your contract and get back to me.” When we told our young stalwart about our decision, he said rather wistfully on the phone that it was true he’d recently “lost some momentum” (If he’d ever had any we were never aware of it), and wished us well. Two weeks later, although her own agent had passed on representing us, Cynthia put us together with a new, small publisher ( http://historypublishingco.com/ ), who worked tirelessly with us and a very experienced author to finally produce the book. There was no advance, and very little money for publicity, though he tried.

Late in 2007 we took the bull by the horns (ouchy) and hired our own independent publicist, the aforementioned and wildly competent Susan Schwartzman, who began marketing our second book months before it was published and is continuing to champion it even after her campaign on our behalf was over. Sales are getting better and better as a result, although, of course, we seem to have picked a hell of a time to become authors in this current chaotic, sky-is-falling publishing scene.

Our advice? Read Susan’s advice on this blog, for one thing, and be aware that if you want your books to sell, you are every bit as responsible to make that happen – and to market yourself – as anyone else in this currently turbulent publishing environment. If you don’t want to sell your book, don’t worry about marketing – but don’t be surprised if you’re either forever obscure or the next John Kennedy O’Toole.