Author publicity trips are extremely important for promoting books abroad. With so much going on in the UK, a lot of people are unaware of the efforts that foreign publishers make when publishing their editions.
Two of my authors went abroad for foreign publicity trips last week. C.J. Daugherty, author of the international bestselling NIGHT SCHOOL series published by Atom/Little, Brown in the UK, and Anna-Lou Weatherley of CHELSEA WIVES published by Avon/HarperCollins.
Book signing at the Montreuil book fair in Paris
C.J. Daugherty was invited to the Paris Montreuil book fair by her French publisher, Robert Laffont, where the response to the second book in the NIGHT SCHOOL series was fabulous. They sent a camera crew to film her, organised a huge publicity breakfast for 35 bloggers, they had her on panel events, and held a book signing where Christi signed 200 copies. Their edition was an Amazon bestseller for two weeks even before publication because of pre-orders. It went into reprint on the same day it was officially released, and it has been in the top 20 on Amazon.fr among digital children’s books. The French reviews have been hugely positive — several girls who came up to Christi at Montreuil said they were buying it ‘because I read about it’. Bloggers even blogged about meeting her. Christi told me that one of the bloggers actually asked her “Can you go out in France without being recognised?”
C.J. Daugherty with her French editor Glenn Tavennec
This is testament to a great author publisher relationship. Christi is willing to do as much as possible to promote each of her 21 editions of NIGHT SCHOOL around the world. NIGHT SCHOOL is also a German bestseller, and remained on the charts for six consecutive weeks. The second book in the series, NIGHT SCOOL: LEGACY, will be published in January in the UK, and we will start to see extensive review coverage in our papers and magazines.
Italian book cover
Anna-Lou Weatherley arrived in Rome on the day of the launch of the Italian edition of CHELSEA WIVES. Her publisher, Newton Compton, cleverly changed the title to REVENGE OF THE WIVES, making it more suitable for the Italian market. Anna-Lou went for a wonderful lunch with her publisher followed by a video interview. They’ve done an enormous marketing campaign for the book with a fabulous book trailer, a popular facebook page, excellent promotional adverts and a mini booklet of the first few chapters which is going into Italian Vanity Fair.
Italian promotional billboard for ‘Revenge of the Wives’
Anna-Lou went shopping on Saturday and every bookstore she passed had rows and rows of her book in the window with huge billboards and placards. The strapline was ‘The novel all the women are talking about!’ She had her picture taken with the bookstore owners and signed copies for customers. Anna-Lou said “I was shopping in Jo Malone and got talking to the assistant and when I told her and her colleague about the book they rushed to the local store and bought copies for me to sign for them – I felt like I was famous!!”
Here is the Italian booktrailer for REVENGE OF THE WIVES
Foreign publicity is so important. Most foreign publishers invite authors to promote their books once they have a fan base to build on so it may be after the first book has been published. They are intense trips but great fun for authors and really help to build profile and sales.
