Marketing and publicity

Our retail setup and distribution service are essential if you want to see your book available for sale. We write the key marketing text for your book's retail setup (i.e. blurb, author biography, key selling points and keywords), assign subject classification codes to your book (which retailers use to find books) and assign a Troubador ISBN (unless you opt to use your own).

For authors using a Troubador ISBN, we handle metadata management for the lifetime of the book. (Metadata is how the book trade order and discover new titles, and how ISBN information is supplied to the book trade. Our metadata is sent electronically via enhanced Onix-3 feeds – we hold a BIC BASIC award for the quality of metadata we supply.)

We notify wholesalers and retailers about your book via digital data grids, and daily through live price and availability (p&a) feeds. We list your book for sale in our online bookshop – a page listing your title, with the option for you to add an author photo and author news, and 24/7 access to sales information and historic royalty statements. We also ensure our warehouse has a stock of your book to fulfil direct, online and trade sales – and we take care of invoicing, returns and the despatch of orders. Once printed, we add your book to our Amazon account and to our Bookshop.org webshop.

This is perfect for authors seeking a more in-depth bookshop option. For authors wishing to give their book the best possible chance of selling through high street retailers, we offer full trade sales representation through Star Book Sales. Star have a team of 11 regional sales representatives who actively sell new titles into retailers' head offices, local stores and other book retail outlets in the run-up to a book's publication date.

In addition to the digital metadata work that we do, managing the key data about your book and sending that to bookshops and wholesalers, we also create a Troubador branded Local AI (Advance Information) sheet, listing all the key information about your book – blurb, biography, publication and ordering information – sent digitally to local bookshops (UK only), with a PDF copy provided for your own use.

This service also includes a half-page entry in our Highlights sales catalogue, only available to customers taking this service. Highlights is mailed out to those placing direct retail orders and to our retail trade list, is available at trade events we attend, and is used by the sales reps to help them sell in new titles.

This service is for authors seeking a professional media marketing campaign at the launch of their book. A dedicated in-house Publicist will create and manage your media campaign – writing and distributing a press release, creating and running a bespoke PR campaign, and responding to and following up on media and review requests on your behalf.

We create a press release about your book and you as its author. As we are handling the entire media campaign on your behalf, the release is Troubador branded and will contain text relevant to the media, a cover image, bibliographic information, an author biography and an author quote. You get the final say on the content of the press release before it is released, and a copy in PDF format for your own use too.

We create a bespoke media contact list using our industry-standard media database, identifying national and local journalists and media organisations (across print, audio, visual and digital media) who may be interested in your book. You approve the media list before the campaign begins, and we also highlight those journalists to whom we'll send a review copy on your behalf.

Your Publicist will follow up on your media campaign, liaise with you over coverage and send you any clippings and features as we receive them. We list your book and ebook (if you have one) on the NetGalley review platform for four weeks. (NetGalley is the UK's leading review site for librarians, publishers, reviewers and bloggers.) After four weeks, we'll chase for any outstanding reviews and then send you a report showing activity (downloads, reviews, etc.). Positive book reviews will be placed on your book entry on our website, and the reviewers are encouraged to post them online.

Our ebook marketing service includes:

• An expertly prepared ebook listing on NetGalley (listing live for four weeks).
• The creation of two promotional graphics for use on social media, in your own advertising efforts and on our own social media feeds.
• A booklet looking at things you can do yourself to promote your ebook.
• We follow up with reviewers who download a copy of your ebook and encourage them to leave a review.
• A full report at the end of the four-week marketing period summarising all activity generated, including a number of download requests, feedback on the cover, reasons people gave for wanting to read the book, and a round-up of any reviews received so far.

Think of this service as something akin to a reader browsing in a bookshop, where they can dip into the text and get a feel for a book. Our Enhanced Discoverability service places your book on both Amazon's 'Search Inside' and Google's 'Search in a Book' platforms, so that potential readers can 'browse' your book. Both platforms make a percentage of a book available to view, never all of it. (But neither allows us to specify what can or cannot be displayed, it is carried out automatically by the suppliers with different random pages being available to view with each visit.)

When your book is ready to go to print, we place your book into Amazon's 'Search Inside' programme, allowing customers to browse some of your books before buying. We also place your book onto Google's 'Search in a Book' platform, enabling those searching on Google to sample your book.

Amazon customers have a 'Buy' button on the same page as the 'Search Inside' function, allowing easy purchases for their customers. Google's search platform includes links to your book on various retailers' websites to help easily purchase by Google browsers.

All of our supplementary marketing services are designed to raise the profile of your book or ebook, and many can be used by you directly to promote your work to retailers and readers. Our supplementary marketing services include:

• A wide range of printed promotional materials, including pop-up banners, posters, bookmarks, business cards, leaflets and postcards.
• A Book Trailer video with which to promote your work on websites and social media.
• Social media graphics.
• Meet the Author video.
• Instagram tours.
• Book2Look Biblet.
• and much more...