The Art of Publicity

TESS TAYLOR is the author of The Forage House (2013) and Work & Days (2016), both published by Red Hen Press. She is an on-air reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered, and this spring she is the Anne Spencer Poet in Residence at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia.

THIS winter, as I resurfaced after a long sabbatical during which I was able to disconnect and work, head down and solitary, on new poems and essays, I found myself thinking about publicity. Maybe it was that, after a flurry of two books and two babies, and after extended time to focus on my writing, I finally had a chance to think holistically about my career. I’d never really thought about publicity strategically before. I’ve had good luck with two books of poems, including Work & Days (Red Hen Press), which magically appeared on the New York Times Best of 2016 list. But even so, my own attempts at publicizing my work have felt a bit haphazard at times—a last-minute scramble of hurried lists and harried galley mailings, carrying packages to the post office—often, it seems, with a baby strapped to my chest. If I’ve occasionally hit the mark, my process of getting work out in the world has mostly been a mixture of luck and happenstance. I wanted to learn to work smarter.

If you want to learn about publicity, talk to a publicist. I thought longingly of a dear novelist friend whose in-house publicist had crafted her a killer press kit, helped her line up freelance articles to dovetail with publication, and arranged a great deal of her national book tour. But not many authors are fortunate enough to work with an in-house publicist. I wondered what independent publicists might have to offer writers who don’t have access to that kind of institutional support and what advice they might give to writers who may not have the resources