These days it is up to new authors to come up with their own marketing and promotional plans because it is all about platform and making yourself stand out in the various marketplaces. The following is an abbreviated article taken from the Bookseller site and illustrates how even the most famous of authors – in this case Jeffrey Archer – still have to have a well-thought out marketing/promotional plan. Budding authors might like to take note; book promotion is tough.

Pan Macmillan is to launch an “integrated pan-global social media, marketing and publicity campaign” to promote Jeffrey Archer’s latest book, in a first for the publisher. Be Careful What You Wish For is the fourth book in The Clifton Chronicles series, and marks the first simultaneous publication of an Archer novel in all Pan Macmillan’s territories. Pan Macmillan’s Creative Director, Geoff Duffield, said Archer’s “brand author status is built on four decades of incredibly successful storytelling”. “This year, we’re cementing his worldwide impact through a single global publication moment and encouraging his fans around the world to come together around it,” he added. In the run-up to the book’s publication on March 13th, Pan Mac has produced a four-part online show The Jeffrey Archer Documentary. Shot in the lead-up to publication, the documentary “looks at the complex process that goes into putting together an Archer novel, through Archer’s 14 drafts, written in his cliff-top writing room in Mallorca, to copy-editing and finally to print”. The day after publication, Friday 14th March, Archer’s fans will be able to pose questions directly to him via Twitter. Fans can send their questions to @jeffrey_archer, @panmacmillan or @markettiers4dc and use the hashtag, #askjeffrey. In the UK, publication of Be Careful What You Wish For will include a promotional partnership with the Daily Telegraph, interviews in national newspapers and on television and radio, and advertising on the London Underground and National Rail, with a “similar marketing push, tailored to local markets” being implemented around the world. Pan Macmillan India has organised a Google Hangout with online retailer Flipkart and over seven national interviews, and, in Australia, Archer is appearing on two national television shows and on Alan Jones’s breakfast radio show in Sydney. In a collaboration with The Times and Sunday Times in South Africa there will be a promotional giveaway of the first novel in The Clifton Chronicles series, Only Time Will Tell. A US/UK partnership with GoodReads, the book review and recommendation website, will include a joint book group and Jeffrey Archer author page to build on the international consumer Clifton Chronicles conversation. The first 1,000 readers to join in the conversation on GoodReads will receive a free copy of the paperback of Only Time Will Tell. Pan Macmillan publisher Jeremy Trevathan said: “The Clifton Chronicles are a rare thing in publishing, a series that grows in sales with each title. This is a testament to the story-telling craft of its author. It’s truly inspiring to watch this happening all over the world and to join with our colleagues in the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, India and South Africa in this endeavour.” Sally Richardson, president and publisher at St Martin’s Press, the Pan Macmillan division in the US which is publishing Be Careful What You Wish For, said: “This campaign is a first for us, and has been fun to plan and roll out. The emphasis has been on digital, social, and traditional marketing, and having the worldwide coordination heightens the impact of all. ”