Authors who decide to market their own books often think that certain aspects of their marketing strategies are more important than others. Authors have all sorts of ideas about the things that they should do to successfully market their books. Some authors focus on making book trailers and excerpts. Others turn to their social media followers with the hopes of making sales. Others think that hiring a publicist will solve their sales problems. What all these authors have in common is that they don’t appreciate that all aspects of a marketing strategy must work together for overall success.

Any person who studied marketing knows about a marketing mix, which is a combination of a marketing strategy and the target audience. Any author can easily define his target audience. However, things start to get dicey when it comes to his marketing strategy. This is the part of marketing that needs the most involvement from an author. In a marketing strategy, four things come into play: product, price, promotion, and place. Only product and promotion relate to a publicist to a great extent.

For an author, the product is the book. However, his expertise, character, and background are also part of his product. These make up an author’s platform and they must go hand in hand with the book. A publicist is a vital part in establishing an author’s platform. This is because a publicist will help to influence people's perception of the author. However, the effectiveness of a publicist will still be affected by how good (or not) a book is.

What is a publicist’s role in promotion? Promotion covers techniques used to let potential readers know about the existence of a book. Promotion includes several activities such as advertising, publicity, online and social media marketing, personal selling, etc. It is important to note that if the other components of a promotional campaign are not working properly, a publicist’s efforts will not be very noticeable. It is the job of an author to make sure that all other components of promotion are working for the publicist's efforts to have a visible impact on marketing campaigns.

A publicist’s job is to create awareness for a book among existing and potential readers. The publicist can create a media kit which includes things such as his picture, cover art of his books, his bio, press releases, and items that describe the author’s book and other works. When properly placed, the kit can influence the way people see an author and his books.

Authors should also know that publicity and paid advertising is not the same thing. For instance, a publicist can request interviews in the media for an author. However, the publicist cannot guarantee that the author will be given the interviews.

Authors, especially self-published ones, should know that to successfully market their books, they should take into account all the components of a marketing mix. They should also understand that as long as one of the components is not working properly, then their marketing strategies will be less effective. Ultimately, an author is the boss and he should oversee the implementation of a marketing strategy. He should therefore be the one to pinpoint the part of his marketing strategy that is failing the others.