Table of Contents
1. NOVEMBER 2016
2. DECEMBER 2016
3. JANUARY 2017
4. FEBRUARY 2017
5. MARCH 2017
6. APRIL 2017
7. MAY 2017
8. JUNE 2017
9. JUNE 2017
10. JULY 2017
11. AUGUST 2017
12. SEPTEMBER 2017
13. OCTOBER 2017
14. NOVEMBER 2017
15. DECEMBER 2017
16. JANUARY 2018
17. FEBRUARY 2018
18. MARCH 2018
19. APRIL 2018
20. MAY 2018
Promotional Information
Direct Marketing:
Announce pre-sales by early Aug. 2018 via email newsletter
program, with a link to preorder on the New Europe Books page, with
a discount code. Include author’s contacts in the email
newsletter.
Announce publication in October 2018 via email newsletter
program, with a link to preorder on the New Europe Books page, with
a discount code. Include author’s contacts in the email
newsletter.
Print postcards to promote the book for the author to
distribute and mail to interested parties who will not receive a
galley.
Social Media:
Provide designed image cards to promote the book, meeting FB
specifications regarding display size, for the author to post on
his FB page, just at the time of pre-order (August) and just prior
to publication (November).
Outreach to key influencers and friends of author to ask them
to tweet about the book’s publication (November).
Facebook boosted ads to promote the book at the time of
preorder (July) and just prior to publication (November).
Publicity:
Blurbs: Secure at least 2-3 high profile endorsements from
friends of the author. (March/April 2018). Top prospects: Gary
Shteyngart, George Saunders, Masha Gessen, Boris Fishman, and
Jackson Katz (whom Paul knows). See the next bullet also.
Foreword: If there’s a person Mikhail knows (perhaps someone
who has been following on Facebook), great, but a VIP foreword is
not as essential as are VIP blurbs. A short foreword from Mikhail
explaining the project would be good⎯by March, so sales reps can
have it in their manuscripts and in advance copies they will
receive in spring. Among the author’s noted literary friends on
Facebook who could be asked for a foreword (or blurbs): Alexander
Chee; Darin Strauss; Amanda Stern; and Liesl Schillinger.
Reviews
Prepublication excerpts in leading publications: Arrange for an
excerpt of the book in New Yorker.com just prior to publication
September–October 2018. Also try the Harper’s reading section,
Brooklyn Rail, and New York Magazine.
Galleys to media, prepub editors, radio producers, book
reviewers, & more (40 galleys, June 2018, and more for the
distributor’s sales reps). Finished book mailing to media just
prior to publication (60 books, September 2018).
Launch events in Montreal and cities where the author has a
natural audience of friends and family. (November 2018) New Europe
Books has a wide reach of contacts at bookstores across New England
and in New York City, and can seek other venues and look beyond the
region in planning events⎯depending on author availability and the
cost of travel/accommodations vs. the likelihood of good-size
audiences. (That is, New Europe Books will organize a book tour but
minus lots of prepublication publicity, including media reviews and
radio interviews, drawing readers to bookstores far from the
author’s natural bases is invariably a challenge.)
About the Author
Mikhail Iossel, the Leningrad-born author of the story collection
Every Hunter Wants to Know (W. W. Norton) and coeditor of the
anthologies Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey
Archive, 2004) and Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (Tin
House, 2010), is a professor of English/Creative Writing at
Concordia University in Montreal and the founding director of the
Summer Literary Seminars international program. Back in the Soviet
Union, he worked as an electromagnetic engineer/submarine
demagnetizer and as roller-coaster security guard, and belonged to
the organization of samizdat writers, Club-81. He came to the US in
1986, at the age of thirty, a whole and complete life behind him,
and started writing in English in 1988. Among his awards are
Guggenheim, NEA, and Stegner Fellowships. His stories and other
prose, in English and in translation to several languages, have
appeared in NewYorker.com, Guernica, Literarian, AGNI, North
American Review, Threepenny Review, Interia, Boulevard, Best
American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
