Selena Mercuri is a Toronto-based writer and publishing professional. She received the 2023 Norma Epstein Award and was runner-up in The Ampersand Review’s 2026 Essay Contest. Selena is Reviews Editor at The New Quarterly and Havana Times, and a book publicist at River Street. Find her on Instagram at @selenamercuriwriter.

How Book Publicity Works in 2026

As a freelance book publicist, I research journalists, pitch reviewers, chase radio producers, approach festivals, coordinate events, prepare authors for interviews, and spend most of my time in the company of spreadsheets.

Some publicists work freelance, moving between publishers and individual campaigns, while others work in-house at publishing companies, where a small press may have one person handling both publicity and marketing while a larger house may have separate teams and multiple publicists managing several titles at once. The structure changes from publisher to publisher, but the fundamental task stays the same, and that is to build a public life for a book.

Publicity is earned attention. A publicist persuades journalists, reviewers, producers, booksellers, festival programmers, podcast hosts, and other gatekeepers that a book or author deserves space in front of their audience. Editorial coverage carries power because an independent person or organization has chosen to give the book attention.

Marketing uses tools the publisher can control more directly, such as advertising, sponsored promotion, displays, promotional materials, and other campaigns designed to reach consumers. Publicity depends on another person making an editorial decision. A publicist can craft an excellent pitch, send the perfect book to the perfect reviewer, and create a compelling campaign, but the final yes belongs to the person receiving it.

As an example, imagine Margaret Atwood as an unknown debut novelist and The Handmaid’s Tale as a brand-new novel arriving for the first time in 2027. A publicist receives the book and has to answer the question of why anyone should pay attention.

“Margaret Atwood has written a new novel” gives us a fact. A publicity campaign turns that fact into a series of stories. A publicist begins by identifying the book’s audiences and the conversations already surrounding them. The Handmaid’s Tale could reach literary-fiction readers, speculative-fiction readers, people interested in gender and reproductive politics, readers fascinated by authoritarianism and religion, and audiences drawn to questions about language, power, and resistance. Publicity strategy grows from understanding those audiences, finding the media and events that reach them, and persuading those outlets that the book matters to their readers.

That process is called positioning, and it drives nearly every decision that follows. A literary magazine might care about Atwood’s voice and formal choices, a political podcast might focus on authoritarianism, a women’s publication might focus on reproductive autonomy, and a writing podcast might want to explore the construction of Gilead. The book stays the same, but the publicist finds the strongest door into it for each audience. This is why a good publicist pitches a story as opposed to simply announcing a publication. Finding a sharp hook gives an editor or producer something they can imagine turning into an article, segment, interview, or event. Finding that angle is one of the central tasks of a campaign, particularly when the publicist can connect the author, the book, and the interests of a specific audience.

The campaign also starts much earlier than publication day. Advance reading copies, or ARCs, circulate before the finished book so reviewers, journalists, festival programmers, and booksellers have time to read, plan, and make decisions. Magazines can work months ahead, festivals program far in advance, and media coverage often requires weeks of preparation, so publicity develops while the book is still approaching publication rather than after it has already landed on shelves.

Publicists also build a substantial package of materials around the book. A campaign may involve a TI sheet, or Title Information sheet, containing the essential publishing information; a press release; an author biography; a headshot; the book cover; an ARC; suggested interview questions; excerpts; and praise for previous work. A strong press kit gives a journalist or producer enough material to understand the author, the book, its significance, and the shape of a possible interview.

Suggested questions can show a producer where a conversation might go, while an author Q&A reveals voice and personality before the interview has even been booked.

The author biography is crucial. I have one extremely practical piece of advice for writers in that regard, which is to include your location in your bio. “Margaret Atwood is a Toronto-based writer” gives a publicist an immediate geographic hook and opens possibilities with local media. At the same time, a hometown, university, or workplace connection can create a legitimate local angle, and those connections often help publicists secure regional interviews or strengthen an event pitch. If an author attended a university, I may look at its alumni magazine, bookstore, library, campus media, reading series, and other institutional channels. This is also why authors should give their publicist information generously. Tell us where you studied, where you grew up, where you have lived, which organizations you belong to, and if you have any pre-existing relations that might prove helpful in your campaign.

Comparable titles, or comps, provide another powerful starting point. Editors and sales teams use comps to position a manuscript in the marketplace and identify likely readers. Comparable and competing books already play a role in how publishers assess marketability at the acquisition stage.

Publicity uses comps as a research tool. If I am working on our imaginary Handmaid’s Tale, I can study recent books that deal with authoritarianism, gender, speculative futures, or reproductive politics and ask who reviewed them, who interviewed their authors, which podcasts featured them, and which festivals programmed them. A publicity comp helps form a map of possible attention.

Events rely on the same logic of audience and connection. When an author travels to a city where they have little community, pairing them with a local writer can combine two audiences and transform a straightforward reading into a compelling conversation. Festivals and reading series strengthen events because they bring built-in audiences. The media landscape makes that breadth increasingly important. Traditional outlets such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television still carry enormous cultural weight, while podcasts, newsletters, digital magazines, social platforms, and specialized online communities (new media) give publicists additional ways to find precise audiences. The strongest campaign follows readers to the places where they already pay attention.

That matters especially as the traditional book-review landscape contracts. Fewer dedicated review spaces and tighter arts budgets place more books in competition for fewer conventional reviews, so publicists increasingly build campaigns through interviews, essays, podcasts, events, newsletters, panels, and other forms of coverage. A review remains valuable, but it represents one route among many.

An author can appear in the media because of the ideas, expertise, or experiences connected to the book, reaching an audience that may never read a conventional book review. Our imaginary Atwood might write an essay on political language, join a panel about authoritarianism, or discuss reproductive politics on a current-affairs program, with the novel entering the conversation through her expertise and perspective.

Authors can make these campaigns dramatically stronger by arriving with ideas. Give your publicist three or four subjects you could write about and a few questions you would love to discuss in interviews. The story behind the story often supplies some of the richest publicity material, whether that involves unusual research or an unexpected origin for the book.

Authors can also undertake publicity themselves by approaching local outlets, pitching essays, building bookstore relationships, maintaining an author website, organizing events, and extending the life of a book beyond its launch. A dedicated publicist adds industry knowledge, established relationships, and the ability to advocate on an author’s behalf.

Essentially, a writer spends years making something in private, then a publicist takes that work into the world and searches for the people and communities that can give it momentum.