One thing I heard from most marketers and PR firms was that they wanted a lead time of three or more months for a book publicity campaign. In other words, they would only take on books in which the release date was at least three months, preferably six months, in the future. These declarations were always accompanied by their pay-by-the-month pricing structure. On the one hand, I can understand that advanced publicity is a plus. On the other hand, that means any author signing up with these firms will have paid $3,000 to $4,000 a month for three or more months before they could see any concrete results. Hmmm…
