[Publicity/marketing] Book Candy Studios

Putting aside questions of whether or not you should hire a publicity agency to promote a book, I'd worry about hiring an agency that seems to specialize in viral marketing but has such a poor website.

Yeah. That website truly sucks.

I'm skeptical. Much of what they claim to provide sounds like stuff you could do yourself--social media promotion and press releases--or whose effectiveness is unproven--such as book trailers.

Can your friend tie the use of Book Candy's services to sales of his/her book?

- Victoria

I'd want to see some proof of how well their services work before I signed up for anything like that.

Twitter and Facebook have turned into a virtual firehouse of shameless self-promotion spam. I'm not sure that viral marketing really works 95% of the time.

You can viral market the new Star Trek movie because, well, it's the new Star Trek movie. It's an established franchise. You can do the same with (insert well-known author here). But for an author with a press that lacks solid marketing and distribution? It's an uphill battle.

These folks may get the job done, but just like anything else you need to determine if they'll do the job for you and you'll get your money's worth.

I'd wonder why you'd bother too, since few authors even go on book tours and there's no evidence trailers help with sales all that much. If you're with a good publisher, they'll do enough marketing for you. This site gives me the feeling they're going with the notion that authors in general must market, which is simply not true unless you're self-published. I really don't see any merits here.