Every new client conversation I have lately includes a version of the same backstory. They worked with someone before me. Sometimes it was a single freelancer running a small social media account on their behalf. Sometimes it was an agency, sometimes it was a coach selling a launch program, sometimes it was a friend who said they were good at this stuff. The work did not hold up, the relationship ended awkwardly or quietly, and now they are vetting providers with a different lens. They want to know what to ask, and they want to know how to spot a fit before they sign anything.
This post is for that conversation. I am going to walk through what to look for, what to actually ask, and the patterns I have learned to read in 13 years of digital marketing and 275+ author launches, both as a provider and as a former buyer of services. I have hired badly myself in this industry, so this is not theoretical.
A note on framing first. The author marketing services industry has a low barrier to entry. Setting up a website and a social media account and calling yourself an author marketing service provider takes an afternoon. That does not make every new entrant unqualified, but it means the variance in what you actually get when you hire someone is enormous, and the words on their services page often do not predict the quality of the work. The questions below are designed to surface what the website cannot.
The five questions worth asking before you sign anything
1. Can they explain the strategic thinking behind a tactical recommendation?
Ask them, at some point in your initial call, to walk you through why they would do a specific tactic for a specific kind of book. For example: "Why would you build an ARC campaign for a slow-burn fantasy differently than for a contemporary romance?" A provider who has only ever executed a template will struggle here. The answer should reference specifics about reader behaviour, where each genre’s readers congregate, what they expect from advance copies, what kind of review velocity each book typically generates. If the answer is generic, the strategy is generic, and you will be paying for execution that does not actually fit your book.
2. Have they worked in your genre or a comparable one, and what did they learn from it?
The genre experience question is not about gatekeeping. It is about whether they have observed enough launches in your space to know the patterns that matter. A provider who has run 40 romance ARC campaigns will know things about reader behaviour, review pacing, and platform dynamics that a generalist marketer will not. A provider who has only ever worked with one genre may struggle to adapt if you write in two. Listen for whether they talk about lessons learned rather than work performed. The first signals a thinking partner. The second signals a vendor.
3. What does their onboarding look like, and what do they need from you to do good work?
A provider who can give you a clear, structured answer about their onboarding process has built one. A provider who improvises is going to improvise on your launch too. Ask for the actual document or checklist if they have one. Look for an onboarding that includes a discovery phase, a strategic brief stage, and a clear handover before execution begins. Watch out for onboardings that consist of "send me your details and I’ll start." That is execution dressed up as a service.
This question also surfaces something else, which is whether they expect to do the work for you or with you. The good providers will ask a lot of you in the first two weeks. They want to know your career goals, your previous launch data, your reader observations, your time constraints. That is not them offloading work onto you. It is them refusing to operate without the information they need.
4. How do they report, and how often?
You should not be the one chasing for an update. Ask what reporting looks like. Frequency, format, what gets included, what happens if a campaign is underperforming halfway through. A provider who cannot describe their reporting cadence does not have one, which means you will only know how something performed if you ask. A provider who says "I will send you a full report at the end" is showing you that they do not intend to course-correct in flight. That is a problem on any campaign where the early data should be informing the rest of the work.
The format question matters too. A spreadsheet with raw numbers is not a report. A report includes what the numbers mean, what shifted, what to do differently next time, and what the author should know going into the next launch. The piece I wrote on author marketing delegation gets into the related question of what should sit on your side of the line versus theirs, which is often where reporting expectations get fuzzy.
5. What is the boundary between what they do and what they do not do?
Good providers can answer this clearly. Their service has a defined scope, and they will tell you when something is outside it. A red flag, in my experience, is the provider who says yes to everything. That is either someone who has not thought about their service offering or someone who is overcommitted and going to deliver below standard on the things they are actually good at. Either way, you do not want to be the client who discovers the limits of their capacity in the middle of your launch.
It also helps to ask what kinds of authors they decline to work with. A provider who has never declined a project has not had to make a fit judgment, which means they are likely to take you on regardless of whether the engagement makes sense.
What I would look for on top of the answers
The conversation itself tells you a lot. A provider who interrupts, talks over you, or pitches without asking you anything about your work is showing you what the engagement will feel like. A provider who asks careful questions, takes notes, and circles back with follow-ups based on what you said, is also showing you something.
I would also pay attention to how they talk about other authors they have worked with. Vague claims of helping authors "grow their reach" are not useful. Specific patterns are. If they tell you "across X launches in your genre, the pre-order conversion rate sits around Y, and the levers that move it are A and B," they are showing you that they have done the work to read their own data. If they cannot name a single specific observation across their past work, they may not have done that work.
The portfolio question is fraught in author marketing. Authors are often reluctant to be publicly named, and ARC and social work does not produce a portfolio in the same way design or copywriting does. That is fine. What you can ask for is named testimonials with permission, results data presented anonymously, or a few specific stories about projects they were proud of.
The cost question, in the right shape
The cheapest provider is rarely the cheapest provider in the end. I mean that more literally than it sounds.
A cheap provider who delivers work that does not fit your book costs you whatever you paid them, plus the launch you had to absorb the consequences of. A cheap provider who does not have systems means you are the system, which is its own cost in your time and attention. A cheap provider who cannot retain you long term means you are re-hiring every six months, which is its own friction.
The point is not that you should always hire the most expensive provider available. The point is that price alone is not a useful filter without the questions above. A more expensive provider who does the work badly costs more than a cheaper one who does it well. The questions above are designed to surface what you are actually buying, which is what allows the price comparison to mean anything.
A final note on fit
The provider who fits the author next to you is not necessarily the provider who fits you. The author who runs full-tilt and wants execution on top of execution needs a different partner than the author who is rebuilding a tired platform from a calmer foundation. The vetting questions above do not tell you who is good. They tell you whether the person in front of you has thought about their work and can do it consistently for the kind of author you are. That is the fit you are actually trying to assess.
If you want to start that conversation with us, book a call or look at our services. Either way, ask us the questions above. The answers should match the standard.
