5 tips for debut authors

Congratulations on your first book. It's been a heady ride. But what now?
debut authors. An open book is lit by a single beam.

Phew. So, by way of the traditional route, you managed to write the book, find a publisher and get it published. So all you have to do now is relax, sit back and bask in the acclaim and glowing reviews right? Not quite. Here are a few things you’ve probably haven’t thought of in your debut outing.

Unless you’ve signed up with a big publisher with a generous marketing budget that’s slated to newbies (rare, many of them are reserved for household names), a lot of the publicity is expected to be done by you. This means that, even if you are assigned a publicist to help you navigate the publicity trail, you are still expected to initiate some cold-selling of your own.

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Thuy On is the Reviews and Literary Editor of ArtsHub and an arts journalist, critic and poet who’s written for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, The Age/SMH and Australian Book Review. She was the Books Editor of The Big Issue for 8 years and a former Melbourne theatre critic correspondent for The Australian. She has three collections of poetry published by the University of Western Australian Press (UWAP): Turbulence (2020), Decadence (2022) and Essence (2025). Threads: @thuy_on123 Instagram: poemsbythuy