stop sending lame PR merch. send an artifact.
It’s easy to look at those massive, multi-hundred-dollar sends from Big 5 publishing houses and just assume modern PR is just a race to see who can be the loudest brand on the timeline.
But scale is a lazy substitute for strategy.
If you spend ten minutes on BookTok, you’ll see the influencer hauls. Bookmail chock full of themed freebies like stickers, perfumes, dried flowers, and enough branded filler to sink a ship. It’s easy to look at those massive, multi-hundred-dollar sends from Big 5 publishing houses and just assume modern PR is just a race to see who can be the loudest brand on the timeline.
But scale is a lazy substitute for strategy.
When we took on influencer management and PR for a debut indie author client recently, we knew the physical send had to be as breathtaking as the book itself. A debut is an author's first real step into the market, and we wanted her to make an impact. Her merch can't feel like generic swag, but it also can't be noise for the sake of noise.
Before we sourced a single item or mailed a single box, we started where we always start at Lazuli House: the strategy. We didn’t pull a generic list of high-follower accounts and hit ship. We immersed ourselves, read the manuscript cover to cover (you’d be surprised who doesn’t), and studied the exact aesthetics driving her specific niche. Then, we built a full media kit and a targeted press strategy designed for the right eyes.
For the physical package, we wanted an artifact, something that begged to be opened on camera, that wowed creators and made the book a need-to-have for their viewers. We wanted to hand creators a visceral piece of the novel’s universe.
The packages included:
A signed, soft-touch cover advanced reader copy
Custom-designed stickers with quotes from the book
A premium-printed, wax-sealed invitation featuring a QR code that takes readers straight to the EPUB
A literal sword letter opener to slice through the wax
(The detail that matters: that invitation is a nod to an invitation received by the FMC, Sera, in Chapter 4. It’s an immersive, insider detail that readers instantly recognize.)
What an intentional PR send does for indie authors:
Itelevates your brand instantly because the aesthetic of the package matches the caliber of the storytelling. It signals to creators (and their viewers) that this is a premium, must-read asset before they even open the first page.
Itdemands shares because creators feel like they unlocked an exclusive experience they (hopefully) want to document.
It generates massive, hyper-targeted reach to an audience whose tastes match yours. Staying true to the genre protects your budget from mailing to the wrong creator.
The campaign is still ongoing, but by sending just 19 PR packages exclusively to hand-picked creators in her genre, we are projected to hit nearly 7.8 million in potential reach and up to 4.7 million earned impressions.
All from 19 boxes.
What building this campaign taught us (or rather, reaffirmed):
Hyper-targeting beats the shotgun approach. We didn't need 100 boxes to make a splash. By drilling down into the exact BookTok micro-niches that matched the novel's tropes, those 19 boxes carried the weight of a campaign five times its size. There’s no better endorsement than when the creator naturally devours the genre.
Aesthetic details dictate the content. Creators are visual storytellers. The sword letter opener and the wax seal delighted everyone who filmed it. Give them an experience that looks stunning on camera, and they’ll do the heavy lifting for you.
Engagement converts better than follower count. Follower numbers look great on a spreadsheet, but some of the highest-converting content came from creators with deeply engaged, specialized audiences. Readers trust influencers who actually read what they recommend, and we wanted our packages in those specific hands.
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The main takeaway: Designing a successful physical ARC experience requires deep cultural fluency and a refusal to do things the way everyone else does them.
Marketing an indie book launch is a distinct challenge because you are introducing a completely unknown world to the market. But when you hand the right people the right story, beautifully packaged and intentionally placed, you relieve the overwhelm of a launch. You don’t need to be the loudest. You just need to be the sharpest.
— Natalie
LAHO is a marketing and communications agency helping founders, businesses, and creators grow relevance and revenue. Think PR with punch, marketing with mood, and the strategy a vision board would hire. We execute cohesive strategies across earned, owned, and paid media to build influence with intention through senior-led storytelling and smart distribution. Need strategy, content, PR, or ads? Reach out here.
on fishbowls & brand strategy
Remember those old fishbowls where everything looked warped when you viewed it through curved glass, or the way a bubble window bends the world when you approach it from the wrong angle? Branding was like that for us.
Remember those old fishbowls where everything looked warped when you viewed it through curved glass, or the way a bubble window bends the world when you approach it from the wrong angle?
Branding was like that for us.
When we decided to start Lazuli House as a full-service marketing and PR agency, we highly contemplated doing our own visual branding. Throughout our combined twenty years in the field, we’ve had our content on billboards, flyers, TV, in magazines, events–anywhere designs go. Our clients love what we come up with.
But when we started looking at it for ourselves, it got a lot harder. Founders will relate to that moment when the work becomes personal. How is it so easy to produce clear, effective work for clients, while feeling strangely stuck when it is time to package our own expertise?
That’s the fishbowl. For LAHO, we reached a point where trying to puzzle out the visual branding decisions was keeping us from doing the actual work. We needed fresh eyes to execute our vision.
It was the best decision we’ve made. The direction we landed on embodied the bold, punchy look we wanted, and it also gave us a usable system for visibility, content, and day-to-day decisions.
What external help did for us:
It removed pressure when we as founders already had a full plate, which gave us bandwidth to focus on operations, client delivery, and growth.
It reduced decision fatigue because we had clear rules for visuals. That, paired with our written branding, guided all posts, pages, and pitches.
It made content faster to produce because templates and a defined style reduced the need to redesign from scratch each time.
It made our visibility cohesive because the message and the visuals moved together across platforms in a way people recognize quickly.
It upped our professionalism immediately because the materials matched the caliber of the work behind them.
We still owned the strategy underneath the visuals.
Visual branding was so successful because we built it on the same strategy that led to our written positioning and messaging. We started where we always start for clients: clarifying why the business exists, who it serves, and what it needs to be known for.
Reason: why we started the business, what need we fill, and what we believe the market deserves.
Audience: who we serve best, what they care about, and what they need to understand quickly in order to trust the work.
Feeling: how we want people to feel after encountering us, including the emotional tone that fits the outcomes we deliver.
Perception: what we want to be known for, including the specific qualities we want associated with our work and our standards.
Offer: what we actually do, in plain language, with clear outcomes and boundaries.
Voice: how we sound when we write, including the rhythm, vocabulary, and level of directness that fits our audience.
After that, knowing what we wanted for visual direction was easy. Creating our website was a major part of the refinement process. Another was our continued client work. Every client we take refines the edges even more, because real work reveals what you do best and what you want to specialize in, especially when you pay attention to what generates results and what you want to be hired for.
The takeaways: Being too close to your own business makes it harder to build a visibility strategy, and having a strong strategy in place makes everything that follows easier to execute.
Marketing, branding, and public relations are unique fields because most founders already understand the core of who they are and what they want to offer. What they benefit from is an outside perspective that brings structure and experienced guidance to that vision. Letting someone outside the fishbowl take on that work takes a weight off and lays a foundation for growth and success.
— Britta
LAHO is a marketing and communications agency helping founders, businesses, and creators grow relevance and revenue. Think PR with punch, marketing with mood, and the strategy a vision board would hire. We execute cohesive strategies across earned, owned, and paid media to build influence with intention through senior-led storytelling and smart distribution. Need strategy, content, PR, or ads? Reach out here.
