In brief. Every “top 10 book marketing services UK” list I could find was written by a company that appears on it. This one is different in two ways. I checked each service’s own website on 5 September 2026 and recorded what it actually charges, which turned out to be the most revealing test of all: eleven of fourteen will not print a price. And I rated them the way I rate everything on this site: impact, setup difficulty, technical skill and budget, plus how many copies you have to sell to pay for it. I sell one of the services on this page. It is declared where it appears, and the arithmetic is the same for mine as for everyone else’s.
Prices and claims checked 5 September 2026. Page reviewed by Robert Prime, 5 September 2026.
How to read this page
Four ratings, one to five, plus the arithmetic, plus one column that matters more here than anywhere else.
| Rating | What 1 means | What 5 means |
|---|---|---|
| Impact | A press release nobody runs | Can move a book into a chart |
| Difficulty | Pay and wait | Weeks of your own time supplying material |
| Technical | If you can send an email, you can do it | You need to understand ads, tracking, metadata |
| Budget | Under £150 | £5,000 or more |
Transparency is recorded separately: does the company print a price on its own website? It sounds trivial. It is not. The Alliance of Independent Authors’ Watchdog Desk, run by John Doppler, evaluates services on five criteria it names as “Pricing & value”, “Service quality”, “Contracts & rights”, “Transparency” and “Customer satisfaction” (ALLi Watchdog Desk). A company that will only quote you on a call has failed one of the five before you have spoken to it, and in my experience it is the one where the price depends on what they think you can pay.
The break-even basis. A £2.99 ebook at Amazon’s 70% royalty earns about £2.09 a copy. So a £495 service costs you 237 copies before you are level. Hold that number against the promises.
The two rules that protect you
Rule one: never buy marketing from a company that also wants to publish your book. The services that bundle ghostwriting, publishing and marketing into one relationship are the ones ALLi’s Watchdog has spent a decade documenting. In a study of vanity-press output published on ALLi’s own site (Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Vanity Presses, John Doppler, 9 April 2020), Austin Macauley’s books had a median Amazon sales rank of 4,850,732, 45% had no calculable sales rank at all, and 65% had no reviews whatsoever. Pegasus Elliott Mackenzie’s median rank was worse, at 5,728,036. Those are the customers who paid for a “marketing package”. The package was the product; the book was the excuse.
Rule two: never buy anything that includes “Amazon reviews”. One service on this page lists Amazon reviews in its top tier. KDP’s own customer-review rules (KDP Help: Customer Reviews, checked 5 September 2026) allow only this much: “You may provide free or discounted copies of your books to readers, as long as you do not require a review in exchange or attempt to influence the review.” And then: “Offering anything other than a free or discounted copy of the book, including gift cards, will invalidate a review, and the Amazon Community team will remove it.” A review a marketing company procured for you is not yours to keep, and the penalty lands on your listing, not on the marketing company. See guaranteed bestseller campaigns for what a manufactured badge actually is.
Tier one: the ones that print a price
1. Wrate’s Editing Services, book marketing
Impact 2 · Difficulty 1 · Technical 1 · Budget £495 · Transparency: yes
A 60-minute planning consultation, a press release or story pitch sent to up to five relevant publications with follow-up, and a copy of the release for your own use. Local and genre press are the targets; national coverage is discussed if there is a genuine human-interest angle.
Verified from Wrate’s marketing page, 5 September 2026: £495, or £435 for authors booking other services.
Break-even: 237 copies. Honest scope, honest price, and a modest result: five pitches is a morning’s work for a publicist, and the value is in the consultation and the release you keep. If you have never written a press release, this is a fair way to get a professional one.
2. New Generation Publishing, Bespoke Marketing Service
Impact 2 · Difficulty 1 · Technical 1 · Budget £359 · Transparency: partial
A press release drafted and distributed, sent to what they describe as 200-plus UK writing groups, library outreach, offers to WH Smith, Foyles and Waterstones, and posts on their own social accounts. Limited to four authors a month.
Verified from New Generation’s page, 5 September 2026: £359. Their other marketing services are listed without prices, which is why this is “partial”.
Break-even: 172 copies. New Generation is a self-publishing services company, so read rule one before you read the offer. On its own, £359 for a distributed press release is not unreasonable. “Offers to major UK retail chains” is not the same as stocking, and I would ask exactly what an “offer” consists of before paying.
3. Literally PR, Power Hour
Impact 2 · Difficulty 1 · Technical 1 · Budget £99–£149 · Transparency: partial
A book PR agency with a consultancy option that is priced and the campaigns that are not. The Power Hour is the useful bit for a self-published author: an hour with someone who does this for a living, before you spend real money anywhere.
Verified from Literally PR, 5 September 2026: Power Hour £99 with a manager or £149 with founder Helen Lewis; free 15-minute discovery call; campaigns by quote.
Break-even: 48 copies for the £99 hour. That is the cheapest professional opinion on this page and the one I would buy first. Spend it asking what they would do with your specific book and budget, then decide whether a campaign is worth quoting.
4. publishing.co.uk, book launch (this is my company)
Impact 4 · Difficulty 1 · Technical 1 · Budget £499–£799 · Transparency: yes
Disclosure: I own this. Judge it by the same arithmetic as everything else here.
Verified from the launch page, 5 September 2026: £499 for the 14-day launch starter, one book: manuscript formatting (print PDF and Kindle EPUB), cover review with redesign if it fails at thumbnail size, Amazon listing setup including A+ Content, an ad-readiness audit, an AI Discovery Score baseline with a 90-day retest, and 90 days of post-launch check-ins. £799 for full launch support, which adds ad-spend management for the first 90 days, monthly listing rewrites and a Book 2 prep call.
Break-even: 239 copies for the starter. What it is not: PR. Nobody at publishing.co.uk will pitch your book to the Guardian. What it is: the technical and Amazon-side setup that most first launches get wrong, done properly, so that any PR you buy elsewhere lands on a listing that converts. If your book is already live and well set up, you do not need this.
Tier two: the established agencies that will not tell you the price
Not being priced online is not the same as being bad. Two of these are among the most reputable names in UK self-publishing. But you should know before you pick up the phone that the number is going to be a conversation.
5. Matador (Troubador Publishing)
Impact 4 · Difficulty 2 · Technical 1 · Budget £6,000–£7,500 in their own examples · Transparency: examples only
The most established self-publishing services company in the UK, and a long-standing ALLi Partner Member. ALLi’s Orna Ross, asked about its reputation in a members’ Q&A on 16 March 2019, said: “Matador is a partner member of ALLi for a very long time so we are very happy to be able to say you won’t go wrong there.” (source)
Verified from Troubador’s pricing page, 5 September 2026: no line-item prices for publicity, digital marketing or NetGalley campaigns. The page states “We don’t offer pre-set packages” and gives worked examples: £6,000 including “Active marketing to the book trade” and “Dedicated publicity campaign”, and £7,500 adding digital marketing and marketing materials. Those examples bundle production with marketing, so the marketing share is not separable from the page.
Break-even on the £6,000 example: 2,871 copies. That is a real number for a real campaign, and it is why Matador’s typical client is not a first-time author with a £2.99 ebook. If you have a non-fiction title with a trade audience and a budget in the thousands, this is the serious option. If you do not, the Power Hour above will tell you so for £99.
6. Palamedes PR
Impact 3 · Difficulty 1 · Technical 1 · Budget not published · Transparency: no
A long-established book PR agency. Its homepage, checked 5 September 2026, states that it generates “guaranteed national and international media coverage” and that it does so “through our in-house NAPA news agency, Belters News, and as the exclusive editorial partner of The European magazine” (Palamedes).
Read that carefully. The guarantee is real, and it is made possible by owning or partnering the outlets that provide it. That is not a criticism of the coverage, which can be genuine and syndicated. It is a reason to ask, before paying, which named outlets are covered by the guarantee and which are aspirations. No prices on the site; consultation by booking.
7. Authoright
Impact 3 · Difficulty 2 · Technical 1 · Budget not published · Transparency: no
Editing, cover design, distribution through its Clink Street imprint, and publicity, with a dedicated project manager. Verified from Authoright, 5 September 2026: no prices shown; the site claims “3,000+ authors”, “98% author retention” and “75% net royalty”, none of which I can check.
This is a bundle, so apply rule one. Authoright has been operating since 2007 and is not in the category ALLi’s study was about, but a company that publishes you and markets you has the same incentive whichever category it sits in.
8. Publishing Push
Impact 3 · Difficulty 2 · Technical 1 · Budget not published · Transparency: no
Editorial, cover, interior, ghostwriting, distribution and “done-for-you publishing”. Verified from Publishing Push, 5 September 2026: no prices anywhere on the site; a free consultation via Calendly and a form asking your book type. The site cites “4000+ Published Authors”.
Same note as Authoright: a publisher-plus-marketer bundle, priced on a call.
9. Reedsy marketplace
Impact 3 · Difficulty 2 · Technical 2 · Budget quote-based · Transparency: no rates shown
Not an agency but a marketplace of freelance marketers, with the useful discipline that you request quotes from up to five at once. Verified from Reedsy’s marketing page, 5 September 2026: no rates or ranges published; each freelancer quotes on your sample pages.
The honest use: get five quotes for the same brief and you will learn more about the market price in a day than any roundup can tell you. The freelancers here are vetted, and many are former publishing-house marketers. The weakness is the same as any marketplace: you are hiring one person, and the quality of the brief you write determines what you get.
Tier three: the marketplaces and the “top 10” crowd
10. Fiverr
Impact 1 · Difficulty 1 · Technical 1 · Budget $45–$271 by Fiverr’s own figures · Transparency: yes, in aggregate
Fiverr publishes its own cost guide, which is unusually candid. Verified from Fiverr’s 2026 book marketer cost guide, 5 September 2026: “Book marketing costs in 2026 range from $45 to $271 based on current marketplace pricing, with most services averaging between $75 and $200 per project.” Press-release pitching averages about $271; a three-month sustained campaign “typically ranges from $400 to $1,200”; genre-specialist launch packages run “$300 to $600”.
What $150 buys: a press release, a batch of social graphics, or a few promotional posts. Not a campaign. The risk at the bottom of this market is the seller who delivers “50 Amazon reviews” or “guaranteed bestseller”. See rule two.
11. Book Marketer UK
Impact 1 · Difficulty 1 · Technical 1 · Budget not published · Transparency: no
Three tiers, no prices, “Book A Free Call”. Verified from bookmarketer.co.uk, 5 September 2026. The top tier, “Become A Best Seller”, lists among its inclusions Amazon reviews, a Wikipedia page, YouTube monetisation and “20 physical books”. The site claims a “95% success ratio”.
I am not going to soften this. Amazon reviews cannot legitimately be sold, a Wikipedia page for a non-notable author is deleted by volunteers within days, and “success ratio” is not a metric. Rule two applies.
12. UK Book Marketing
Impact 1 · Difficulty 1 · Technical 1 · Budget not published · Transparency: no
Ghostwriting, editing, design, audiobook production, publishing and marketing under one roof. Verified from ukbookmarketing.co.uk, 5 September 2026: no prices; quote by form or live chat; claims of “1000+ Authors Worldwide”, a “94% Rehire Rate” and a “100% Satisfaction Guarantee”.
The ghostwriting-plus-publishing-plus-marketing bundle is the exact shape rule one describes. I could not find anything on the site that would let me verify a single one of its claims.
13. DolmanScott
Impact 2 · Difficulty 2 · Technical 2 · Budget not published · Transparency: no
Websites, social media strategy and digital advertising for authors. Verified from DolmanScott, 5 September 2026: no prices; you complete a form and they respond within 24 hours. A narrower, more technical offer than most here, and the digital-advertising piece is the one that can actually sell books. Ask what ad spend is included and what is management fee.
14. The “top 10 book marketing services UK” articles
Impact 0 · Transparency: no
Listed as a warning rather than a service. The first page of Google for this query is dominated by lists published by ghostwriting companies, each of which places itself or its sister brand near the top. They are advertisements formatted as journalism. If a “review” site’s own name contains the word ghostwriting, it is in the business rule one warns about.
The four questions that expose a bad one
I have watched authors spend £2,000 they could not afford on a service that delivered a press release and a spreadsheet. Ask these before you pay anyone, including me.
- “What is the price, in writing, before the call?” If the answer is a call, the price is variable.
- “Which of these outcomes do you guarantee, and which do you hope for?” A guarantee of coverage on outlets the agency owns is a different thing from a guarantee of coverage.
- “Do you also publish books, ghostwrite, or sell reviews?” Any yes means the marketing is a route to a larger sale.
- “How many copies did your last three clients sell in the 90 days after the campaign?” Nobody will know. The good ones will say so honestly.
The order I would actually spend in
- Literally PR’s Power Hour, £99. One professional opinion before anything else. Forty-eight copies.
- Your own listing, done properly. Either yourself with my launch checklist, or the £499 launch, which is mine. No PR converts on a broken listing.
- Amazon Ads at £5 a day, run yourself, before any agency runs them for you. The platforms roundup explains why this beats every service here on cost per sale.
- A single priced press-release service (Wrate’s or New Generation) if you have a genuine local or human-interest angle. Not otherwise.
- Matador, if you have a trade-facing non-fiction title and a four-figure budget, and the Power Hour agreed.
What I would not buy: anything from a company that also wants to publish the book, anything with “reviews” in the inclusions, and anything from a company that will not put a number on a web page.
What I could not verify
- Bookollective (Bristol, community reviewers). I could not reach a live website on 5 September 2026 and have not rated it.
- Smith Publicity (US). No prices on its own site. Third-party pages quote monthly figures; I do not repeat prices I could not read on the vendor’s page.
- ALLi ratings for every service here. ALLi’s public ratings table loads fifty rows at a time and I could not retrieve the full list on 5 September 2026. What I could verify: Matador’s Partner Member status via ALLi’s own site, Amazon KDP’s “Excellent (Partner)” rating, and the Austin Macauley and Pegasus figures above from ALLi’s published study. Where I have not cited a rating, ALLi has not been checked, not cleared.
- Every “authors served” and “success rate” figure quoted by the services above. They are the companies’ own claims, printed so you can see them, not because I could confirm them.
If any of this has changed, tell me and I will re-check and re-date the entry.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a book marketing service cost in the UK?
The three UK services that publish a price charge £99 for an hour’s consultancy (Literally PR), £359 for a distributed press release (New Generation Publishing) and £495 for a consultation plus five pitches (Wrate’s). Matador’s own worked examples run £6,000 to £7,500 including production. Everyone else quotes on a call, checked 5 September 2026.
Are book marketing services worth it for a self-published book?
Rarely for a £2.99 debut ebook, where a £495 service needs 237 sales to break even and most PR does not produce them. Worth it for non-fiction with a trade or professional audience, for an author with a series behind them, or as a single priced consultation before spending anything larger.
What is a vanity press and how do I spot one?
A company that charges you to publish your book and then sells you marketing for it. The tell is the bundle: ghostwriting, publishing and marketing from one supplier. ALLi’s study of vanity-press output found most of the books had no measurable sales and no reviews.
Can I pay for Amazon reviews?
No. KDP’s rules allow a free or discounted copy with no review required and no attempt to influence it; anything more “will invalidate a review, and the Amazon Community team will remove it”. The consequences fall on your listing. Any service that lists “Amazon reviews” as an inclusion should be avoided for that reason alone.
What does a book publicist actually do?
Pitches your book and your story to journalists, producers and reviewers, and follows up. Good ones have relationships and know which angle each outlet wants. What they cannot do is guarantee coverage on outlets they do not control, and the honest ones will say so.
Is publishing.co.uk’s launch service a marketing service?
Partly. It sets up the Amazon side of a launch (files, cover check, listing, A+ Content, ad readiness) and monitors it for 90 days. It does not do press or media outreach. I own it, so weigh that.
Related guides
- Book launch package cost breakdown: every line item priced separately, so you can see what a bundle is worth
- Guaranteed bestseller campaigns: how a badge is manufactured and what it is worth
- Self-publishing packages UK: the full-service bundles and the vanity warning signs
- Best platforms to promote your book: the do-it-yourself channels, rated the same way
- Editorial review services compared: paid reviews that are legitimate, and what they cost
