Echoes of the Lost is Ooligan Press’s forthcoming mystery/thriller title, set to be released in May 2026. Now that the initial work of developmental edits, cover design, and putting together the book’s marketing plan has been completed, the book is moving on to the next steps in the process: contact lists, blurb requests, and review requests.

While this may sound tedious, these tasks make up much of the backbone of a book’s publicity. Let’s start with blurbs since that’s what our team worked on first. Used in a few different ways, blurbs are praise quotes written for Echoes of the Lost by other mystery/thriller authors. These quotes will appear on the front cover of the book, on the “praise page” inside, and in other publicity materials like the press kit. Blurbs are used to add credibility to the author by demonstrating that other authors enjoyed their work, and to draw readers in who may already be fans of the blurbers and trust their judgement. 

The blurb request process begins with two key steps: writing a template and putting together a list of author contacts. The blurb request template for Echoes of the Lost is fairly standard, beginning with a greeting to the author followed by a description of the book. Then, we make specific connections between Echoes of the Lost and each author’s own works before asking them to write a blurb for us. Potential blurbers are selected because of their experience in the genre, connection to Ooligan Press, and/or their status as other indie-published authors. In this case, since Cindy Brown is already an established author, she also had a list of her own personal contacts that she reached out to for blurbs.

The review request process begins very similarly: with a template and a contact list. In this case, the contact list is much longer—spanning trade magazines, book blogs, Bookstagrammers, podcasts, and more. These contacts range from worldwide outlets with millions of annual viewers to local, Portland-based newspapers, to social media accounts with just a few thousand followers. The review request template begins with a brief overview of Echoes of the Lost, followed by specific connections to each contact, then a plot summary, and finally information about the book’s publication date. The reviews written in response to these requests are critical for increasing sales, so it’s very important that each connection is strong—even though the contact list has almost one hundred outlets on it.

Since strong connections are key for both blurb and review requests, they are edited by me, the marketing and publicity manager, and the copy chief. This is done both to maintain Ooligan’s reputation as an organized and professional publisher, and to ensure that our chances of successful requests are as high as possible.