If you know an author, no matter how successful, you’ve heard the complaint: Their publisher failed to publicize their book sufficiently. But Adam Langer‘s friend Lissa Warren, a publicist, tells him, “The thing about authors is that some of them just don’t get it.” Intrigued, he polls book publicists for their side of the story in this Book Standard column, including Nicholas Latimer, head of publicity for Knopf, Erin Cox of Simon & Schuster, and leading independent publicist Lyn Goldberg. Most say more or less the same thing: as Warren puts it, “They think they should get on Oprah, but their book is about the economy of Japan. They’ve written a book on massage for dogs and think it should be reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. They think they should hit USA Today‘s bestseller list but their book is on a niche topic—like rose gardens in Arizona—and the print run is only 2,000 copies.”