April 22, 2024 • 45 mins
Ashley Alberico is the Sales and Marketing Director for the Crown Publishing Group, a subset of Penguin Random House. In this episode, Ashley discusses what happens behind the scenes in sales and marketing meetings, and how experts boil down your book to pithy marketing jargon that appeals to booksellers and readers.
Having worked with the likes of Michelle Obama and Ina Garten, Ashley explains how Amazon categorizes books, the difference between Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and what you should tell friends when they ask you "Where should I buy your book?" (The answer: it's complicated!) Ashley also dishes about the role of authors in the marketing and sales process, and the calendar for when important decisions are made. Also, learn practical advice like the difference between announced print runs and actual print runs, and what can of ads or publicity actually sell books.
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Episode Transcript
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Music.
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How Books Work, real talk with editors, agents, and publishing insiders.
Hosted by writers Julie Seitao and Alice Robb. Well, Ashley,
thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Ashley Alberico has worked at Penguin Random House for over 10 years and across
multiple publishing functions, including finance, sales, and marketing.
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Her career has primarily been dedicated to nonfiction, and she has had the privilege
of working on a range of books from Celebrated Voices such as Eric Larson,
Michelle Obama, and Ina Garten. That is quite a list.
She's currently the sales marketing director for the Crown Publishing Group.
Sounds so lofty when you say it like that. It does. It is lofty. Embrace it.
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Ten years is a long time. Gosh, even when you just say it like that,
I'm like, wow, I've never done anything else. Which isn't true.
Actually, I came from finance, but... You did come from finance.
Yeah, tell us about that. What's your journey?
My journey is I went to college thinking that I just wanted to make money.
So I majored in business. And I still, of course, want to make money. Who doesn't?
I majored in finance and I went to work for JP Morgan, which I did for two years
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after college in investment banking.
And I thought I wanted to be a stockbroker. And it turns out that I felt my
soul physically leaving my body during the investment banking.
So I had done the whole thing. I went to New York. I got a job offer. It was a big one.
And then I had this 22-year-old existential crisis and realized that I needed
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to shift and pivot or else I would hate myself forever.
And I started sending bottles of wine to publishing companies in the hopes that
somebody would take me for a financial analyst, because it's really the only
experience I had alongside a sincere love of publishing.
And I still feel like the ability to call books that become movies like way before they happened.
And they hired me. So I ended up working in finance. That was my first job as
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a financial analyst, ironically enough for Crown.
So actually, the largest piece of my career has been working for Crown Publishing
Group and so primarily non-fiction.
Yeah, I started off in finance. I was there for three and a half years.
And I think every step I've made after that has been to kind of just get closer,
closer and closer to the books.
Finance was interesting. And it was just very strategic, very budget,
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very numbers, numbers, numbers, which was my background.
But I wanted to really get into the nitty gritty of the books.
And so from there, I wanted to move over to sales, which was the best.
Yes. Obviously, I think to date, I would say my favorite job still has been
being an account manager and being a sales rep. I was a sales rep for Walmart first.
And then I went on to be the account manager for Barnes & Noble.
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It's great. Selling books is the best because you get the best of both worlds.
You get to sit with the editors and you're all about the books and their enthusiasm.
And then you get to go off into the world and it becomes your baby a little
bit because you're like, it is my job.
I am tasked with making sure that people give a shit about this book and then
it makes its way into the world.
And you feel this kind of like great sense of responsibility.
And so I love that about being a sales rep.
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And I honestly wouldn't do that forever if I felt like I was the kind of person
that can stay in one job forever.
But anyway, inevitably, inertia happens. And I ended up on the publishing side
in this kind of very unique role of sales marketing,
which basically what it is, because I feel like many people don't really understand
the concept of what sales marketing even is, is figuring out ways and tactics
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to expand the reach of books and bookstores specifically.
So a traditional marker is working very much on the consumer side.
What do we do to get consumers interested? How do we get an audience?
Sales marketing is how do we get accounts to care about this book?
And the biggest piece of that is the reps. So the nice thing is that I still
get to work with account managers every day.
The people that I work with most often, aside from working with people like
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Libby and the editors but um i still get to do that kind of like get people
to care about this book kind of thing,
just i don't have to have bnn yelling at me every day which is kind of nice.
Actually yeah that was one of our questions which was like can you walk us through
what your day is like typically like a lot of us authors have no idea what you
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actually do you know i think it's so funny because people,
having worked in finance, having worked in sales, and now having worked,
this is my first time working kind of like in the publishing machine.
So I feel like one of the things that kind of like surprised me the most is
just kind of how much goes into getting one book published.
And when people hear that we publish like 400 books a year, I mean,
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I think it's proud we're publishing fewer than that right now,
but you know, it's a lot of books and it's, you know, how do you publish this many?
How does every author and book get the kind of unique love that it needs and
look all books aren't created equal they all sell differently and many of the
different platform but i i didn't realize how much goes into publishing that one book like.
Publishing is corporate. There are a lot of people behind the scenes,
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a lot of people kind of pulling the threads.
And so a day in my life is very much every single bit of the publishing program, right?
So since we work so closely with sales, it is very much based on the sales cycle.
But reps are usually selling books about six months out, which means that about
a year before a book publishes, we're sitting in a room talking about how we're
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going to get this book out into the world and strategizing about how we're going
to get accounts to really take it and run with it.
What are our priorities? What is mid-list? What is stuff that we kind of know,
you know, we own it, it's ours, we don't know, maybe the moment has passed,
maybe it's not the kind of book that we think is really going to resonate.
So that's kind of where the whole thing begins.
Like what are our priorities for a span? Like right now we're talking about
fall 24, right? So we're, you know, not necessarily year out, nine months out or so.
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So my life is like fall 24, spring 25. Like I'm living in these,
life always feels like it's on fast forward because I'm always working like a year out.
And so for fall you know where we're heading into a sales conference and like
we're basically figuring out like what are key priorities that we have come
that we have coming for the fall.
What are kind of like the books that we see as kind of opportunities but maybe
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you know or maybe going to need a little bit more love because maybe they don't
have as big of a platform obviously non-fiction is incredibly platform driven
and so like my life right now is like just figuring out kind of like we're about
to sit with these reps i'll sit in meetings to figure out where are we with
these books? How is our positioning, right?
Is the positioning tight enough? If I'm reading a headline, does it work for Amazon?
Does it work for BNN? Does it work for the field? There are hundreds and hundreds
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of indie bookstores throughout the country.
And then as far as it's like stand overlaps, because at the same time that we're
doing this, we're also looking at spring 25.
So it's like, okay, well, we need all of our copy for all of our books that
we have coming for spring 25, like probably ready to go. What do we have to read?
We're about to go and we're about to launch these books in a few weeks to the entire company.
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So these books are not as baked, but you know, you would think by the time you
hit saw, everything should be more baked. What are we missing?
What do we have? Like, are we missing manuscripts? Do we not have the reads?
Are we positioning book as it's all in the read? And then we don't have anything
like that happens so often.
And I know as authors, you know, it's not easy, right? Books are your baby.
You're constantly writing a book. You're editing it. You're re-editing it.
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Does that feel like it's at a stage where we're sharing with everyone?
Oh my gosh, I'm here away. They still have so much time, but you don't have
time because we need to get that book out there.
We need your reps to read it. We need them to love it. We need to share it with accounts.
So a large part of my day, like a day in the life, you know,
I'm sitting through a lot of meetings trying to figure out, is the positioning tight?
Depending on where we are in a span, do we have everything we need for that book?
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Are we ordering galleys? Is it a galley? Which is like an, you know,
for the girls that maybe doesn't know what a galley is. A galley is an advanced book.
It can actually look a little bit like a book, but usually it'll have a stamp
that says advanced reading copy.
I mean, I'd be perfect. There are errors in these things. Some authors hate
that and they don't like us even publishing early copies with mistakes in them.
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Those are usually our journalists of the world.
But most accounts know that, you know, these are not real books.
You know, they actually like love catching little things or,
you know, this is a stunt, right? Like it's kind of like, I'm going to sing.
Well, my team works on the galley timeline, like how we're getting early sales materials to accounts.
Accounts so we have a lot of meetings about that and where we are and getting
them early enough are we do we have it early enough to a patient to pitch a
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book that we see as an indie darling,
in time for an indie next step line you know what i mean some of those kinds
of things like deadlines actually run my life so much which sometimes i'm just
being a rapper doesn't feel quite as like deadline deadline deadline deadline
heavy but that is kind of like what my job is today like i'm sitting with productions
talking about galleys i'm sitting with sales to say okay okay, well,
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we have your galleys, but what the fuck else do you need, right?
Like, do you need a one sheet that talks about the brand?
Is there an opportunity for your Book of the Month Club, a monthly pick?
Is there an Amazon opportunity? Is there an merchandising opportunity for Amazon?
Do the BISACs make, you know, certain books Amazon can't even promote based
on what our BISACs are, believe it or not.
BISACs are like the things that, I mean, I'm sure you know that,
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but BISACs are- I don't know. What is a BISACs? I've never even heard of that phrase.
It's like, it's like,
it's like, like this is what we all want to know what
is a buy sack so but driving back to every single do you know what a tip sheet
is a ti sheet a positioning sheet okay so every book starts with copy right
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and like that you're familiar with you have to put pitch your book when you
put a proposal in and you say this is what i want right that's how we you know
either you have reading material,
for us or you don't and you see that they either buy your book or you don't
they value it at a a certain price based on how you pitch and what your proposal
is and all the components that go into that.
Once we own the book is where kind of my job more kicks in.
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We own it at what level do we own it? How do we prioritize it?
And it starts off with a tip sheet, TI sheet, which is, it has copy.
It has kind of like a pithy little headline that kind of positions your book has.
This is like the manifesto of X in the self-help memoir that meets Y and it'll help you achieve X,
Y, or Z, right it has kind of like a promise and what you can expect to get
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from the book and it's usually pretty catchy and it ends up everywhere it's
usually what you'll see if you look at your amazon retail copy online.
From there, we put a bunch of different other things on this tip sheet that
helps reps go to their accounts and say, this is why you should buy the book.
Every single rep, every single tip sheet in some capacity.
So it's important because when you have a list of 400 books to sell for a year
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and a rep is going in to meet with a buyer,
they may have like an hour to sell like 50 books, which is not a lot of time
because you're basically then getting what, like a minute, like a minute and a half per book.
Book. You have to prioritize. You have to figure out the books that need more
time. And you have to figure out the books that maybe need less time.
But regardless of who is selling it and who you're selling it to,
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you use this tip sheet to sell it. So it kind of like sets up the scene for the book.
And if you don't get as much time to sell a book, that's all they ask.
That's all the account will ever see. And that's what they'll use to buy the
book and monetize it. And it really kind of sets you up for success in an account.
So you have your headline, you have your copy of a target audience.
Who are your books like, right? Right.
Like if you're in your dream world of authoredom, right, you probably have an
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idea of what your book is like. You know, my book is like Outlive.
My book is like Atomic Habits. Like I'm writing this kind of self-help book or it's a memoir.
You know, it's something like When Breath Becomes Air. You know,
we have like this dream or reality of what we expect the book to do.
Some cases it's realistic and some cases it isn't. And what that target consumer
is meant to be is a little bit aspirational.
We really see this as being for fans of When Breath Becomes Air.
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Maybe it's a debut author, which is high praise, right?
Because that's a book that's got on to doing incredibly well.
It's a perennial bestseller.
But we will address to get a tangible sense of what the book is and what they
can come into and if they've read books like that.
And so we'll do a few key consumer bullets for them to kind of be used to set the stage for the book.
And then five facts, especially for nonfiction, are a way to say,
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this is where a book lives in a bookstore. This is where consumers can find it.
In a perfect world, else, you would hope that your book is stacked all the way
up in the front, copies and copies high, and that people are going to see it
and people are going to buy it.
And there's no way that it's going to get buried anywhere and everybody will read it and love it.
But the reality is, you know, that's merchandising. Not every book gets that.
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A lot of books get it in the beginning of their life cycle, right?
A book goes on sale. That's when you're doing your media.
That's when you're kind of like that blitz is. So we get front of store merchandising
a lot of the time, more front loaded in the beginning of a book's life.
It's really the books that go on to have perennial kind of like organic sales,
kind of like, you know, like an outlive that you've kind of been seeing sell all year by Peter T.S.
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That will live there in the front of section because of how well it's been doing.
But the reality is you have to fight for space.
If it goes elsewhere, you better be like really hope that it's going into a
section where buyers can find it because that doesn't always happen, right?
So if you write a book that is a blend of a different nonfiction categories,
maybe it's a little bit business, Maybe it's a little bit prescriptive.
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Maybe it's a little bit current affairs, right?
Like there can be so many different friends that a nonfiction book pulls on.
But you have to pick a home. If you miss your first home, you miss everyone.
You kind of need a key audience or you get no audience.
It's not to say that a nonfiction book or any book can't have crossover opportunities.
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It can't say that. It doesn't mean that a fiction book doesn't have nonfiction
readers. It doesn't mean that an adult fiction book doesn't have YA readers.
But the first and most important thing that we try to do with nonfiction is
to pick a lane. who is the key audience for this.
So if this is a memoir, that is our first BISAC. It is like basically a subject category.
We position it that way with reps. That is how they know to go to a bookseller
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and say, this is a memoir, first and foremost.
This should live alongside X, Y, or Z book.
These are the fans. And then from there, you have crossover audiences,
which make up your other BISACs. Like your second BISAC may be business,
your third BISAC may be current affairs. We always have three.
And that kind of tells you what it's a little bit of a blend of.
But the reality is a book needs to live somewhere. And for retail,
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those buy sacks are very important.
It's important for Amazon, too, perhaps less so from a, you know,
it's not like it's going to go live in a store.
People can find it based on metadata, which for Amazon is kind of the more important thing.
But there are certain buy sacks that Amazon doesn't promote or that they don't work, you guys.
So we have to be mindful of that. When we're picking our buy sacks,
you know, they don't do it for, like, self-help, right? Right.
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So like if we're not going to get the promotion we need, you know,
and something is something else.
I mean, I think we do a pretty great job of making sure that if this is a self-help
book, you know, it has to be self-help hell or high water or else,
you know, regardless of where you're promoting it, it's not going to work.
But those are all just kind of things that we have to keep in mind.
It's meaningful for, you know, specialty retailers like your special markets,
like things that will go into, you know, a bookstore that's not sorry,
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a store that's not a bookstore.
Store so on urban outsiders and anthropology places that
carry books that aren't traditional book retailers bisax and
kind of how we're positioning with audiences is really important for them
too and the last like big thing is like we always have comps
like comps for us like floats on aspirational in terms of
you know this is where we really see who the reader is but
tangible comps like comps that accounts need comps that reps need to really
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kind of get the book out and the number that they need need to be recent you
know like if you're going into picture a new book like The struggle is always
trying to find something that's published in the last three years at a level
that you think is reasonable for the book that you've written.
And that's the battle comps can take. And they need a lot of the time they need
to be in-house for us because that's kind of how we see the numbers and where
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things have been distributed.
So comps and comp titles can take a lot of our time. Like in a given day,
I probably spend at least one hour of every day of my life in this office looking
for comps in some capacity. Right.
So that's kind of, that's your tip sheet, like in a nutshell,
like those kinds of components. And then they make up like the basis of how a rep will sell a book.
So who is it that your team writes them? Because obviously, as a writer,
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we don't have any, like, we don't even see them.
So how are they like, where are they getting this information?
Who's writing it? Like, is this, is the editor, the acquiring editor involved in that at all?
Oh, yes, heavily, heavily. You know, Libby is, for example, I'll use Libby just
because you know her, aren't you?
Just on this podcast, she'll give me her TI sheet with the bones of it,
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which I believe a lot of the time will either come, it'll be a lot of what has
come from you as an author, right?
A lot of from your proposal, a lot from the pages you've already provided.
Libby will have read it at that point. So she'll pull from a lot of how you've
positioned the book yourself. Like, how an author positions their book and what
they want from it and who they see as the audience is actually really,
I mean, I hope you'll be happy to hear, very important to us.
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You know, as corporate as this machine can sometimes feel, our authors are very important to us.
And at the end of the day, like, we do want, we want how you feel about the
book and how you see the book to be true to what the book is and how we sell
it. So, you know, and a lot of the time, like, that'll be how you're invested in it, right?
And that'll just be more meaningful for the book and its ultimate life cycle.
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So, yes, she'll pull from how you're positioning the book, either how to read
the material or from the pitch.
Because these happen early on. Sometimes we have to do these tip sheets before
we even have our own manuscript in. In fact, most of the time we do.
So that'll come from, yeah, the acquiring editor. And the target consumer,
that also tends to come, it's a little bit of the, it's a little bit of the editor.
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It's a little bit of marketing marketing who also reads the material
and a little bit my team as well
as sales and marketing having a little bit more of kind of the atomic facing view
of what we're seeing working in the get so you know
they'll have a if a target like a target consumer of saying like this is for
fans of we're gonna go fiction now just because i hate so much on fiction like
this is for fans of meg bolitzer like great that's a helpful thing to note but
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like what about meg bolitzer you know what i mean like what what you need something
to kind of conceptualize it.
The sales team is something to kind of like actually bite into.
And so for fans of women's fiction that makes shit sale things,
like Meg, what would start it?
Like there's tons of ways my team will help look at a target consumer and say
like, make this meaningful for us so that we can make it meaningful for accounts.
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And then the comps, I mean, again, a lot of those, a lot of this will come from
the author and the editor pulling from the materials that they've received.
But we weigh in heavily on comps just because it has to hit all of those kind
of like requirements that we need, both on the aspirational side,
but then also on the actual, this is how we are going to buy the book.
And these are the numbers that we need to reach side.
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But yeah, I mean, realistically, you should be seeing those DIs though.
So those TIs generally go to authors, like, and they should be,
the copy at the very least is usually something that an author weighs in on
before we let it come with me feed to retail.
Because those tip sheets, they stay behind the scenes until we feel like,
usually the way it works is the copy for your book will feed out nine months
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before on sale to retailers, right?
So that means on Amazon, on BNN, like our personal peer-reviewed websites,
nine months before is kind of like the organic, all our ducks in a row,
this is what happens. We hold other certain books back.
Usually we hold books back that have very big platforms behind them because
we have to time an announcement to them.
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So if we hold those books back, we need to kind of like block them in our system,
which means all that information that's on that spreadsheet gets blocked. bought.
Realistically, a lot of that information gets fed out to retailers.
Some of it stays a very kind of like specific sales focused sites that they
used to sell. But a lot of it goes out there.
I mean, you know, you look up your book, you should be able to see your headline,
you should be able to see your copy.
You know, Amazon doesn't really do buy sacks the way other book accounts would,
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but you can see like in which buckets it's kind of being searched for and surfaced.
But yeah, I mean, those are done very much with your way.
And I think for us, you know, we look at it and we fine tune
it we have a copy editing team they also look at it and kind of make
it more like pithy and salesy and
i think that kind of our job is to kind of take what you have done
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and put it into a format that makes it feel like like zingery which isn't a
word but today it is a word and what are what are the most important retailers
one thing i've always has been unclear about is sometimes readers or friends will ask me like,
oh, what's the best place to buy your book? And I never quite know what to tell them.
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Oh my god, I like all of my answers. This will be long-winded.
Because the problem is, it's like, you know, just like every single book is
our baby, even though they are all prioritized differently and we pay different
amounts for them and they will go on to sell very differently.
Every bookstore is kind of like your baby in a sense, because they all sell
the books and you want to be able to say like support blog, right?
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But everybody shops in a different way.
There is one, I will say, I will refuse to say that one is more important than
the other because collectively, collectively, like we need all of our retailers.
But what I will say is Amazon makes up a good 60%, if not more.
It's not more on like a title by title basis of what we sell,
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especially in nonfiction.
If you've looked at a bookstore recently, you will notice that the trend bookstores
shift with trends. And right now they are very, very fiction focused.
Romantasy is like what is in the water. Rom-com is what is in the water is like
what people are reading.
And because of that, every time you walk in the bookstore, you're going to see the Sarah J.
Moss's of the world. You're going to see the Rebecca Yarris's of the world.
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They're also eating up like prime real estate in books for us from the stories.
What people are, you know, is trend shift, but that is very much where we're living.
So the struggle with nonfiction for us right now is getting retailers outside
of Amazon to care in a significant way about our books and to really position
them in stores and to originate them in stores.
So from that standpoint, I will say Amazon does make up, especially for nonfiction,
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a very significant amount of market share. And market share basically is the
share of the pie in terms of where books are sold.
And a lot of people use Amazon for nonfiction because metadata is a driving force there, right?
So if you look up something like, I want to read about a book about cats and guns.
I'm using an example of, you know, how to teach your cat about gun safety,
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right? It's like a white elephant book for us. It sells every year.
We have to do nothing to make it sell.
It's like, what's that? Every year, the last four weeks of the year,
it sells like bananas. Right?
And it's rather controversial, actually. But either way, the point is you can
look up like Cats and Guns and
get this book, right? And that is like the magic of a tool like Amazon.
Metadata is very important. We think about the words that we have associated with the book.
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That way, when people look it up, they can find it. I would love to see people
as a full-on Barnes & Noble rep.
I would love to see people shopping more in bookstores.
I think like the bookstore, I think, you know, it's not for your friends,
for example, it's like, oh, where should I be shopping?
I think like it depends on what their user experience is. is if they need a
book in a pinch and they want something to deliver tomorrow and it's a snowstorm
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and they don't want to go out, like that's a lot of America most of the time,
even in the best of weather.
And so that Amazon is your account for that, right?
But if you want an experience, like if you want to really like,
if you're a book lover and you want to feel the magic of books and you want
to walk in and smell the freaking pages and you want to feel like nostalgic,
like for me, like I grew up in a Barnes and Noble.
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It was next door to my house. I went there to study. like for me
it's like it is an experience it always will be and so for
that person you go to a bookstore and i think barnes and noble has
come a really long way in the past few years they were
bought by james daunt who bought waterstones out in the
uk which is a beautiful bookstore it's their key bookstore
out there it is lovely if you're ever out there you should go but bnn has really
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come a long way towards kind of making the bookstore experience form feel more
like an indie booksell bookseller experience whereas before that it kind of
felt like a little maybe like cold with like fluorescent lighting and you couldn't
necessarily understand.
What's to place anywhere yeah I think like Barnes and Noble has come a long
way and I will plug for the indie bookstores as well just like I love a good
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like a swirling into an indie bookstore there are so many of them in New York so,
It's true. We were talking with the publicist yesterday about print runs.
And I'm curious, as we talk about the timeline for a book, so you have your
tip sheet and then in the nine months out, all the stuff goes up on whatever, Amazon, et cetera.
(24:31):
When do you start to actually get feedback?
When did the sales reps say, okay, we're getting some traction on this book or we're not?
Or what is the timing for all of that? Yeah, absolutely. Good question.
So, for example, right now we are setting print runs for books that I mean,
I will start here just because I feel like everything needs a little bit of
(24:53):
context, which is, you know, the difference between an announced first print
and actual print. Is that something that is meaningful to you?
Yes, because my announced first print, I am sure, is not going to be my real
first print. So, yes, I do.
So for the broader world, whoever is listening to this podcast,
the way it works is that we have a positioning number.
It is called your announced first print. And announced first print is,
(25:15):
I don't want to say meaningless, but I think it's more of, it's not meaningless,
but it's more of an example of setting the stage for a book.
It is a lot higher than what we actually inevitably end up printing.
And accounts know this. So if we go in and we say, the announced first print is 100,000 copies.
Like, realistically, you're probably like, like, we're probably going out the
(25:36):
door and shipping maybe like with that number, which means that we don't print 50.
If we're going out with 50, we would print more than that. we're certainly not
going to be printing 100, right?
So like that number is kind of fluffed and it's meant to be because accounts
know that it is kind of like a positioning tactic and they use it to prioritize books.
So we set those numbers early. Like we set an announced first print.
(25:57):
We set like a pub goal for an account. So let's say your announced first print is 100,000.
Your pub goal, like what you're going in account is probably like 50,000.
It's like roughly half of that. Just to kind of like give you an example.
And we're setting those numbers for spring 25 So those kind of like positioning steps.
We don't print the book until closer to publication. But right now,
(26:21):
Wraps are out in the world selling summer before.
So what, we're like six months out from summer. Summer technically starts in June.
So like the numbers are all due like around, you know, this time.
So we're starting to like actually like think about the print runs.
It's not like we're going to go to print tomorrow.
But the reason, because we are such a big publisher and because we have to plan
(26:42):
accordingly with paper, We actually
have to like set these, we set like various stages of a print run.
It will be like your first estimate and then there will be like your final bind and like all of that.
I forget the exact, I don't want to quote myself because I forget the exact
timeline having not been on that for a while now of when they would be like
doing a final bind before the book is printed. did.
But generally, when you ask about momentum and reps are starting to like,
(27:04):
oh, this is exciting and this is starting to bubble, reps are selling summer right now.
So generally, while we are still certainly in the midst of spring and the things
that are happening for nonfiction books are happening now, like we're getting
a lot of media, reps are with a ton getting excited about the summer.
So I think one of the hardest things about publishing is probably aligning the
(27:26):
sales cycle to the marketing and publicity one.
And it is no harder than for nonfiction, which is driven so much by media because
reps are selling so far out and marketing and publicity plans don't come together
until much closer to publication.
So we're sitting now and talking about books that are like my marketing and
publicity meetings, we're talking about spring.
And in my sales facing meetings, we're talking about like, we're getting ready
(27:47):
to talk about fall, but they're selling summer.
So it's like, there's just such a difference in terms of where people are.
Reps are very responsive when you give them a campaign for an upcoming title.
So it's not to say that we still can't very much impact what we're going out
the door with for spring titles.
At this point, like, of course, there's time, especially for books that are
like a little bit later in the spring span.
(28:07):
But those numbers are in, right? Like for spring, like we're in it,
right? Like it's happening now. Here we are.
At this point, like the reps numbers are.
There. We know what they're taking. We know what the numbers look like basically
throughout all of spring. So that takes us all through May.
Summer is starting to come in now as they're at the accounts.
(28:28):
So we're starting to get a sense of how books are going to come in.
So that when you ask about how do we know when the reps are starting to feel
like something is bubbling, we know now for summer because they're now starting to sell.
We can prioritize until we're blue in the face. And certainly that matters to
reps and that helps with them positioning with accounts.
Accounts we don't know like a sleeper make him out of
the woodwork like oh my god you know we didn't we have like a 20,000 first
(28:49):
print for an ounce for a sprint for this like like accounts are loving
this read like let's talk about how we can bump it up let's talk about what
we would need to make it more of a like to get people to care i mean it truly
is harder for non-fiction i know i keep saying it but fiction is just the kind
of thing where you could be nobody from nowhere and write a fiction book and
get the buzz and the right people reading it and somebody on on TikTok,
(29:12):
I'll like inflate it and it'll take off.
And then all of a sudden you have a movie deal. I'm like, you're out there.
Your book is huge and you're a millionaire, right?
For nonfiction, and I'm sure Libby talked about this a little,
but when you're collecting the information that you need for nonfiction,
what is your following? Who's listening?
Like who's out there? What does your social media look like?
(29:33):
Why do people want to read about your life or your prescriptive elements or
whatever it is that you have in your book?
And it's a lot harder to position nonfiction without a platform.
And so reps always want to know, you know, what do they bring to the table?
And for nonfiction, that is a lot more meaningful than it is for fiction.
And so that's kind of like, again, when things are bubbling,
(29:54):
like, and how we prioritize, those are the earliest stats, aside from the read
itself, that books are, that books, that reps are using to position your books.
Sorry, Alice, I don't know if you, I just want to ask one, one follow up with
that, if that's okay. Yeah.
One of the other things we've been, you know, the point of the podcast is really
to educate a lot of us writers who even have, you know, more than one book out
(30:18):
there about the sort of hidden stuff that goes on,
because a lot of it is really hard for us to navigate or even know about.
Yeah. What do you, do you think it's, do you think authors should know these
kind of things or like try to be more involved or is it like,
what is the reason why we're, we're shielded from a lot of the business side
(30:39):
of the industry, you know?
Yeah, no, I know. I know exactly what you're saying. And I think,
you know, part of the reason for that is because when you sign on to publish
with a company like Penguin Random House, for example, like I said,
like we got a lot of people. ball.
Like we know a lot of these people have been in the business forever.
Like we know what we're doing. These refs have been selling for years.
(30:59):
Like we know an opportunity when it strikes, we know how to publish your book,
we know how to package your book.
And I think it's really hard for authors who have written this baby,
right? Like this is your child.
Like there's some emotion that wasn't in the book and like you want to be able
to package it. You have ideas on how to sell it. And like those things are incredibly valuable.
I think the reason you're shielded is because sometimes we'll take a package
(31:20):
that you love and you're like, this is the package, right?
Like this is it, this is the tagline, this is ASCII thing.
And we'll take it to a sales face meeting and they'll be like,
This is trash. I don't know. I have gone through.
Well, the sales force had a very strong feeling about my cover.
So I have a very different cover than the one that we originally had in mind. So I understand.
(31:45):
Which, you know, I guess, are there things that we as authors should be doing
that would be helpful for you or that you wish you'd seen more of?
Yeah, a few things. to this.
One is take everything that you hear from your fellow writers and agents and
people who have published books with a grain of salt.
Every book is different. Every sales team is different. Every publisher publishes
(32:07):
a little bit differently.
So as far as, you know, like my, we did this for my book and they did this for
my book, like you can hear all that, but you have to believe and trust the process.
The marketing team that you have in place, they are listening to you.
They will do everything that they can to make sure that the book that you have
written reaches which is the audience they're meant to reach.
Like this is their job. They've been doing it for so long.
(32:27):
So that's one piece of it. There is a piece of test the process and try to take
what you're hearing from like your, and you know, maybe your restaurant is like Jumbo Lahiri.
And like, so maybe she's a New York Times bestselling author.
And so she has like certain things that have happened for her book that may
not be realistic right now for yours.
It's not to say that we wouldn't look into it or that we're not reaching out to the same people.
(32:48):
It's just that you kind of have to keep that in mind because when you hear that,
it gets very like, well, why are we not doing the same thing? right?
And like this energy can be better spent with you out there in the world,
talking to people about your book, building up your following.
You know, if it's a nonfiction book, like you want to be out there,
you want to be figuring out ways to reach readers. You want to be leaning into your message.
(33:12):
Like the word that the concept of lean in is so true.
And basically every aspect like life, but also in book publishing,
if you're writing a book about.
If you're doing a podcast about how books work and you are then writing a book
about like how books work, let's just use those as only the books.
Everything you say out in the world needs to lean into this message in some capacity, right?
(33:33):
Like sometimes we have celebrities writing a cookbook and they've never posted
a food content post in their entire life to their millions and millions and
millions of followers, right?
So like even for them, it is true that you need to live your message, right? Right.
Like if you're going to be writing your first cocktail book,
but you're a celebrity and you've never even spoken about cocktails,
it is not authentic. It is not going to ring true.
(33:54):
So for you writing a book out in the world, like whatever that message is,
get out there, get it to the people that you want to hear it,
live it, read it, post about it, grow your following, get a sub stack,
like whatever you can do to kind of like the numbers are important. Yes.
But more importantly is the level of engagement that you have with the people that follow you.
(34:14):
And that engagement comes very much from authenticity.
And people know when it's something that you're saying or doing like kind of
rings false which is kind of even a trouble that we will see with majorly platformed
authors that have like all the followers in the world but we publish something
that just doesn't feel true to who they are, their content or like what they're
imposing about and it's like,
what business does this author have talking to me about this, right?
(34:36):
And then you're basically just getting, you know some of their fan base that
would buy anything that they would take, which is big but it's certainly not
big to the amount that we have paid.
So that's kind of
what i would say i would say it's those two big things like trust
your people trust the process if you feel like you're not being heard like certainly
that's one thing and that is a problem i would say like as
pure age i feel like we do such a good job of listening but try to
(34:59):
stop comparing like as in life as with
books try to stop comparing yourself to everybody else and
kind of like live the like live the reality that you
have and do everything you can to get your message off the ground because it's
going to help the message of the book so julie should
start spending a lot of time in department stores and
yes i am thinking of all these things you don't
(35:20):
even know what i'm working on i have a whole draft of ideas but i mean right
i guess i guess to that end you do you as the sales force know when we're like
super engaged like i'm working pretty closely with a wonderful marketing person
at penguin random house she's amazing.
We've been like, you know, working on stuff together. It's awesome.
(35:42):
But like they know if you're like super engaged and trying and stuff that like goes through even if.
The engagement with your audience is slow to come. Yes, I know.
But yes, yes. But they, they know. Yeah, that's important.
Okay. It is. Yeah. I, it is. We worked with all, I don't work with authors.
I don't necessarily, you are wonderful.
(36:04):
I have met plenty of wonderful authors, but, you know, I, I've also met plenty
of not wonderful authors.
I don't envy having to, to deal with it when things get really difficult and sticky. tricky.
And I think, you know, one of the challenges is trying to protect this art that
somebody has created while also trying to get it to sell.
And sometimes those messages don't align and you feel like you're not receiving
(36:27):
the attention care that you need.
I mean, I get it. But I will say that, Rex, when we have an engaged author,
when we have an author that is willing to do anything, when we have an author
that is like thinking creatively or outside the box, and like we know because
your marketers are emailing us and your editors are emailing us and we are,
you know, we are trying to figure out like the levers that we can then pull
(36:47):
to leverage what you have also leveraged. So it is getting out there.
Cool. I know Alice has another podcast she has to run and do.
So I don't know. I don't know. Like, I know. I know. Do you do you?
Alice, do you have any parting questions we haven't asked? Or I know we I have
a topical question, actually.
So I'm about to be a guest on a podcast. Someone is going to interview me about
(37:12):
a book that I wrote the bulk of it in 2016 and 2017.
It came out in 2018 about the science of dreaming.
And I was just this morning, I was rereading the book and kind of refreshing
myself on what I wrote seven years ago.
In terms of like, I guess it made me think about the lifespan of a book.
(37:35):
And like, I don't know, how meaningful is it to like, keep doing publicity five
years, seven years after a book comes out?
Like, can it make a difference? Are there still books in a warehouse somewhere
that is like, you know, if this goes well, they'll pull three out of there? Yeah.
Yeah, you mentioned mid list author. So I right, that's sort of that idea, right? Yeah, it is.
(37:58):
So like there's a difference between it and for, you know, I think most authors
would notice and most people interested in books, but there's a front list and a back list.
The front list is when a book publishes for the first year of its life.
And there is certainly a lot of energy that goes into that first year of a book's publication.
I talked a little bit about it from a merchandising standpoint,
because so much of the media happens in that year.
(38:18):
That's generally when we'll see a book in the front of a bookstore on an end
cap stacked up on the table. But I think your question is a really good one
because, oddly enough, Backlist supports into me.
And Backlist is what happens to a book after that first year, right?
Like, it publishes in trade paperback, not always, but, you know,
sometime, most of the time, actually, I publish in trade paperback and that's
(38:39):
where it'll live forever. And I know the question of how important is it to
do publicity years down the line?
I mean, I know a book like A Little Life has always sold,
but not nearly in the amounts of sales we've seen in the most,
I don't know, last year or two years from TikTok and social media and Instagram.
(39:01):
Consumers have no meaningful understanding of what front list and back list is, right?
Every book that they find is new to them, right? They wouldn't know that something
is brand new versus something the older.
So it's always going to be meaningful from the standpoint of a consumer is coming
to your book from the first time. To them, it's new when they find it.
And because social media has given life to backlist books that have been out
(39:24):
for years and years and years, and maybe didn't even have like much of a past
for the first however many years of their life. And now they're seeing these
like massive resurgences.
I would say it is meaningful because, you know, I think at any point,
if your book finds its way into the right hands and with the right platform, it can really sell well.
And even if it isn't buckets, right, of sales and it's not like flying off the
(39:47):
shelves, we call books like it just has like a nice backless cycle, right?
Right. Which means that like over time, if you're out there doing publicity
and you're still getting the word out and you're still like talking about this
message and it is part of what you do, then like over time, the sales will just
trickle and they'll build and they'll have like a snowball effect.
So, yes, depending on how a book is selling and on the time we do spend time
looking at rates of movement for books and figuring out whether or not they
(40:09):
should stay in print, go out of print.
There's also a print-on-demand option, which is like we don't really hold the
inventory, but based on how books are being demanded on Amazon,
it's primarily an Amazon play.
We will print-on-demand for certain books. So the answer is yes.
I think it is meaningful if you're out there however many years down the line.
And then if you're writing a new book and you have an old book,
(40:32):
there is the concept of like we always identify if an author has a backlist
title when they're writing a new Because we will work to make sure that we will
certainly make sure that accounts know that you have written a book before and
that that should come into the conversation when they're selling your new book.
Like, hey, this author has a backlist title.
And like, they'll even pull consumer insights if it's more relevant.
You know, if it's nonfiction, like the science of dreams, like,
(40:54):
I feel like we are continuously changing.
There is this level of escapism that people are clearly coming to for fiction
and what is more relevant to that than dreams and kind of being able to escape reality a little bit.
So, like, if I were your marketer, that's kind of where I'd be going with this.
I would find a way to make that book just as relevant now as it was perhaps
in 2016 and tying that into the message of a new book. Does that answer your question?
(41:17):
And you can be like me and watch on Author Central on Amazon if your old backlist
title is still selling and how it's doing. I honestly, I commend you as authors.
Like I commend you so much. I feel like everybody in publishing probably has
this secret dream of wanting to write or having written or whatever it is.
Like I certainly in a past life used to dabble. I'm like, it's to get to the
(41:38):
point where you write a book and research a book and finish a book and trust
somebody else with like the creative endeavors to get out into the world. And it is commendable.
And I'm honestly, I mean, all of you every day, which is probably why I'm still here after 10 years.
Well, I mean, I feel like that's somewhat heartening because I
feel like there's so much like you know dire news
out there about all that stuff and if you're like actually inside the
(41:59):
publishing house and you're still like it's great that you're
doing this that's like you know oh it's so good
it's so good it's good it's an amazing like a
lot of it i feel like it's like anything else in the world the loudest
voices are usually the most negative ones and when you hear much negative things
about publishing out in the world it's like any other job right we're like yes
there are downsides because it is corporate there are a lot of people here doing
(42:21):
a lot of things and And some of them are not as front lines as like a marketing
and a publicity and you work really hard and you don't necessarily see that,
you know, you'll see the memes on whatever XOXO gossip girl or whatever the heck publishing girl.
And it's like I would say, it's like anything else where you kind of like have
that in some capacity. But everybody here loves books.
(42:42):
Everybody here is energized about every new book that comes to the table.
Like you get to work with somebody like Libby who like, I feel like every time
she pitches a book, I instantly become obsessed with whoever the author is because
she just has such a good eye and they're all people, you know,
I, there is a reason why people start off in publishing and never read it.
You know, I think a lot of the hopping around you see to other publishers is
(43:03):
in the notoriously underpaid industry, which I think is something that everybody
knows and we're trying to be more visible about it.
But you move on to make more money in order to get to stay in a career that
you love because it is really hard to make money here. And it's really hard
to move around, which, you know, I've moved around a lot.
There's something that I tell everybody who's new to publishing,
like, don't feel like you need to be stuck in finance. Don't feel like you need
(43:25):
to be stuck in sales. Don't feel like you need to be stuck in marketing.
If you are interested, there is room.
You just need to be willing to, whenever you put energy and effort into,
like, we'll be, it's like anything else, like, we'll be there for the outcome.
But yeah, I would say everybody here, I mean, largely people love authors and
they love books and that's why people are here.
So, this was on such an uplift. I feel like all we're doing is like doomsaying.
(43:52):
So that's really, it's lovely to hear, you know, a positive message on that.
And thank you so much, Ashley.
I hope maybe we can do like a part two eventually at one point.
Anytime. And if you have any follow-up questions, like, you know,
if something doesn't read as clear, like I'm, you know, yes. Yes.
And also we should say, if you have other like
(44:14):
people that you work with that you feel like would be great to
talk about what they do sort of more behind the scenes like we
were thinking about like yeah like a cover designer who
like does designs or like I don't know like please
put the word out because we would love to like feature them and just learn about
what they do so I have um I would say have you talked to a sales rep oh no you're
(44:36):
the only like actual sales marketing person we've we've talked to so far so
that would be amazing like an actual rep yeah yeah a rep would would be great. I'll see. I will.
Yeah. Put the word out. Yeah. Okay.
Let everybody know. It was so nice to meet you. Thank you so much, Ashley. So amazing.
Thank you. Everything. Good luck for your books. Thank you. Bye. Bye.
(45:03):
Thanks for listening. This has been an episode of How Books Work.
Join us on our next episode as we continue to explore publishing behind the.
Music.
Music.
(00:05):
How Books Work, real talk with editors, agents, and publishing insiders.
Hosted by writers Julie Seitao and Alice Robb. Well, Ashley,
thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Ashley Alberico has worked at Penguin Random House for over 10 years and across
multiple publishing functions, including finance, sales, and marketing.
(00:28):
Her career has primarily been dedicated to nonfiction, and she has had the privilege
of working on a range of books from Celebrated Voices such as Eric Larson,
Michelle Obama, and Ina Garten. That is quite a list.
She's currently the sales marketing director for the Crown Publishing Group.
Sounds so lofty when you say it like that. It does. It is lofty. Embrace it.
(00:50):
Ten years is a long time. Gosh, even when you just say it like that,
I'm like, wow, I've never done anything else. Which isn't true.
Actually, I came from finance, but... You did come from finance.
Yeah, tell us about that. What's your journey?
My journey is I went to college thinking that I just wanted to make money.
So I majored in business. And I still, of course, want to make money. Who doesn't?
I majored in finance and I went to work for JP Morgan, which I did for two years
(01:16):
after college in investment banking.
And I thought I wanted to be a stockbroker. And it turns out that I felt my
soul physically leaving my body during the investment banking.
So I had done the whole thing. I went to New York. I got a job offer. It was a big one.
And then I had this 22-year-old existential crisis and realized that I needed
(01:36):
to shift and pivot or else I would hate myself forever.
And I started sending bottles of wine to publishing companies in the hopes that
somebody would take me for a financial analyst, because it's really the only
experience I had alongside a sincere love of publishing.
And I still feel like the ability to call books that become movies like way before they happened.
And they hired me. So I ended up working in finance. That was my first job as
(02:00):
a financial analyst, ironically enough for Crown.
So actually, the largest piece of my career has been working for Crown Publishing
Group and so primarily non-fiction.
Yeah, I started off in finance. I was there for three and a half years.
And I think every step I've made after that has been to kind of just get closer,
closer and closer to the books.
Finance was interesting. And it was just very strategic, very budget,
(02:23):
very numbers, numbers, numbers, which was my background.
But I wanted to really get into the nitty gritty of the books.
And so from there, I wanted to move over to sales, which was the best.
Yes. Obviously, I think to date, I would say my favorite job still has been
being an account manager and being a sales rep. I was a sales rep for Walmart first.
And then I went on to be the account manager for Barnes & Noble.
(02:45):
It's great. Selling books is the best because you get the best of both worlds.
You get to sit with the editors and you're all about the books and their enthusiasm.
And then you get to go off into the world and it becomes your baby a little
bit because you're like, it is my job.
I am tasked with making sure that people give a shit about this book and then
it makes its way into the world.
And you feel this kind of like great sense of responsibility.
And so I love that about being a sales rep.
(03:07):
And I honestly wouldn't do that forever if I felt like I was the kind of person
that can stay in one job forever.
But anyway, inevitably, inertia happens. And I ended up on the publishing side
in this kind of very unique role of sales marketing,
which basically what it is, because I feel like many people don't really understand
the concept of what sales marketing even is, is figuring out ways and tactics
(03:28):
to expand the reach of books and bookstores specifically.
So a traditional marker is working very much on the consumer side.
What do we do to get consumers interested? How do we get an audience?
Sales marketing is how do we get accounts to care about this book?
And the biggest piece of that is the reps. So the nice thing is that I still
get to work with account managers every day.
The people that I work with most often, aside from working with people like
(03:53):
Libby and the editors but um i still get to do that kind of like get people
to care about this book kind of thing,
just i don't have to have bnn yelling at me every day which is kind of nice.
Actually yeah that was one of our questions which was like can you walk us through
what your day is like typically like a lot of us authors have no idea what you
(04:16):
actually do you know i think it's so funny because people,
having worked in finance, having worked in sales, and now having worked,
this is my first time working kind of like in the publishing machine.
So I feel like one of the things that kind of like surprised me the most is
just kind of how much goes into getting one book published.
And when people hear that we publish like 400 books a year, I mean,
(04:38):
I think it's proud we're publishing fewer than that right now,
but you know, it's a lot of books and it's, you know, how do you publish this many?
How does every author and book get the kind of unique love that it needs and
look all books aren't created equal they all sell differently and many of the
different platform but i i didn't realize how much goes into publishing that one book like.
Publishing is corporate. There are a lot of people behind the scenes,
(04:59):
a lot of people kind of pulling the threads.
And so a day in my life is very much every single bit of the publishing program, right?
So since we work so closely with sales, it is very much based on the sales cycle.
But reps are usually selling books about six months out, which means that about
a year before a book publishes, we're sitting in a room talking about how we're
(05:20):
going to get this book out into the world and strategizing about how we're going
to get accounts to really take it and run with it.
What are our priorities? What is mid-list? What is stuff that we kind of know,
you know, we own it, it's ours, we don't know, maybe the moment has passed,
maybe it's not the kind of book that we think is really going to resonate.
So that's kind of where the whole thing begins.
Like what are our priorities for a span? Like right now we're talking about
fall 24, right? So we're, you know, not necessarily year out, nine months out or so.
(05:45):
So my life is like fall 24, spring 25. Like I'm living in these,
life always feels like it's on fast forward because I'm always working like a year out.
And so for fall you know where we're heading into a sales conference and like
we're basically figuring out like what are key priorities that we have come
that we have coming for the fall.
What are kind of like the books that we see as kind of opportunities but maybe
(06:08):
you know or maybe going to need a little bit more love because maybe they don't
have as big of a platform obviously non-fiction is incredibly platform driven
and so like my life right now is like just figuring out kind of like we're about
to sit with these reps i'll sit in meetings to figure out where are we with
these books? How is our positioning, right?
Is the positioning tight enough? If I'm reading a headline, does it work for Amazon?
Does it work for BNN? Does it work for the field? There are hundreds and hundreds
(06:32):
of indie bookstores throughout the country.
And then as far as it's like stand overlaps, because at the same time that we're
doing this, we're also looking at spring 25.
So it's like, okay, well, we need all of our copy for all of our books that
we have coming for spring 25, like probably ready to go. What do we have to read?
We're about to go and we're about to launch these books in a few weeks to the entire company.
(06:53):
So these books are not as baked, but you know, you would think by the time you
hit saw, everything should be more baked. What are we missing?
What do we have? Like, are we missing manuscripts? Do we not have the reads?
Are we positioning book as it's all in the read? And then we don't have anything
like that happens so often.
And I know as authors, you know, it's not easy, right? Books are your baby.
You're constantly writing a book. You're editing it. You're re-editing it.
(07:13):
Does that feel like it's at a stage where we're sharing with everyone?
Oh my gosh, I'm here away. They still have so much time, but you don't have
time because we need to get that book out there.
We need your reps to read it. We need them to love it. We need to share it with accounts.
So a large part of my day, like a day in the life, you know,
I'm sitting through a lot of meetings trying to figure out, is the positioning tight?
Depending on where we are in a span, do we have everything we need for that book?
(07:34):
Are we ordering galleys? Is it a galley? Which is like an, you know,
for the girls that maybe doesn't know what a galley is. A galley is an advanced book.
It can actually look a little bit like a book, but usually it'll have a stamp
that says advanced reading copy.
I mean, I'd be perfect. There are errors in these things. Some authors hate
that and they don't like us even publishing early copies with mistakes in them.
(07:55):
Those are usually our journalists of the world.
But most accounts know that, you know, these are not real books.
You know, they actually like love catching little things or,
you know, this is a stunt, right? Like it's kind of like, I'm going to sing.
Well, my team works on the galley timeline, like how we're getting early sales materials to accounts.
Accounts so we have a lot of meetings about that and where we are and getting
them early enough are we do we have it early enough to a patient to pitch a
(08:18):
book that we see as an indie darling,
in time for an indie next step line you know what i mean some of those kinds
of things like deadlines actually run my life so much which sometimes i'm just
being a rapper doesn't feel quite as like deadline deadline deadline deadline
heavy but that is kind of like what my job is today like i'm sitting with productions
talking about galleys i'm sitting with sales to say okay okay, well,
(08:39):
we have your galleys, but what the fuck else do you need, right?
Like, do you need a one sheet that talks about the brand?
Is there an opportunity for your Book of the Month Club, a monthly pick?
Is there an Amazon opportunity? Is there an merchandising opportunity for Amazon?
Do the BISACs make, you know, certain books Amazon can't even promote based
on what our BISACs are, believe it or not.
BISACs are like the things that, I mean, I'm sure you know that,
(09:00):
but BISACs are- I don't know. What is a BISACs? I've never even heard of that phrase.
It's like, it's like,
it's like, like this is what we all want to know what
is a buy sack so but driving back to every single do you know what a tip sheet
is a ti sheet a positioning sheet okay so every book starts with copy right
(09:24):
and like that you're familiar with you have to put pitch your book when you
put a proposal in and you say this is what i want right that's how we you know
either you have reading material,
for us or you don't and you see that they either buy your book or you don't
they value it at a a certain price based on how you pitch and what your proposal
is and all the components that go into that.
Once we own the book is where kind of my job more kicks in.
(09:44):
We own it at what level do we own it? How do we prioritize it?
And it starts off with a tip sheet, TI sheet, which is, it has copy.
It has kind of like a pithy little headline that kind of positions your book has.
This is like the manifesto of X in the self-help memoir that meets Y and it'll help you achieve X,
Y, or Z, right it has kind of like a promise and what you can expect to get
(10:06):
from the book and it's usually pretty catchy and it ends up everywhere it's
usually what you'll see if you look at your amazon retail copy online.
From there, we put a bunch of different other things on this tip sheet that
helps reps go to their accounts and say, this is why you should buy the book.
Every single rep, every single tip sheet in some capacity.
So it's important because when you have a list of 400 books to sell for a year
(10:28):
and a rep is going in to meet with a buyer,
they may have like an hour to sell like 50 books, which is not a lot of time
because you're basically then getting what, like a minute, like a minute and a half per book.
Book. You have to prioritize. You have to figure out the books that need more
time. And you have to figure out the books that maybe need less time.
But regardless of who is selling it and who you're selling it to,
(10:49):
you use this tip sheet to sell it. So it kind of like sets up the scene for the book.
And if you don't get as much time to sell a book, that's all they ask.
That's all the account will ever see. And that's what they'll use to buy the
book and monetize it. And it really kind of sets you up for success in an account.
So you have your headline, you have your copy of a target audience.
Who are your books like, right? Right.
Like if you're in your dream world of authoredom, right, you probably have an
(11:11):
idea of what your book is like. You know, my book is like Outlive.
My book is like Atomic Habits. Like I'm writing this kind of self-help book or it's a memoir.
You know, it's something like When Breath Becomes Air. You know,
we have like this dream or reality of what we expect the book to do.
Some cases it's realistic and some cases it isn't. And what that target consumer
is meant to be is a little bit aspirational.
We really see this as being for fans of When Breath Becomes Air.
(11:33):
Maybe it's a debut author, which is high praise, right?
Because that's a book that's got on to doing incredibly well.
It's a perennial bestseller.
But we will address to get a tangible sense of what the book is and what they
can come into and if they've read books like that.
And so we'll do a few key consumer bullets for them to kind of be used to set the stage for the book.
And then five facts, especially for nonfiction, are a way to say,
(11:56):
this is where a book lives in a bookstore. This is where consumers can find it.
In a perfect world, else, you would hope that your book is stacked all the way
up in the front, copies and copies high, and that people are going to see it
and people are going to buy it.
And there's no way that it's going to get buried anywhere and everybody will read it and love it.
But the reality is, you know, that's merchandising. Not every book gets that.
(12:16):
A lot of books get it in the beginning of their life cycle, right?
A book goes on sale. That's when you're doing your media.
That's when you're kind of like that blitz is. So we get front of store merchandising
a lot of the time, more front loaded in the beginning of a book's life.
It's really the books that go on to have perennial kind of like organic sales,
kind of like, you know, like an outlive that you've kind of been seeing sell all year by Peter T.S.
(12:36):
That will live there in the front of section because of how well it's been doing.
But the reality is you have to fight for space.
If it goes elsewhere, you better be like really hope that it's going into a
section where buyers can find it because that doesn't always happen, right?
So if you write a book that is a blend of a different nonfiction categories,
maybe it's a little bit business, Maybe it's a little bit prescriptive.
(13:00):
Maybe it's a little bit current affairs, right?
Like there can be so many different friends that a nonfiction book pulls on.
But you have to pick a home. If you miss your first home, you miss everyone.
You kind of need a key audience or you get no audience.
It's not to say that a nonfiction book or any book can't have crossover opportunities.
(13:21):
It can't say that. It doesn't mean that a fiction book doesn't have nonfiction
readers. It doesn't mean that an adult fiction book doesn't have YA readers.
But the first and most important thing that we try to do with nonfiction is
to pick a lane. who is the key audience for this.
So if this is a memoir, that is our first BISAC. It is like basically a subject category.
We position it that way with reps. That is how they know to go to a bookseller
(13:44):
and say, this is a memoir, first and foremost.
This should live alongside X, Y, or Z book.
These are the fans. And then from there, you have crossover audiences,
which make up your other BISACs. Like your second BISAC may be business,
your third BISAC may be current affairs. We always have three.
And that kind of tells you what it's a little bit of a blend of.
But the reality is a book needs to live somewhere. And for retail,
(14:06):
those buy sacks are very important.
It's important for Amazon, too, perhaps less so from a, you know,
it's not like it's going to go live in a store.
People can find it based on metadata, which for Amazon is kind of the more important thing.
But there are certain buy sacks that Amazon doesn't promote or that they don't work, you guys.
So we have to be mindful of that. When we're picking our buy sacks,
you know, they don't do it for, like, self-help, right? Right.
(14:29):
So like if we're not going to get the promotion we need, you know,
and something is something else.
I mean, I think we do a pretty great job of making sure that if this is a self-help
book, you know, it has to be self-help hell or high water or else,
you know, regardless of where you're promoting it, it's not going to work.
But those are all just kind of things that we have to keep in mind.
It's meaningful for, you know, specialty retailers like your special markets,
like things that will go into, you know, a bookstore that's not sorry,
(14:52):
a store that's not a bookstore.
Store so on urban outsiders and anthropology places that
carry books that aren't traditional book retailers bisax and
kind of how we're positioning with audiences is really important for them
too and the last like big thing is like we always have comps
like comps for us like floats on aspirational in terms of
you know this is where we really see who the reader is but
tangible comps like comps that accounts need comps that reps need to really
(15:17):
kind of get the book out and the number that they need need to be recent you
know like if you're going into picture a new book like The struggle is always
trying to find something that's published in the last three years at a level
that you think is reasonable for the book that you've written.
And that's the battle comps can take. And they need a lot of the time they need
to be in-house for us because that's kind of how we see the numbers and where
(15:37):
things have been distributed.
So comps and comp titles can take a lot of our time. Like in a given day,
I probably spend at least one hour of every day of my life in this office looking
for comps in some capacity. Right.
So that's kind of, that's your tip sheet, like in a nutshell,
like those kinds of components. And then they make up like the basis of how a rep will sell a book.
So who is it that your team writes them? Because obviously, as a writer,
(16:02):
we don't have any, like, we don't even see them.
So how are they like, where are they getting this information?
Who's writing it? Like, is this, is the editor, the acquiring editor involved in that at all?
Oh, yes, heavily, heavily. You know, Libby is, for example, I'll use Libby just
because you know her, aren't you?
Just on this podcast, she'll give me her TI sheet with the bones of it,
(16:25):
which I believe a lot of the time will either come, it'll be a lot of what has
come from you as an author, right?
A lot of from your proposal, a lot from the pages you've already provided.
Libby will have read it at that point. So she'll pull from a lot of how you've
positioned the book yourself. Like, how an author positions their book and what
they want from it and who they see as the audience is actually really,
I mean, I hope you'll be happy to hear, very important to us.
(16:48):
You know, as corporate as this machine can sometimes feel, our authors are very important to us.
And at the end of the day, like, we do want, we want how you feel about the
book and how you see the book to be true to what the book is and how we sell
it. So, you know, and a lot of the time, like, that'll be how you're invested in it, right?
And that'll just be more meaningful for the book and its ultimate life cycle.
(17:10):
So, yes, she'll pull from how you're positioning the book, either how to read
the material or from the pitch.
Because these happen early on. Sometimes we have to do these tip sheets before
we even have our own manuscript in. In fact, most of the time we do.
So that'll come from, yeah, the acquiring editor. And the target consumer,
that also tends to come, it's a little bit of the, it's a little bit of the editor.
(17:31):
It's a little bit of marketing marketing who also reads the material
and a little bit my team as well
as sales and marketing having a little bit more of kind of the atomic facing view
of what we're seeing working in the get so you know
they'll have a if a target like a target consumer of saying like this is for
fans of we're gonna go fiction now just because i hate so much on fiction like
this is for fans of meg bolitzer like great that's a helpful thing to note but
(17:54):
like what about meg bolitzer you know what i mean like what what you need something
to kind of conceptualize it.
The sales team is something to kind of like actually bite into.
And so for fans of women's fiction that makes shit sale things,
like Meg, what would start it?
Like there's tons of ways my team will help look at a target consumer and say
like, make this meaningful for us so that we can make it meaningful for accounts.
(18:17):
And then the comps, I mean, again, a lot of those, a lot of this will come from
the author and the editor pulling from the materials that they've received.
But we weigh in heavily on comps just because it has to hit all of those kind
of like requirements that we need, both on the aspirational side,
but then also on the actual, this is how we are going to buy the book.
And these are the numbers that we need to reach side.
(18:38):
But yeah, I mean, realistically, you should be seeing those DIs though.
So those TIs generally go to authors, like, and they should be,
the copy at the very least is usually something that an author weighs in on
before we let it come with me feed to retail.
Because those tip sheets, they stay behind the scenes until we feel like,
usually the way it works is the copy for your book will feed out nine months
(19:01):
before on sale to retailers, right?
So that means on Amazon, on BNN, like our personal peer-reviewed websites,
nine months before is kind of like the organic, all our ducks in a row,
this is what happens. We hold other certain books back.
Usually we hold books back that have very big platforms behind them because
we have to time an announcement to them.
(19:22):
So if we hold those books back, we need to kind of like block them in our system,
which means all that information that's on that spreadsheet gets blocked. bought.
Realistically, a lot of that information gets fed out to retailers.
Some of it stays a very kind of like specific sales focused sites that they
used to sell. But a lot of it goes out there.
I mean, you know, you look up your book, you should be able to see your headline,
you should be able to see your copy.
You know, Amazon doesn't really do buy sacks the way other book accounts would,
(19:46):
but you can see like in which buckets it's kind of being searched for and surfaced.
But yeah, I mean, those are done very much with your way.
And I think for us, you know, we look at it and we fine tune
it we have a copy editing team they also look at it and kind of make
it more like pithy and salesy and
i think that kind of our job is to kind of take what you have done
(20:07):
and put it into a format that makes it feel like like zingery which isn't a
word but today it is a word and what are what are the most important retailers
one thing i've always has been unclear about is sometimes readers or friends will ask me like,
oh, what's the best place to buy your book? And I never quite know what to tell them.
(20:31):
Oh my god, I like all of my answers. This will be long-winded.
Because the problem is, it's like, you know, just like every single book is
our baby, even though they are all prioritized differently and we pay different
amounts for them and they will go on to sell very differently.
Every bookstore is kind of like your baby in a sense, because they all sell
the books and you want to be able to say like support blog, right?
(20:52):
But everybody shops in a different way.
There is one, I will say, I will refuse to say that one is more important than
the other because collectively, collectively, like we need all of our retailers.
But what I will say is Amazon makes up a good 60%, if not more.
It's not more on like a title by title basis of what we sell,
(21:15):
especially in nonfiction.
If you've looked at a bookstore recently, you will notice that the trend bookstores
shift with trends. And right now they are very, very fiction focused.
Romantasy is like what is in the water. Rom-com is what is in the water is like
what people are reading.
And because of that, every time you walk in the bookstore, you're going to see the Sarah J.
Moss's of the world. You're going to see the Rebecca Yarris's of the world.
(21:38):
They're also eating up like prime real estate in books for us from the stories.
What people are, you know, is trend shift, but that is very much where we're living.
So the struggle with nonfiction for us right now is getting retailers outside
of Amazon to care in a significant way about our books and to really position
them in stores and to originate them in stores.
So from that standpoint, I will say Amazon does make up, especially for nonfiction,
(22:01):
a very significant amount of market share. And market share basically is the
share of the pie in terms of where books are sold.
And a lot of people use Amazon for nonfiction because metadata is a driving force there, right?
So if you look up something like, I want to read about a book about cats and guns.
I'm using an example of, you know, how to teach your cat about gun safety,
(22:22):
right? It's like a white elephant book for us. It sells every year.
We have to do nothing to make it sell.
It's like, what's that? Every year, the last four weeks of the year,
it sells like bananas. Right?
And it's rather controversial, actually. But either way, the point is you can
look up like Cats and Guns and
get this book, right? And that is like the magic of a tool like Amazon.
Metadata is very important. We think about the words that we have associated with the book.
(22:42):
That way, when people look it up, they can find it. I would love to see people
as a full-on Barnes & Noble rep.
I would love to see people shopping more in bookstores.
I think like the bookstore, I think, you know, it's not for your friends,
for example, it's like, oh, where should I be shopping?
I think like it depends on what their user experience is. is if they need a
book in a pinch and they want something to deliver tomorrow and it's a snowstorm
(23:04):
and they don't want to go out, like that's a lot of America most of the time,
even in the best of weather.
And so that Amazon is your account for that, right?
But if you want an experience, like if you want to really like,
if you're a book lover and you want to feel the magic of books and you want
to walk in and smell the freaking pages and you want to feel like nostalgic,
like for me, like I grew up in a Barnes and Noble.
(23:24):
It was next door to my house. I went there to study. like for me
it's like it is an experience it always will be and so for
that person you go to a bookstore and i think barnes and noble has
come a really long way in the past few years they were
bought by james daunt who bought waterstones out in the
uk which is a beautiful bookstore it's their key bookstore
out there it is lovely if you're ever out there you should go but bnn has really
(23:46):
come a long way towards kind of making the bookstore experience form feel more
like an indie booksell bookseller experience whereas before that it kind of
felt like a little maybe like cold with like fluorescent lighting and you couldn't
necessarily understand.
What's to place anywhere yeah I think like Barnes and Noble has come a long
way and I will plug for the indie bookstores as well just like I love a good
(24:10):
like a swirling into an indie bookstore there are so many of them in New York so,
It's true. We were talking with the publicist yesterday about print runs.
And I'm curious, as we talk about the timeline for a book, so you have your
tip sheet and then in the nine months out, all the stuff goes up on whatever, Amazon, et cetera.
(24:31):
When do you start to actually get feedback?
When did the sales reps say, okay, we're getting some traction on this book or we're not?
Or what is the timing for all of that? Yeah, absolutely. Good question.
So, for example, right now we are setting print runs for books that I mean,
I will start here just because I feel like everything needs a little bit of
(24:53):
context, which is, you know, the difference between an announced first print
and actual print. Is that something that is meaningful to you?
Yes, because my announced first print, I am sure, is not going to be my real
first print. So, yes, I do.
So for the broader world, whoever is listening to this podcast,
the way it works is that we have a positioning number.
It is called your announced first print. And announced first print is,
(25:15):
I don't want to say meaningless, but I think it's more of, it's not meaningless,
but it's more of an example of setting the stage for a book.
It is a lot higher than what we actually inevitably end up printing.
And accounts know this. So if we go in and we say, the announced first print is 100,000 copies.
Like, realistically, you're probably like, like, we're probably going out the
(25:36):
door and shipping maybe like with that number, which means that we don't print 50.
If we're going out with 50, we would print more than that. we're certainly not
going to be printing 100, right?
So like that number is kind of fluffed and it's meant to be because accounts
know that it is kind of like a positioning tactic and they use it to prioritize books.
So we set those numbers early. Like we set an announced first print.
(25:57):
We set like a pub goal for an account. So let's say your announced first print is 100,000.
Your pub goal, like what you're going in account is probably like 50,000.
It's like roughly half of that. Just to kind of like give you an example.
And we're setting those numbers for spring 25 So those kind of like positioning steps.
We don't print the book until closer to publication. But right now,
(26:21):
Wraps are out in the world selling summer before.
So what, we're like six months out from summer. Summer technically starts in June.
So like the numbers are all due like around, you know, this time.
So we're starting to like actually like think about the print runs.
It's not like we're going to go to print tomorrow.
But the reason, because we are such a big publisher and because we have to plan
(26:42):
accordingly with paper, We actually
have to like set these, we set like various stages of a print run.
It will be like your first estimate and then there will be like your final bind and like all of that.
I forget the exact, I don't want to quote myself because I forget the exact
timeline having not been on that for a while now of when they would be like
doing a final bind before the book is printed. did.
But generally, when you ask about momentum and reps are starting to like,
(27:04):
oh, this is exciting and this is starting to bubble, reps are selling summer right now.
So generally, while we are still certainly in the midst of spring and the things
that are happening for nonfiction books are happening now, like we're getting
a lot of media, reps are with a ton getting excited about the summer.
So I think one of the hardest things about publishing is probably aligning the
(27:26):
sales cycle to the marketing and publicity one.
And it is no harder than for nonfiction, which is driven so much by media because
reps are selling so far out and marketing and publicity plans don't come together
until much closer to publication.
So we're sitting now and talking about books that are like my marketing and
publicity meetings, we're talking about spring.
And in my sales facing meetings, we're talking about like, we're getting ready
(27:47):
to talk about fall, but they're selling summer.
So it's like, there's just such a difference in terms of where people are.
Reps are very responsive when you give them a campaign for an upcoming title.
So it's not to say that we still can't very much impact what we're going out
the door with for spring titles.
At this point, like, of course, there's time, especially for books that are
like a little bit later in the spring span.
(28:07):
But those numbers are in, right? Like for spring, like we're in it,
right? Like it's happening now. Here we are.
At this point, like the reps numbers are.
There. We know what they're taking. We know what the numbers look like basically
throughout all of spring. So that takes us all through May.
Summer is starting to come in now as they're at the accounts.
(28:28):
So we're starting to get a sense of how books are going to come in.
So that when you ask about how do we know when the reps are starting to feel
like something is bubbling, we know now for summer because they're now starting to sell.
We can prioritize until we're blue in the face. And certainly that matters to
reps and that helps with them positioning with accounts.
Accounts we don't know like a sleeper make him out of
the woodwork like oh my god you know we didn't we have like a 20,000 first
(28:49):
print for an ounce for a sprint for this like like accounts are loving
this read like let's talk about how we can bump it up let's talk about what
we would need to make it more of a like to get people to care i mean it truly
is harder for non-fiction i know i keep saying it but fiction is just the kind
of thing where you could be nobody from nowhere and write a fiction book and
get the buzz and the right people reading it and somebody on on TikTok,
(29:12):
I'll like inflate it and it'll take off.
And then all of a sudden you have a movie deal. I'm like, you're out there.
Your book is huge and you're a millionaire, right?
For nonfiction, and I'm sure Libby talked about this a little,
but when you're collecting the information that you need for nonfiction,
what is your following? Who's listening?
Like who's out there? What does your social media look like?
(29:33):
Why do people want to read about your life or your prescriptive elements or
whatever it is that you have in your book?
And it's a lot harder to position nonfiction without a platform.
And so reps always want to know, you know, what do they bring to the table?
And for nonfiction, that is a lot more meaningful than it is for fiction.
And so that's kind of like, again, when things are bubbling,
(29:54):
like, and how we prioritize, those are the earliest stats, aside from the read
itself, that books are, that books, that reps are using to position your books.
Sorry, Alice, I don't know if you, I just want to ask one, one follow up with
that, if that's okay. Yeah.
One of the other things we've been, you know, the point of the podcast is really
to educate a lot of us writers who even have, you know, more than one book out
(30:18):
there about the sort of hidden stuff that goes on,
because a lot of it is really hard for us to navigate or even know about.
Yeah. What do you, do you think it's, do you think authors should know these
kind of things or like try to be more involved or is it like,
what is the reason why we're, we're shielded from a lot of the business side
(30:39):
of the industry, you know?
Yeah, no, I know. I know exactly what you're saying. And I think,
you know, part of the reason for that is because when you sign on to publish
with a company like Penguin Random House, for example, like I said,
like we got a lot of people. ball.
Like we know a lot of these people have been in the business forever.
Like we know what we're doing. These refs have been selling for years.
(30:59):
Like we know an opportunity when it strikes, we know how to publish your book,
we know how to package your book.
And I think it's really hard for authors who have written this baby,
right? Like this is your child.
Like there's some emotion that wasn't in the book and like you want to be able
to package it. You have ideas on how to sell it. And like those things are incredibly valuable.
I think the reason you're shielded is because sometimes we'll take a package
(31:20):
that you love and you're like, this is the package, right?
Like this is it, this is the tagline, this is ASCII thing.
And we'll take it to a sales face meeting and they'll be like,
This is trash. I don't know. I have gone through.
Well, the sales force had a very strong feeling about my cover.
So I have a very different cover than the one that we originally had in mind. So I understand.
(31:45):
Which, you know, I guess, are there things that we as authors should be doing
that would be helpful for you or that you wish you'd seen more of?
Yeah, a few things. to this.
One is take everything that you hear from your fellow writers and agents and
people who have published books with a grain of salt.
Every book is different. Every sales team is different. Every publisher publishes
(32:07):
a little bit differently.
So as far as, you know, like my, we did this for my book and they did this for
my book, like you can hear all that, but you have to believe and trust the process.
The marketing team that you have in place, they are listening to you.
They will do everything that they can to make sure that the book that you have
written reaches which is the audience they're meant to reach.
Like this is their job. They've been doing it for so long.
(32:27):
So that's one piece of it. There is a piece of test the process and try to take
what you're hearing from like your, and you know, maybe your restaurant is like Jumbo Lahiri.
And like, so maybe she's a New York Times bestselling author.
And so she has like certain things that have happened for her book that may
not be realistic right now for yours.
It's not to say that we wouldn't look into it or that we're not reaching out to the same people.
(32:48):
It's just that you kind of have to keep that in mind because when you hear that,
it gets very like, well, why are we not doing the same thing? right?
And like this energy can be better spent with you out there in the world,
talking to people about your book, building up your following.
You know, if it's a nonfiction book, like you want to be out there,
you want to be figuring out ways to reach readers. You want to be leaning into your message.
(33:12):
Like the word that the concept of lean in is so true.
And basically every aspect like life, but also in book publishing,
if you're writing a book about.
If you're doing a podcast about how books work and you are then writing a book
about like how books work, let's just use those as only the books.
Everything you say out in the world needs to lean into this message in some capacity, right?
(33:33):
Like sometimes we have celebrities writing a cookbook and they've never posted
a food content post in their entire life to their millions and millions and
millions of followers, right?
So like even for them, it is true that you need to live your message, right? Right.
Like if you're going to be writing your first cocktail book,
but you're a celebrity and you've never even spoken about cocktails,
it is not authentic. It is not going to ring true.
(33:54):
So for you writing a book out in the world, like whatever that message is,
get out there, get it to the people that you want to hear it,
live it, read it, post about it, grow your following, get a sub stack,
like whatever you can do to kind of like the numbers are important. Yes.
But more importantly is the level of engagement that you have with the people that follow you.
(34:14):
And that engagement comes very much from authenticity.
And people know when it's something that you're saying or doing like kind of
rings false which is kind of even a trouble that we will see with majorly platformed
authors that have like all the followers in the world but we publish something
that just doesn't feel true to who they are, their content or like what they're
imposing about and it's like,
what business does this author have talking to me about this, right?
(34:36):
And then you're basically just getting, you know some of their fan base that
would buy anything that they would take, which is big but it's certainly not
big to the amount that we have paid.
So that's kind of
what i would say i would say it's those two big things like trust
your people trust the process if you feel like you're not being heard like certainly
that's one thing and that is a problem i would say like as
pure age i feel like we do such a good job of listening but try to
(34:59):
stop comparing like as in life as with
books try to stop comparing yourself to everybody else and
kind of like live the like live the reality that you
have and do everything you can to get your message off the ground because it's
going to help the message of the book so julie should
start spending a lot of time in department stores and
yes i am thinking of all these things you don't
(35:20):
even know what i'm working on i have a whole draft of ideas but i mean right
i guess i guess to that end you do you as the sales force know when we're like
super engaged like i'm working pretty closely with a wonderful marketing person
at penguin random house she's amazing.
We've been like, you know, working on stuff together. It's awesome.
(35:42):
But like they know if you're like super engaged and trying and stuff that like goes through even if.
The engagement with your audience is slow to come. Yes, I know.
But yes, yes. But they, they know. Yeah, that's important.
Okay. It is. Yeah. I, it is. We worked with all, I don't work with authors.
I don't necessarily, you are wonderful.
(36:04):
I have met plenty of wonderful authors, but, you know, I, I've also met plenty
of not wonderful authors.
I don't envy having to, to deal with it when things get really difficult and sticky. tricky.
And I think, you know, one of the challenges is trying to protect this art that
somebody has created while also trying to get it to sell.
And sometimes those messages don't align and you feel like you're not receiving
(36:27):
the attention care that you need.
I mean, I get it. But I will say that, Rex, when we have an engaged author,
when we have an author that is willing to do anything, when we have an author
that is like thinking creatively or outside the box, and like we know because
your marketers are emailing us and your editors are emailing us and we are,
you know, we are trying to figure out like the levers that we can then pull
(36:47):
to leverage what you have also leveraged. So it is getting out there.
Cool. I know Alice has another podcast she has to run and do.
So I don't know. I don't know. Like, I know. I know. Do you do you?
Alice, do you have any parting questions we haven't asked? Or I know we I have
a topical question, actually.
So I'm about to be a guest on a podcast. Someone is going to interview me about
(37:12):
a book that I wrote the bulk of it in 2016 and 2017.
It came out in 2018 about the science of dreaming.
And I was just this morning, I was rereading the book and kind of refreshing
myself on what I wrote seven years ago.
In terms of like, I guess it made me think about the lifespan of a book.
(37:35):
And like, I don't know, how meaningful is it to like, keep doing publicity five
years, seven years after a book comes out?
Like, can it make a difference? Are there still books in a warehouse somewhere
that is like, you know, if this goes well, they'll pull three out of there? Yeah.
Yeah, you mentioned mid list author. So I right, that's sort of that idea, right? Yeah, it is.
(37:58):
So like there's a difference between it and for, you know, I think most authors
would notice and most people interested in books, but there's a front list and a back list.
The front list is when a book publishes for the first year of its life.
And there is certainly a lot of energy that goes into that first year of a book's publication.
I talked a little bit about it from a merchandising standpoint,
because so much of the media happens in that year.
(38:18):
That's generally when we'll see a book in the front of a bookstore on an end
cap stacked up on the table. But I think your question is a really good one
because, oddly enough, Backlist supports into me.
And Backlist is what happens to a book after that first year, right?
Like, it publishes in trade paperback, not always, but, you know,
sometime, most of the time, actually, I publish in trade paperback and that's
(38:39):
where it'll live forever. And I know the question of how important is it to
do publicity years down the line?
I mean, I know a book like A Little Life has always sold,
but not nearly in the amounts of sales we've seen in the most,
I don't know, last year or two years from TikTok and social media and Instagram.
(39:01):
Consumers have no meaningful understanding of what front list and back list is, right?
Every book that they find is new to them, right? They wouldn't know that something
is brand new versus something the older.
So it's always going to be meaningful from the standpoint of a consumer is coming
to your book from the first time. To them, it's new when they find it.
And because social media has given life to backlist books that have been out
(39:24):
for years and years and years, and maybe didn't even have like much of a past
for the first however many years of their life. And now they're seeing these
like massive resurgences.
I would say it is meaningful because, you know, I think at any point,
if your book finds its way into the right hands and with the right platform, it can really sell well.
And even if it isn't buckets, right, of sales and it's not like flying off the
(39:47):
shelves, we call books like it just has like a nice backless cycle, right?
Right. Which means that like over time, if you're out there doing publicity
and you're still getting the word out and you're still like talking about this
message and it is part of what you do, then like over time, the sales will just
trickle and they'll build and they'll have like a snowball effect.
So, yes, depending on how a book is selling and on the time we do spend time
looking at rates of movement for books and figuring out whether or not they
(40:09):
should stay in print, go out of print.
There's also a print-on-demand option, which is like we don't really hold the
inventory, but based on how books are being demanded on Amazon,
it's primarily an Amazon play.
We will print-on-demand for certain books. So the answer is yes.
I think it is meaningful if you're out there however many years down the line.
And then if you're writing a new book and you have an old book,
(40:32):
there is the concept of like we always identify if an author has a backlist
title when they're writing a new Because we will work to make sure that we will
certainly make sure that accounts know that you have written a book before and
that that should come into the conversation when they're selling your new book.
Like, hey, this author has a backlist title.
And like, they'll even pull consumer insights if it's more relevant.
You know, if it's nonfiction, like the science of dreams, like,
(40:54):
I feel like we are continuously changing.
There is this level of escapism that people are clearly coming to for fiction
and what is more relevant to that than dreams and kind of being able to escape reality a little bit.
So, like, if I were your marketer, that's kind of where I'd be going with this.
I would find a way to make that book just as relevant now as it was perhaps
in 2016 and tying that into the message of a new book. Does that answer your question?
(41:17):
And you can be like me and watch on Author Central on Amazon if your old backlist
title is still selling and how it's doing. I honestly, I commend you as authors.
Like I commend you so much. I feel like everybody in publishing probably has
this secret dream of wanting to write or having written or whatever it is.
Like I certainly in a past life used to dabble. I'm like, it's to get to the
(41:38):
point where you write a book and research a book and finish a book and trust
somebody else with like the creative endeavors to get out into the world. And it is commendable.
And I'm honestly, I mean, all of you every day, which is probably why I'm still here after 10 years.
Well, I mean, I feel like that's somewhat heartening because I
feel like there's so much like you know dire news
out there about all that stuff and if you're like actually inside the
(41:59):
publishing house and you're still like it's great that you're
doing this that's like you know oh it's so good
it's so good it's good it's an amazing like a
lot of it i feel like it's like anything else in the world the loudest
voices are usually the most negative ones and when you hear much negative things
about publishing out in the world it's like any other job right we're like yes
there are downsides because it is corporate there are a lot of people here doing
(42:21):
a lot of things and And some of them are not as front lines as like a marketing
and a publicity and you work really hard and you don't necessarily see that,
you know, you'll see the memes on whatever XOXO gossip girl or whatever the heck publishing girl.
And it's like I would say, it's like anything else where you kind of like have
that in some capacity. But everybody here loves books.
(42:42):
Everybody here is energized about every new book that comes to the table.
Like you get to work with somebody like Libby who like, I feel like every time
she pitches a book, I instantly become obsessed with whoever the author is because
she just has such a good eye and they're all people, you know,
I, there is a reason why people start off in publishing and never read it.
You know, I think a lot of the hopping around you see to other publishers is
(43:03):
in the notoriously underpaid industry, which I think is something that everybody
knows and we're trying to be more visible about it.
But you move on to make more money in order to get to stay in a career that
you love because it is really hard to make money here. And it's really hard
to move around, which, you know, I've moved around a lot.
There's something that I tell everybody who's new to publishing,
like, don't feel like you need to be stuck in finance. Don't feel like you need
(43:25):
to be stuck in sales. Don't feel like you need to be stuck in marketing.
If you are interested, there is room.
You just need to be willing to, whenever you put energy and effort into,
like, we'll be, it's like anything else, like, we'll be there for the outcome.
But yeah, I would say everybody here, I mean, largely people love authors and
they love books and that's why people are here.
So, this was on such an uplift. I feel like all we're doing is like doomsaying.
(43:52):
So that's really, it's lovely to hear, you know, a positive message on that.
And thank you so much, Ashley.
I hope maybe we can do like a part two eventually at one point.
Anytime. And if you have any follow-up questions, like, you know,
if something doesn't read as clear, like I'm, you know, yes. Yes.
And also we should say, if you have other like
(44:14):
people that you work with that you feel like would be great to
talk about what they do sort of more behind the scenes like we
were thinking about like yeah like a cover designer who
like does designs or like I don't know like please
put the word out because we would love to like feature them and just learn about
what they do so I have um I would say have you talked to a sales rep oh no you're
(44:36):
the only like actual sales marketing person we've we've talked to so far so
that would be amazing like an actual rep yeah yeah a rep would would be great. I'll see. I will.
Yeah. Put the word out. Yeah. Okay.
Let everybody know. It was so nice to meet you. Thank you so much, Ashley. So amazing.
Thank you. Everything. Good luck for your books. Thank you. Bye. Bye.
(45:03):
Thanks for listening. This has been an episode of How Books Work.
Join us on our next episode as we continue to explore publishing behind the.
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