June 23, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode of 'All Things Book Marketing,' host Smith Publicity's Corinne Moulder talks with Lee Wind, Chief Content Officer for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA).
Lee discusses his award-winning program 'We Are Stronger Than Censorship,' which counteracts book challenges by donating books to promote freedom to read. He shares insights on creating impactful book marketing strategies, emphasizing the importance of allyship and his experiences as an author focusing on queer history and social justice.
Lee also introduces his upcoming picture book, Like That, Eleanor: The Amazing Power of Being an Ally. For more information, visit wearestrongerthancensorship.org and leewind.org.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:19 Lee Wind's Background and Achievements
01:52 We Are Stronger Than Censorship: The Motivation
03:22 Challenges and Strategies in Book Banning
05:32 Program Partnerships and Community Involvement
07:23 Impact and Future Goals of the Program
20:38 The Importance of Allyship
21:51 Lee Wind's New Book: Like That, Eleanor
29:02 Book Marketing Tips and Strategies
38:43 Conclusion and Call to Action
For more information visit Smith Publicity, connect with Corinne Moulder and Lee Wind.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Smith Publicity All Things Book Marketing podcast,
offering tips, insights, and advice from the best in the
publishing industry.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me today on
the podcast All Things Book Marketing. I am Carin Molder
stepping in as the host and so excited to welcome
Lee Wind to our program today. Lee is the Chief
Content Officer for the Independent Book Publishers Association, or IbpA
(00:32):
as so many of us know it, the largest nonprofit
trade association of independent publishers in the US. He aims
to make publisher education both informative and actionable, and is
constantly iterating ibpa's book marketing programs to help IbpA members
achieve and succeed. He is the co founder of We
(00:52):
Are Stronger Than Censorship, a program that buys and donates
two books to offset every one book challenge. Lee is
also an author who writes the books that would have
changed his life as a young gay Jewish kid. His
seventh book is out this summer, the picture book Like
That eleanor The Amazing Power of Being an Ally, illustrated
(01:14):
by Kelly Mangan. It's published by IbpA member Cardinal Rule
Press and Publishers weekly call it accessible, heartfelt and empowering. Lee,
thank you for being on today.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Thank you so much, Karin. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yes, you know your name carries a certain weight in
the industry. We've always known you associated with IbpA here,
but it was very recently, Lee, at the VASG annual
event in April, that you actually won the Industry Champion
Award and I was in attendance. I always loved that meeting,
(01:51):
but what I really left with with that day was
truly the impact of what you're doing with your new program.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
We are s longer than censorship.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I knew I had to have you on and I
will ask you to just share a little bit about
your motivation for it.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Absolutely. Thanks. Yeah, that was a lovely moment. It was
very Uh, it was very cool because I got to
I had ten minutes to talk to this room full
of publishing industry, you know, movers and shakers, and talk
to them about something I really care about. So, as
(02:31):
you said in my bio, which I recognized since I
wrote it, it's so funny to have to write about
yourself and a third person. I write books for kids
and teens, and most of the books are about queer
history or social justice or the combination of those things.
(02:53):
And I have a nonfiction series with Learner for ages
eleven and up. It's called the Queer History Project. The
first book was No Way They Were Gay, and then
the second book is the Gender Binary is a Big lie.
The cover of No Area They Were Gay has a
bunch of famous people on it that we didn't maybe
know were men who love men or women who love
(03:15):
women are people who live outside the gender binary, including
Eleanor Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and Mahama Gandhi. And that
book has gotten a lot of accolades, and it has
also landed on quite a few we don't like this
book lists and has been challenged. Through that book being challenged,
(03:36):
I was invited to participate in these sort of like
support group meetings for authors in that situation by doctor
Taslin Magnuson. And Taslin is the person in the US
that holds the data on book banning, and she is
lovely and we became friends and we were talking about
(03:59):
how well it felt like the freedom to read side
was only playing defense and we're running around and like
the banners seemed very organized, like there was this one
person who the Washington posted an analysis of book bands
in the twenty twenty two twenty twenty three school year,
(04:19):
and they found that eleven people, eleven individuals, were behind
sixty percent of all the book challenges in the US.
And that was astonishing to me and I just felt like, Wow,
the other side is really organized. There was one one
person in Wisconsin challenged four hundred books in an elementary
(04:39):
school library. All four hundred books were pulled off the
shelves for four months while they were reviewed. At the
end of that time, almost all of them went back
on the shelves. But think about those kids in that school.
They lost access to all those to their library basically
for an entire semester. So it's like out of control.
And I was saying to Tasslin, we need to come
(04:59):
up with something that's offense. How do we play offense?
Why are we always on the defense? And so that's
where the two of us cooked up this idea of
what if we created a program where we bought and
donated two books to offset every one book challenge and
start to make the numbers work against the book banners.
(05:20):
And it's been a lot of heavy lifting of just
basically like sweat equity and spit and duct tape kind
of thing, like we're like, okay, let's do this, and
like let's put on a show. We have a barn,
and we're borrowing the barn. We're borrowing everything. It's all
it's all in kind donations. We have over fifty industry
(05:42):
partners and I think actually that is an element of
it that got big interested, because it's not just me
doing this. It's it's literally all my time on this
program is spent building partnerships and trying to activate other
people's can communities in service of this cool idea, which
(06:03):
is that we can pull the emergency brake on this
runaway train if we get enough traction. So we launched
so we have twenty independent publishers. Each of them have
one book in the program, and those are the books
we're buying. Because we also want to make the point
and this is how it's an IbpA program. We also
want to make the point that independent publishers are the
real drivers of diversity. Corporate publishers do put out beautiful books,
(06:28):
but at the end of the day, so many independent
publishers are mission driven and they really are trying to
push back against the sort of legacy of exclusion that
the publishing is sort of steeped in. And so we
want to highlight the amazing work that independent publishers are doing.
And then we have about like ten partners that are
(06:49):
helping us distribute the books like Florida Freedom to Read,
Texas Freedom to Read. We need diverse books. We also
have about right now ten bookstore partners, although I think
we're going to start building more. And the idea again
is that like the more we can build our numbers
(07:10):
of books donated, maybe it starts to slow those people's
role a little bit. And if that person in Wisconsin
that challenged four hundred books knew that in response to
their challenging that eight hundred books were going to be
bought and donated, maybe it would slow their role. So
that's the big idea behind it. And I was announcing
(07:32):
at the big event, which was exciting, that we had
just crossed raising sixteen thousand dollars, which meant that we
were able to donate two thousand books to offset one
thousand book challenges. Now, there's a long way to go
to create equity here. Right like last year, Pan America's
numbers were ten thousand, and like thirty four challenges happened
(07:56):
in last year, so there's a lot more to oh,
but like, just envision it for a second, Like if
we could get twenty thousand books purchased and donated, that
would be super exciting. So I got really excited and
I was like sharing about it, and then a couple
of people that were in the audience, including you, came
up to me afterwards and they were like, how we
want to do more, we want to collaborate, we want
(08:18):
to help, we want to partner. And we actually just
heard from the Book Manufacturers Institute that they put out
a challenge to their member. They're like for people that
don't know, they're like, you know, printers and the people
that build the printing presses, and they're sort of like
that side of the industry and they're very cool, and
(08:38):
they didn't they were looking for something to do to
help champion the freedom to read in this climate, and
so they put out a challenge to their members to
raise sixteen thousand dollars and if their members do it
by September fifteen, they're going to match that with another
sixteen thousand dollars do nation. So if it works, that's
(08:59):
another fourth books donated to offset two thousand more challenges.
So I love that. I love the idea that we're
building momentum and we're getting people excited and everybody listening
can help.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Absolutely, everyone can listen.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And I do think, you know, to think of a term,
it feels like we're a little bit of a sitting
duck because we're surrounded by books and all that we
do in our industry, right we're marketing them, we're reading them,
we're brainstorming about the content, we're working with our authors.
But there is this real problem that's happening. And you know,
(09:33):
even speaking to my sons, what catches me sometimes is
I'll say, you know, education is such power. Reading is
such power that can't be taken away from you. And
yet late we're on the precipice of seeing these stories
be taken away and even just hearing the four months
between that one individual challenging those books to them returning
(09:58):
to the bookshelf. What really stood out to me in
your presentation at bisg Yes is the thought that goes
into it and the hard work that you're doing for
others to be able to participate, but it was the
quotes and the feedback that you've received as an author
writing the books that you wish you had as a young.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Child.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
So those four months were critical where someone might have
missed an opportunity to feel included or to see themselves
in an area where they just don't really feel a
part of. And you've said very powerfully, Lee, that book
banning isn't really about the books.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
So in the larger discussion.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Here, can you impact that for us a little bit
and lean into what that really means.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah, it's not about the books at all, which is hard.
It's hard for for the general public to understand that
it's not about the books because when we talk about
book banning, we're like, look at this, this is the
number one banned book in the country, and we almost
celebrate the top ten most challenged books. And they actually
are the ones that are seeing in some cases like
their sales are going up. But it's not about those.
(11:11):
And actually, this is weird because being a sort of
like midless band author, I definitely have had people like
when one of my books lands in one of these
articles or lists and stuff and I share it, people
are like, oh, congratulations. It means you're doing something right,
and I'm like, okay, thank you. But that's the point
of the book. Bands is not the books. It is
(11:35):
to create a chilling effect. It is to make librarians
and teachers afraid and in some cases booksellers afraid to
bring in the books that they know would be helpful
to their audiences. Right, they know the students would need it,
they know it would make a difference. We have lots
(11:55):
of data about, like anecdotal and statistical about like how
seeing yourself in a book can make you feel much
less alone and can can give you hope, and also
how books are empathy machines and they make you see
common humanity with somebody else. And that's what they're They're
banning things to make it feel like to to isolate
(12:20):
and to attack people. And like, so one of the
things we just did on the we are Stronger than
Censorship website We are stronger than censorship dot org is
that we included some quotes because I did that. Actually,
that was a fun thing. In the awards program I presentation,
I was able to have slides up and I asked
(12:41):
the community to read with me because I think that
the voices of teens, the voices of young people who
are being prevented from reading the books is really important
to hear, Diana. Sorry, I'm looking at the quotes on
the on the website right now, and there was a
great quote by a trans author who did a tour
(13:02):
of libraries and she wrote, this is not a culture war.
Book bands are a fascist style campaign of cultural rature.
And then there was a student that wrote, book bands
that are taking place right now at record pace are
not just about inappropriate content. That's not what they're about.
This is merely another way for people to target our identities,
our core humanity, and strip us away from compassion. And
(13:26):
then you hear these kids talk about like that. There's
one quote from an anti censorship PSA's where they had
a bunch of teens talking and this teen said, reading
their God It's me Margaret made me feel so much
less alone. It assured me that whatever I was experiencing
was not some anomalous experience that no one could relate to.
And like, you hear that again and again, like here
(13:47):
was another one. I yearned growing up for narratives that
spoke directly to my experiences, that assured me that my identity,
both as black and queer, it was not only valid
but beautiful. It was through books like All Boys Aren't
Blue that I discovered a narrative that resonated with my
own and ps, All Boys Are Blue is the number
one most challenged book in the country, you know. And
then this one, which I thought was really profound too.
(14:09):
If this book had been banned before I read it,
I would never have understood the fear that someone who
was a minority bass on a daily basis. By banning books,
we ban the opportunity for kids to grow.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Well, if that doesn't make you feel like you want
to put your actions into something, I don't know what does.
So Lee, you know, for our listener community, for industry professionals,
for our partners in this crazy world of publishing where
we sit, what are some of the ways that people
can take actionable steps to support the program? And if
(14:45):
you don't, you won't see it here. But Lee has
one of his shirts that he's rocking too strong like
a reader, And I know you have some other iterations,
but if you could give us some ideas on how
to put ourselves into the program and support love to
hear that.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Absolutely, And I just want to say before before I
talk about the program, I want to just say that
this is not the only way you can push back.
There are lots of ways that you can fight book banning,
and there are lots of wonderful organizations to do doing
really cool work. On the legislative side. There there's Authors
against bookmans, so you should join that if you're an author.
(15:23):
There is. Every library institute does a really good legislative roundup.
The Author's Guild does some great advocacy. There's lots of
get involved in your local school board stuff and local
elections because those have a huge impact. The Friends of
the Library groups like, there's lots you can do, and
we are starting the insternship is a cool way to
(15:45):
kind of go on the offense. So the shirt I'm
wearing so our logo for we are starting the censorship
is like basically in bold type black letters, we are
stronger than censorship. And the O of stronger is the
is a do not enter sign, a red do not
under sign where the white bar in the center of
(16:07):
it is opening up to reveal it's a book being read.
I'm quite delighted with our Sorry, it's the O of
censorship and it's really cool. So we took that. Oh
and that's what the O in my shirt that's as
strong like a reader. The O of strong is that
is that icon of the do not under sign opening
(16:28):
up to reveal it's a book being read. So every
T shirt, every sweatshirt, all the slag includes a sixteen
dollars donation to buy two books to offset one book challenge.
And nobody gets a shirt for free. I paid for
my shirt. That's sort of a joke for those of
us working behind the scenes on the program, like, yep,
nobody gets a free shirt. You want a shirt, you
(16:49):
have to donate, and then you know you could there's
just general donations available on the site and spreading a word, right,
if you have an audience and you want to partner
with us and you want to you know, get the
word out. If you're a publisher and you have a
particular book or series that you think really relates to this,
(17:11):
you know, definitely, you know we're open to any kind
of collaboration. We were talking with one publisher about like
maybe twenty five cents a copy of this book in
their series could be a donation to the program. Again,
we were talking about like independent publishers. If you are
an independent publisher and you want to have a book
considered for our next round, which well, we're going to
(17:33):
choose another twenty publishers in twenty books in January twenty
twenty six, so you can submit to have us consider it,
and it doesn't need to be your most challenged book.
It could simply be a book that you feel has
been negatively impacted by the chilling effect. And then we
try to sort of like curate a list. If you're
a bookstore listening, the way that bookstores participate is that
(17:55):
you basically look at the list of twenty books, you
choose whatever ones you think will do well in your
store in your community, and you print out a shelf
talker that we give you and it goes right under
one of the books. You just put the one book
base out and there's the shelf talker and it includes
a QR code for people to learn more about the program.
But it also that it is urging people in your store.
(18:16):
It says, buy this book for yourself or for this
store to donate. And that's really cool because that kind
of decentralizes this whole thing, and you know that's very exciting.
I think for stores to be like, wow, we are
actually starting to build a pile of books that we're
going to be able to donate in our own community
to a nonprofit or to a community center. In some way,
(18:39):
we're going to activate our own community to start pushing back.
And at some point, I don't really care about counting
the numbers. I mean, the numbers are fun, it's fun
to be able to say, but like, really, I want
to like create a tipping point in our culture where
we are pushing back against book banning by distributing a
lot more books that are important and that really can
(19:03):
touch people's lives.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
It's so important, and I just feel even if we
everyone who's listening, everyone who's tuning in, who hears this
be shared, even just having the organization's name at our
ready to be able to bring it into conversation. Because
last week at the US Book Show, I had a
wonderful conversation with an individual who we've long worked with
(19:27):
and she's starting her journey, you know, out of the
industry very slowly. I think a lot of us leave
so slow it's hard to let go of. And you know,
I am having more conversations with individuals in the industry
and not just in what they can do and finding
more time on their hands and where to put it.
(19:48):
And I think just having the knowledge that this exists.
I've already brought it up in three different conversations, one
that I pitched to my book club, because we are
very intent on supporting matters such as this here and again,
we talk a lot about what we see that we
want to change, but it's hard to find the time,
(20:11):
no what's the value and where to put the action.
So you've done that for us, Lee, You've taken a
lot of the late nights that you're having are really
all for our benefit and where we can put our
action in our resources. So I do I just think
it's it's great to have it on the tip of
our tongue because this is a conversation within the book
(20:32):
world and beyond that we can use this as that
resource for solution and to inspire action.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
That's awesome, Thank you, Karan, And I love that you're
talking about it, and sure it's spreading the word. I
would love to share. And this is a kind of
slightly let go with me. I'm going to try to
make an elegant segue. But there's this there's this idea
that we have that we're allies, and yet sometimes we
don't do anything. And I do feel like there's no
(21:02):
such thing as a silent ally. So if I feel
like in my head that I'm an ally to women
but I'm not actually doing anything to back that up,
then I'm not much of a feminist, right I'm not.
I'm not much of an ally to women. And so
I think that this idea of allyship is something that
(21:22):
even in our current moment of where diversity and equity
and inclusion have somehow become bad words or like, which
is I love what Pete Budajetd said. He's like, Okay,
so the opposite of diversity is everyone's the same homogeneity,
and the opposite of equity is things are unfair, and
(21:44):
the opposite of inclusion or people are excluded. How are
people arguing against these things? It was so well said,
right like so, but but in this client climate, I
still think that allyship is something that almost everyone can
get behind, right like, And uh, I have my picture
book that thought this summer is about ally I.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
See this segue instilling these lessons youngly.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Yeah, So one of the people that I did the
research on in no way they were gay, was Eleanor
Roosevelt because Eleanor Roosevelt had a decades long love affair
with another woman, Lorena Hiccock, while she was married while
Eleanor was married to FDR. But FDR had his own
a romantic relationship with another woman, so they kind of
like they had kids together, and then they were like, hey,
you go that way, I'm going to go this way.
(22:30):
Uh and uh. And it was the letters between Eleanor
Roosevelt and Lorena Hiccock were jaw dropping and beautiful and
so tender, and people are like, well they were friends, Yeah,
they were friends, and they were they were romantic. They
were romantically in love with each other, and you have
to read the letters. It's astonishing and so uh. But
(22:53):
Eleanor Roosevelt was a really cool ally like it in
some really fascinating ways. I'm just gonna give one example. So, so,
when Eleanor Roosevelt became First Lady right when her husband
was elected president, and they went and moved into the
White House, and she discovered that the press conferences that
(23:16):
the president gave on a weekly basis were only open
to men reporters, and she thought that was really unfair,
but she didn't like she didn't fight it in like
a in a confrontational way. She was super smart and
super clever. And so what she did is she decided
(23:37):
that she was going to have her own weekly chats
with the media, but she would only allow women reporters
to attend. And what it did is it forced all
these media outlets to hire women reporters because if they didn't,
they would miss out on that flow of information from
the White House. And you know, Ellen Roosevelt was really
(24:00):
the first First Lady to be something more than a hostess.
That she envisioned the job of being First Lady as
a way to leverage her platform to focus on helping
other people. And she was largely encouraged in this by
(24:21):
the woman she loved, Lorna Hicock. And so that's really
fascinating too. So anyway, there were all these stories about
Eleanor Roosevelt being an ally and really doing these very
very cool things, and I've always I was as I
was reading it, I thought, oh, that's really cool. And
then my husband and I we've been together twenty eight
years and we have a grown daughter. She just graduated college,
(24:43):
and in the course of her going through school, there
were so many things that she noticed that were unfair,
and these two ideas sort of like floating in different
parts of my mind, and then I finally figured out
how to put them together as a picture book. And
so like that Eleanor, I'm going to hold up the
cover to so you can see it. For those of
(25:05):
you able to see the video and for those not,
it's a young girl holding a book about Eleanor Roosevelt
and with a sort of thought bubble that's as like that,
Eleanor the amazing power of being an Ally. And in
the book, Eleanor is the child of two dads, and
it's my first picture book with a two dad family.
(25:25):
So I'm really extra excited about that, just in time
for my kid to be twenty two. And she sees
some things that are unfair that happen in her school,
and she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know
what to say, and so she doesn't say anything. But
when she gets home, stocks with her dad's about it,
and they tell her these cool stories of Eleanor Roosevelt
(25:48):
being an ally, and ultimately there's a moment where one
of her friends at school is excluded because the friend
is non binary, and the teacher's like, let's play a
game to get know each other. Girls line up on
that side of the classroom, boys on this side of
the classroom, and it leaves her this friend Star out
and Star kind of doesn't know what to do, and
(26:11):
Eleanor is inspired by something her dad told her about
what Eleanor Roosevelt did, and she's able to sort of
like stand up in that moment and do a very
elegant solution for being an ally, and it sort of
makes her little corner of the world a little more fair.
And it's landing on a moment I wouldn't have chosen it,
(26:33):
but it's landing on a moment where I think that
a lot of a lot of adults are going to
want their kiddos to know how do you go from
being a bystander to being an ally? How can you
stand up for others? And what does it mean to
be a friend. And I'm very excited about the book.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Well, congratulations, Lee, and I agree with you as a
parent and just as my own self. In this climate,
I think we learn a lot through the books that
are teaching our kids. They become thoughtful conversations to have
and a different way for adults as well to look
at the very same topic that you're exploring. So I
(27:15):
do love that perspective in the read that you're giving
us with an opportunity to explore conversation with the next
group of leaders. And I do know it is about
the action. That's what we need, that's what we want
to see, and teaching the next generation is part.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Of that action, right, absolutely, Yeah, And conversations, it's so
much about that. I had. I had the cool opportunity
to talk to Jackie Woodson at one point, and I
was asking her about her beautiful picture book On the
Other Side, which is sort of about racism and two
little girls, one white woman black who become friends and
(28:00):
that both of their the parents don't want the kids
to be friends, so and they're not allowed to go
over to the other's house, their next door neighbors, so
they sit on the fence in between h and become
friends sitting on the fence in between their properties. And
it's just beautiful. And I said to Jackie, how do
you even approach writing a picture book about racism? And
(28:21):
she said I'm not. I don't think of it like
I'm starting the conversation. I'm continuing the conversation. And I
thought that was so so wise and so helpful, because
this is not a book about the world being the
totality of the world being unfair. And the kiddos that
(28:42):
have an adult share this book with them, it's not
going to surprise them. It's not going to be the
first time they've experienced unfairness or they've witnessed unfairness. It's
just letting kids know that they can be empowered to
be a friend and that that small action can can
make a huge difference.
Speaker 5 (29:03):
Yeah, oll late, you're so You're so great at speaking
about it, I have chills. You know, we are a
book marketing podcast. You you have your next book coming
out your you're no stranger to the launch, but thinking
here in how we could switch gears and kind of wrap.
(29:26):
Do you have a few key tips that you've done
in the past for your own brand, for your own self,
maybe how you're be approaching like that eleanor potentially a
little differently this time, or just some high level.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Takeaways for our eager group of listeners to hear. Any
ideas that you have on tips and tactics that you
you really see being a good use of time.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Absolutely, I have three, so uh. The first one that
really helps me is recognizing that I'm not selling myself.
I'm not even really selling my book. I know that
sounds weird, but to hang with me for a second,
I am super uncomfortable saying, Karin, let me tell you
(30:17):
about my new book. I am such a great author.
I think you should get the book. Like I just
want to like like hide my head even saying those
words in mock, you know, as a joke. I'm super
super uncomfortable and like slightly breaking out in the sweat,
Like it's like that is that that is what we
feel like we're being told to constantly do. But actually
(30:41):
what works better, I think is if I can tap
into the thing I'm excited about about my book, like
the underlying thing, like like that Eleanor I've been excited
to tell you about Eleanor Roosevelts being an ally and
about how kids can be empowered to be friends to
each other and to stand up for each other, Like
you hear my voice right, Like I am excited about that,
(31:04):
and that can connect with what other people are excited about,
and yeah, the book is there, and it's like that's
sort of like the vehicle for sharing the excitement. But
I'm not telling you buy my book by my book,
by the book. I'm telling you, like, let your kids
know that they can be allies. Let your kids know
that they have power even though they're kids, to make
a difference in our world and make it a little
(31:25):
more fair. That's what I am so excited about. And
when I'm sharing what I'm really excited about, all that
sort of weird awkwardness of like buy my book goes away.
And it's because I'm not even saying that. I'm saying
let your kids know that they can make a difference,
that they can help make our world more fair because
they're gonna see unfair stuff and it doesn't have to
(31:46):
be confrontational the way they make things more fair. It
can be creative, it can be joyous, it can be
a celebration. And I think that that is a huge
breakthrough for me and for those of you doing like
nonfiction stuff. I think that there's it applies as well,
because you can talk about the way that book is
(32:10):
going to help people, like I've done two crowdfunding things
so far, both successfully and the point of it. Like
my very first book, Queer's Five Dollar Bill, was a
y novel and I wanted to crowdfund it so I
could publish it professionally because at IVPA we don't believe that,
Like the term self publishing we think is a misnomer,
(32:32):
and we think that if you're going to publish something
you wrotete, you are the publisher of that. So you
are an author publisher and you need to hire a
team of professionals to help you do it professionally. The
idea that you can do it all yourself, No, don't
do that. If nobody's going to pay you to design
the cover of their book, you have no business designing
the cover of your book. So the idea of pulling
(32:58):
the like you want to empower yourself by not making
it about you, right, Okay, that sounded weird, but like so,
the way I did the crowdfunding is that I didn't
say help Lee publish Lee's book because Lee wants a
published book. It wasn't about me at all. I said, Hey,
(33:19):
I have this idea to do this book that's going
to empower teams. It's going to empower it, particularly queer
and allied teens. And so I have this vision of
raising enough money to produce this book professionally and donate
four hundred and fifty copies of this book help me
do that. So when I was talking about the Kickstarter,
I was actually talking about help me empower queer teens
(33:41):
and allied teens. And that was a message. I didn't
feel awkward about it at all because I believe that
with my whole heart. That's what I want the vehicle
to do. That was contribute to the Kickstarter, help me
publish this book professionally, and it succeeded. And so I
feel like because I didn't make it about me, it worked.
So it's you don't make it about yourself. You make
it about the thing you're passionate about, and that connects
(34:03):
with other people's passion and then it's book marketing. But
it's not awkward, right. That's that's tip one. That was long,
but I had to get there.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
The two is this was a really helpful metaphor for
me that when people don't know who you are, trying
to get them to buy your book is a really
big leap. Like and the metaphor I heard that I
like best is that it's like, imagine it's imagine a
(34:40):
stadium and there are people outside the stadium and they
don't know who you are, and you need to ask
them to come inside the stadium. And then when you're
in the stadium, they're like, there's a stage that you're
on and the people that are up on the stage
with you, they're the ones that have bought your book.
But it's like it's a two part process. You have
to get the people that don't know about you to
(35:00):
come into your universe, and then the people that are
in your universe, you're trying to get them to convert,
to become readers and to love what you're doing. But
to focus your efforts on the people that don't know
you and try to get them to go from outside
the stadium to up on stage with you is a
huge ask and it's very difficult to do, and people
(35:22):
spend a lot of time and energy trying to do
exactly that, and it's a misuse of your resources.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Time and money, right.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Time and money, because it's so hard. I mean, think
about it, when was the last time that you encountered
something that you never heard about before? And you bought
tickets to it, or you bought the book. Like, it's very,
very difficult, right, it's just.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Not how it's not how it works. Then Lee, we
say the same thing. It is, and publishers will say
the same thing too, now that it is more of
activating your direct network and you have to start thinking
through that contacts. You had mentioned the email list, and
maybe that's your third tip, but that's that's gold, right, did.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
I the head it's my third tip? You totally were
reading my mind, Corinth. Yes, so it is lovely to
have a big social media following. Yes, it's it's lovely
to get the hearts and the likes and all that.
But social media platforms can change their algorithms. They can
change how they work overnight. And this happened to me.
(36:27):
I spent years building a big following on Facebook, and
like it was, I mean, it wasn't that big. It
was like two thousand people, but you know, for me,
that was big and I was super excited. And then yeah, yeah,
and then overnight they changed how it worked and instead
of everyone that had already signed up saying I'm interested
in what Lee Wind is saying, seeing it only twelve
(36:50):
people saw it and they were like, well, if you
pay us, we can share it with more of the
people that already said they want to see what you do.
And I was like, wait, what, it's so not cool.
So so really that is when I shifted my focus
to my email list. So social media. Actually, there was
(37:11):
a really interesting study that just came out from BookBub
and they were they were they did it. They asked
authors what do you use social media for? And the
vast majority of them, like eighty seven percent said I
use it to find new people. But then like seventy percent,
so you could choose more than one right, said that
they use it to deepen the relationships they already have
with people that already know about them. So again, like
(37:34):
it's that bringing people from outside into the stadium, and
then it's the people that are in the stadium like
building like deepening your connections with them, and I think
that those are both really valid and helpful. And again,
building the email list is really critical. So like I
my email list is now like twenty three hundred people,
and that's to me, that is way more valuable than
(37:57):
ten thousand people on social media. Not that I have
ten people on social media, but like, because those people
I can reach, and sure they're gonna some people unsubscribed.
That is totally cool. I don't want to be bothering
people like I only want them there if they want
to be there. There's a great quote by m Lamant
in her she talks about it in Bird by Bird.
She talks about how lighthouses don't run all over an
(38:18):
island looking for boats to save. They just stand there
and they shine. And I think about that a lot
for me as an author, like I am going to
shine a light on the things that I am excited
about and fascinated about, and the people that are interested
in that, come to the light, come hang out with me.
And if you're not interested, it's totally okay. Sail on,
go on your own journey. It is okay. I don't
(38:40):
need to convince everyone that I'm right and they're wrong
about history. I just want to share what I'm excited
about and hopefully connect with other people who are excited
about that as well.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Well.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
I hope you have a lot of excited people to
listen to this interview and take some next chats. So
two things I want to hear are where individuals should
go to learn more about we are stronger than censorship
and start to take some of those action items that
you had shared, and also where people can learn more
about like that Eleanor and get their own copy which
(39:14):
is soon to come.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Absolutely, so we are stronger than censorship. It's just we
are stronger than censorship dot org. It's very easy. That's
where you can find all the cool things under get involved.
There's all this cool options, our merchandise, our shopping list
of books, you can sign up, you can share, you
can find discussion guides and for the books, and you
(39:39):
can donate. So that's the easy one. And then even
easier is finding out more about me and my books
is leewind l e w I n D dot org,
which I chuckle about because I feel like I approach
it from a nonprofit perspective.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
Well, Lee, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
This was so lovely to have you on and to
really inspire us to not be an ally just today
but every day and looking forward to seeing the continued
success of the foundation and all the best of luck
in your upcoming launch.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Thank you so much, and thanks everyone for listening.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Smith Publicity.
All Things book Marketing podcast. To reach us and learn
about our many services, visit Smith Publicity dot com or
send us an email to info at smith Publicity dot com.
Welcome to the Smith Publicity All Things Book Marketing podcast,
offering tips, insights, and advice from the best in the
publishing industry.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me today on
the podcast All Things Book Marketing. I am Carin Molder
stepping in as the host and so excited to welcome
Lee Wind to our program today. Lee is the Chief
Content Officer for the Independent Book Publishers Association, or IbpA
(00:32):
as so many of us know it, the largest nonprofit
trade association of independent publishers in the US. He aims
to make publisher education both informative and actionable, and is
constantly iterating ibpa's book marketing programs to help IbpA members
achieve and succeed. He is the co founder of We
(00:52):
Are Stronger Than Censorship, a program that buys and donates
two books to offset every one book challenge. Lee is
also an author who writes the books that would have
changed his life as a young gay Jewish kid. His
seventh book is out this summer, the picture book Like
That eleanor The Amazing Power of Being an Ally, illustrated
(01:14):
by Kelly Mangan. It's published by IbpA member Cardinal Rule
Press and Publishers weekly call it accessible, heartfelt and empowering. Lee,
thank you for being on today.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Thank you so much, Karin. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yes, you know your name carries a certain weight in
the industry. We've always known you associated with IbpA here,
but it was very recently, Lee, at the VASG annual
event in April, that you actually won the Industry Champion
Award and I was in attendance. I always loved that meeting,
(01:51):
but what I really left with with that day was
truly the impact of what you're doing with your new program.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
We are s longer than censorship.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I knew I had to have you on and I
will ask you to just share a little bit about
your motivation for it.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Absolutely. Thanks. Yeah, that was a lovely moment. It was
very Uh, it was very cool because I got to
I had ten minutes to talk to this room full
of publishing industry, you know, movers and shakers, and talk
to them about something I really care about. So, as
(02:31):
you said in my bio, which I recognized since I
wrote it, it's so funny to have to write about
yourself and a third person. I write books for kids
and teens, and most of the books are about queer
history or social justice or the combination of those things.
(02:53):
And I have a nonfiction series with Learner for ages
eleven and up. It's called the Queer History Project. The
first book was No Way They Were Gay, and then
the second book is the Gender Binary is a Big lie.
The cover of No Area They Were Gay has a
bunch of famous people on it that we didn't maybe
know were men who love men or women who love
(03:15):
women are people who live outside the gender binary, including
Eleanor Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and Mahama Gandhi. And that
book has gotten a lot of accolades, and it has
also landed on quite a few we don't like this
book lists and has been challenged. Through that book being challenged,
(03:36):
I was invited to participate in these sort of like
support group meetings for authors in that situation by doctor
Taslin Magnuson. And Taslin is the person in the US
that holds the data on book banning, and she is
lovely and we became friends and we were talking about
(03:59):
how well it felt like the freedom to read side
was only playing defense and we're running around and like
the banners seemed very organized, like there was this one
person who the Washington posted an analysis of book bands
in the twenty twenty two twenty twenty three school year,
(04:19):
and they found that eleven people, eleven individuals, were behind
sixty percent of all the book challenges in the US.
And that was astonishing to me and I just felt like, Wow,
the other side is really organized. There was one one
person in Wisconsin challenged four hundred books in an elementary
(04:39):
school library. All four hundred books were pulled off the
shelves for four months while they were reviewed. At the
end of that time, almost all of them went back
on the shelves. But think about those kids in that school.
They lost access to all those to their library basically
for an entire semester. So it's like out of control.
And I was saying to Tasslin, we need to come
(04:59):
up with something that's offense. How do we play offense?
Why are we always on the defense? And so that's
where the two of us cooked up this idea of
what if we created a program where we bought and
donated two books to offset every one book challenge and
start to make the numbers work against the book banners.
(05:20):
And it's been a lot of heavy lifting of just
basically like sweat equity and spit and duct tape kind
of thing, like we're like, okay, let's do this, and
like let's put on a show. We have a barn,
and we're borrowing the barn. We're borrowing everything. It's all
it's all in kind donations. We have over fifty industry
(05:42):
partners and I think actually that is an element of
it that got big interested, because it's not just me
doing this. It's it's literally all my time on this
program is spent building partnerships and trying to activate other
people's can communities in service of this cool idea, which
(06:03):
is that we can pull the emergency brake on this
runaway train if we get enough traction. So we launched
so we have twenty independent publishers. Each of them have
one book in the program, and those are the books
we're buying. Because we also want to make the point
and this is how it's an IbpA program. We also
want to make the point that independent publishers are the
real drivers of diversity. Corporate publishers do put out beautiful books,
(06:28):
but at the end of the day, so many independent
publishers are mission driven and they really are trying to
push back against the sort of legacy of exclusion that
the publishing is sort of steeped in. And so we
want to highlight the amazing work that independent publishers are doing.
And then we have about like ten partners that are
(06:49):
helping us distribute the books like Florida Freedom to Read,
Texas Freedom to Read. We need diverse books. We also
have about right now ten bookstore partners, although I think
we're going to start building more. And the idea again
is that like the more we can build our numbers
(07:10):
of books donated, maybe it starts to slow those people's
role a little bit. And if that person in Wisconsin
that challenged four hundred books knew that in response to
their challenging that eight hundred books were going to be
bought and donated, maybe it would slow their role. So
that's the big idea behind it. And I was announcing
(07:32):
at the big event, which was exciting, that we had
just crossed raising sixteen thousand dollars, which meant that we
were able to donate two thousand books to offset one
thousand book challenges. Now, there's a long way to go
to create equity here. Right like last year, Pan America's
numbers were ten thousand, and like thirty four challenges happened
(07:56):
in last year, so there's a lot more to oh,
but like, just envision it for a second, Like if
we could get twenty thousand books purchased and donated, that
would be super exciting. So I got really excited and
I was like sharing about it, and then a couple
of people that were in the audience, including you, came
up to me afterwards and they were like, how we
want to do more, we want to collaborate, we want
(08:18):
to help, we want to partner. And we actually just
heard from the Book Manufacturers Institute that they put out
a challenge to their member. They're like for people that
don't know, they're like, you know, printers and the people
that build the printing presses, and they're sort of like
that side of the industry and they're very cool, and
(08:38):
they didn't they were looking for something to do to
help champion the freedom to read in this climate, and
so they put out a challenge to their members to
raise sixteen thousand dollars and if their members do it
by September fifteen, they're going to match that with another
sixteen thousand dollars do nation. So if it works, that's
(08:59):
another fourth books donated to offset two thousand more challenges.
So I love that. I love the idea that we're
building momentum and we're getting people excited and everybody listening
can help.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Absolutely, everyone can listen.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
And I do think, you know, to think of a term,
it feels like we're a little bit of a sitting
duck because we're surrounded by books and all that we
do in our industry, right we're marketing them, we're reading them,
we're brainstorming about the content, we're working with our authors.
But there is this real problem that's happening. And you know,
(09:33):
even speaking to my sons, what catches me sometimes is
I'll say, you know, education is such power. Reading is
such power that can't be taken away from you. And
yet late we're on the precipice of seeing these stories
be taken away and even just hearing the four months
between that one individual challenging those books to them returning
(09:58):
to the bookshelf. What really stood out to me in
your presentation at bisg Yes is the thought that goes
into it and the hard work that you're doing for
others to be able to participate, but it was the
quotes and the feedback that you've received as an author
writing the books that you wish you had as a young.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Child.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
So those four months were critical where someone might have
missed an opportunity to feel included or to see themselves
in an area where they just don't really feel a
part of. And you've said very powerfully, Lee, that book
banning isn't really about the books.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
So in the larger discussion.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Here, can you impact that for us a little bit
and lean into what that really means.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah, it's not about the books at all, which is hard.
It's hard for for the general public to understand that
it's not about the books because when we talk about
book banning, we're like, look at this, this is the
number one banned book in the country, and we almost
celebrate the top ten most challenged books. And they actually
are the ones that are seeing in some cases like
their sales are going up. But it's not about those.
(11:11):
And actually, this is weird because being a sort of
like midless band author, I definitely have had people like
when one of my books lands in one of these
articles or lists and stuff and I share it, people
are like, oh, congratulations. It means you're doing something right,
and I'm like, okay, thank you. But that's the point
of the book. Bands is not the books. It is
(11:35):
to create a chilling effect. It is to make librarians
and teachers afraid and in some cases booksellers afraid to
bring in the books that they know would be helpful
to their audiences. Right, they know the students would need it,
they know it would make a difference. We have lots
(11:55):
of data about, like anecdotal and statistical about like how
seeing yourself in a book can make you feel much
less alone and can can give you hope, and also
how books are empathy machines and they make you see
common humanity with somebody else. And that's what they're They're
banning things to make it feel like to to isolate
(12:20):
and to attack people. And like, so one of the
things we just did on the we are Stronger than
Censorship website We are stronger than censorship dot org is
that we included some quotes because I did that. Actually,
that was a fun thing. In the awards program I presentation,
I was able to have slides up and I asked
(12:41):
the community to read with me because I think that
the voices of teens, the voices of young people who
are being prevented from reading the books is really important
to hear, Diana. Sorry, I'm looking at the quotes on
the on the website right now, and there was a
great quote by a trans author who did a tour
(13:02):
of libraries and she wrote, this is not a culture war.
Book bands are a fascist style campaign of cultural rature.
And then there was a student that wrote, book bands
that are taking place right now at record pace are
not just about inappropriate content. That's not what they're about.
This is merely another way for people to target our identities,
our core humanity, and strip us away from compassion. And
(13:26):
then you hear these kids talk about like that. There's
one quote from an anti censorship PSA's where they had
a bunch of teens talking and this teen said, reading
their God It's me Margaret made me feel so much
less alone. It assured me that whatever I was experiencing
was not some anomalous experience that no one could relate to.
And like, you hear that again and again, like here
(13:47):
was another one. I yearned growing up for narratives that
spoke directly to my experiences, that assured me that my identity,
both as black and queer, it was not only valid
but beautiful. It was through books like All Boys Aren't
Blue that I discovered a narrative that resonated with my
own and ps, All Boys Are Blue is the number
one most challenged book in the country, you know. And
then this one, which I thought was really profound too.
(14:09):
If this book had been banned before I read it,
I would never have understood the fear that someone who
was a minority bass on a daily basis. By banning books,
we ban the opportunity for kids to grow.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Well, if that doesn't make you feel like you want
to put your actions into something, I don't know what does.
So Lee, you know, for our listener community, for industry professionals,
for our partners in this crazy world of publishing where
we sit, what are some of the ways that people
can take actionable steps to support the program? And if
(14:45):
you don't, you won't see it here. But Lee has
one of his shirts that he's rocking too strong like
a reader, And I know you have some other iterations,
but if you could give us some ideas on how
to put ourselves into the program and support love to
hear that.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Absolutely, And I just want to say before before I
talk about the program, I want to just say that
this is not the only way you can push back.
There are lots of ways that you can fight book banning,
and there are lots of wonderful organizations to do doing
really cool work. On the legislative side. There there's Authors
against bookmans, so you should join that if you're an author.
(15:23):
There is. Every library institute does a really good legislative roundup.
The Author's Guild does some great advocacy. There's lots of
get involved in your local school board stuff and local
elections because those have a huge impact. The Friends of
the Library groups like, there's lots you can do, and
we are starting the insternship is a cool way to
(15:45):
kind of go on the offense. So the shirt I'm
wearing so our logo for we are starting the censorship
is like basically in bold type black letters, we are
stronger than censorship. And the O of stronger is the
is a do not enter sign, a red do not
under sign where the white bar in the center of
(16:07):
it is opening up to reveal it's a book being read.
I'm quite delighted with our Sorry, it's the O of
censorship and it's really cool. So we took that. Oh
and that's what the O in my shirt that's as
strong like a reader. The O of strong is that
is that icon of the do not under sign opening
(16:28):
up to reveal it's a book being read. So every
T shirt, every sweatshirt, all the slag includes a sixteen
dollars donation to buy two books to offset one book challenge.
And nobody gets a shirt for free. I paid for
my shirt. That's sort of a joke for those of
us working behind the scenes on the program, like, yep,
nobody gets a free shirt. You want a shirt, you
(16:49):
have to donate, and then you know you could there's
just general donations available on the site and spreading a word, right,
if you have an audience and you want to partner
with us and you want to you know, get the
word out. If you're a publisher and you have a
particular book or series that you think really relates to this,
(17:11):
you know, definitely, you know we're open to any kind
of collaboration. We were talking with one publisher about like
maybe twenty five cents a copy of this book in
their series could be a donation to the program. Again,
we were talking about like independent publishers. If you are
an independent publisher and you want to have a book
considered for our next round, which well, we're going to
(17:33):
choose another twenty publishers in twenty books in January twenty
twenty six, so you can submit to have us consider it,
and it doesn't need to be your most challenged book.
It could simply be a book that you feel has
been negatively impacted by the chilling effect. And then we
try to sort of like curate a list. If you're
a bookstore listening, the way that bookstores participate is that
(17:55):
you basically look at the list of twenty books, you
choose whatever ones you think will do well in your
store in your community, and you print out a shelf
talker that we give you and it goes right under
one of the books. You just put the one book
base out and there's the shelf talker and it includes
a QR code for people to learn more about the program.
But it also that it is urging people in your store.
(18:16):
It says, buy this book for yourself or for this
store to donate. And that's really cool because that kind
of decentralizes this whole thing, and you know that's very exciting.
I think for stores to be like, wow, we are
actually starting to build a pile of books that we're
going to be able to donate in our own community
to a nonprofit or to a community center. In some way,
(18:39):
we're going to activate our own community to start pushing back.
And at some point, I don't really care about counting
the numbers. I mean, the numbers are fun, it's fun
to be able to say, but like, really, I want
to like create a tipping point in our culture where
we are pushing back against book banning by distributing a
lot more books that are important and that really can
(19:03):
touch people's lives.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
It's so important, and I just feel even if we
everyone who's listening, everyone who's tuning in, who hears this
be shared, even just having the organization's name at our
ready to be able to bring it into conversation. Because
last week at the US Book Show, I had a
wonderful conversation with an individual who we've long worked with
(19:27):
and she's starting her journey, you know, out of the
industry very slowly. I think a lot of us leave
so slow it's hard to let go of. And you know,
I am having more conversations with individuals in the industry
and not just in what they can do and finding
more time on their hands and where to put it.
(19:48):
And I think just having the knowledge that this exists.
I've already brought it up in three different conversations, one
that I pitched to my book club, because we are
very intent on supporting matters such as this here and again,
we talk a lot about what we see that we
want to change, but it's hard to find the time,
(20:11):
no what's the value and where to put the action.
So you've done that for us, Lee, You've taken a
lot of the late nights that you're having are really
all for our benefit and where we can put our
action in our resources. So I do I just think
it's it's great to have it on the tip of
our tongue because this is a conversation within the book
(20:32):
world and beyond that we can use this as that
resource for solution and to inspire action.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
That's awesome, Thank you, Karan, And I love that you're
talking about it, and sure it's spreading the word. I
would love to share. And this is a kind of
slightly let go with me. I'm going to try to
make an elegant segue. But there's this there's this idea
that we have that we're allies, and yet sometimes we
don't do anything. And I do feel like there's no
(21:02):
such thing as a silent ally. So if I feel
like in my head that I'm an ally to women
but I'm not actually doing anything to back that up,
then I'm not much of a feminist, right I'm not.
I'm not much of an ally to women. And so
I think that this idea of allyship is something that
(21:22):
even in our current moment of where diversity and equity
and inclusion have somehow become bad words or like, which
is I love what Pete Budajetd said. He's like, Okay,
so the opposite of diversity is everyone's the same homogeneity,
and the opposite of equity is things are unfair, and
(21:44):
the opposite of inclusion or people are excluded. How are
people arguing against these things? It was so well said,
right like so, but but in this client climate, I
still think that allyship is something that almost everyone can
get behind, right like, And uh, I have my picture
book that thought this summer is about ally I.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
See this segue instilling these lessons youngly.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Yeah, So one of the people that I did the
research on in no way they were gay, was Eleanor
Roosevelt because Eleanor Roosevelt had a decades long love affair
with another woman, Lorena Hiccock, while she was married while
Eleanor was married to FDR. But FDR had his own
a romantic relationship with another woman, so they kind of
like they had kids together, and then they were like, hey,
you go that way, I'm going to go this way.
(22:30):
Uh and uh. And it was the letters between Eleanor
Roosevelt and Lorena Hiccock were jaw dropping and beautiful and
so tender, and people are like, well they were friends, Yeah,
they were friends, and they were they were romantic. They
were romantically in love with each other, and you have
to read the letters. It's astonishing and so uh. But
(22:53):
Eleanor Roosevelt was a really cool ally like it in
some really fascinating ways. I'm just gonna give one example. So, so,
when Eleanor Roosevelt became First Lady right when her husband
was elected president, and they went and moved into the
White House, and she discovered that the press conferences that
(23:16):
the president gave on a weekly basis were only open
to men reporters, and she thought that was really unfair,
but she didn't like she didn't fight it in like
a in a confrontational way. She was super smart and
super clever. And so what she did is she decided
(23:37):
that she was going to have her own weekly chats
with the media, but she would only allow women reporters
to attend. And what it did is it forced all
these media outlets to hire women reporters because if they didn't,
they would miss out on that flow of information from
the White House. And you know, Ellen Roosevelt was really
(24:00):
the first First Lady to be something more than a hostess.
That she envisioned the job of being First Lady as
a way to leverage her platform to focus on helping
other people. And she was largely encouraged in this by
(24:21):
the woman she loved, Lorna Hicock. And so that's really
fascinating too. So anyway, there were all these stories about
Eleanor Roosevelt being an ally and really doing these very
very cool things, and I've always I was as I
was reading it, I thought, oh, that's really cool. And
then my husband and I we've been together twenty eight
years and we have a grown daughter. She just graduated college,
(24:43):
and in the course of her going through school, there
were so many things that she noticed that were unfair,
and these two ideas sort of like floating in different
parts of my mind, and then I finally figured out
how to put them together as a picture book. And
so like that Eleanor, I'm going to hold up the
cover to so you can see it. For those of
(25:05):
you able to see the video and for those not,
it's a young girl holding a book about Eleanor Roosevelt
and with a sort of thought bubble that's as like that,
Eleanor the amazing power of being an Ally. And in
the book, Eleanor is the child of two dads, and
it's my first picture book with a two dad family.
(25:25):
So I'm really extra excited about that, just in time
for my kid to be twenty two. And she sees
some things that are unfair that happen in her school,
and she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know
what to say, and so she doesn't say anything. But
when she gets home, stocks with her dad's about it,
and they tell her these cool stories of Eleanor Roosevelt
(25:48):
being an ally, and ultimately there's a moment where one
of her friends at school is excluded because the friend
is non binary, and the teacher's like, let's play a
game to get know each other. Girls line up on
that side of the classroom, boys on this side of
the classroom, and it leaves her this friend Star out
and Star kind of doesn't know what to do, and
(26:11):
Eleanor is inspired by something her dad told her about
what Eleanor Roosevelt did, and she's able to sort of
like stand up in that moment and do a very
elegant solution for being an ally, and it sort of
makes her little corner of the world a little more fair.
And it's landing on a moment I wouldn't have chosen it,
(26:33):
but it's landing on a moment where I think that
a lot of a lot of adults are going to
want their kiddos to know how do you go from
being a bystander to being an ally? How can you
stand up for others? And what does it mean to
be a friend. And I'm very excited about the book.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Well, congratulations, Lee, and I agree with you as a
parent and just as my own self. In this climate,
I think we learn a lot through the books that
are teaching our kids. They become thoughtful conversations to have
and a different way for adults as well to look
at the very same topic that you're exploring. So I
(27:15):
do love that perspective in the read that you're giving
us with an opportunity to explore conversation with the next
group of leaders. And I do know it is about
the action. That's what we need, that's what we want
to see, and teaching the next generation is part.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Of that action, right, absolutely, Yeah, And conversations, it's so
much about that. I had. I had the cool opportunity
to talk to Jackie Woodson at one point, and I
was asking her about her beautiful picture book On the
Other Side, which is sort of about racism and two
little girls, one white woman black who become friends and
(28:00):
that both of their the parents don't want the kids
to be friends, so and they're not allowed to go
over to the other's house, their next door neighbors, so
they sit on the fence in between h and become
friends sitting on the fence in between their properties. And
it's just beautiful. And I said to Jackie, how do
you even approach writing a picture book about racism? And
(28:21):
she said I'm not. I don't think of it like
I'm starting the conversation. I'm continuing the conversation. And I
thought that was so so wise and so helpful, because
this is not a book about the world being the
totality of the world being unfair. And the kiddos that
(28:42):
have an adult share this book with them, it's not
going to surprise them. It's not going to be the
first time they've experienced unfairness or they've witnessed unfairness. It's
just letting kids know that they can be empowered to
be a friend and that that small action can can
make a huge difference.
Speaker 5 (29:03):
Yeah, oll late, you're so You're so great at speaking
about it, I have chills. You know, we are a
book marketing podcast. You you have your next book coming
out your you're no stranger to the launch, but thinking
here in how we could switch gears and kind of wrap.
(29:26):
Do you have a few key tips that you've done
in the past for your own brand, for your own self,
maybe how you're be approaching like that eleanor potentially a
little differently this time, or just some high level.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Takeaways for our eager group of listeners to hear. Any
ideas that you have on tips and tactics that you
you really see being a good use of time.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Absolutely, I have three, so uh. The first one that
really helps me is recognizing that I'm not selling myself.
I'm not even really selling my book. I know that
sounds weird, but to hang with me for a second,
I am super uncomfortable saying, Karin, let me tell you
(30:17):
about my new book. I am such a great author.
I think you should get the book. Like I just
want to like like hide my head even saying those
words in mock, you know, as a joke. I'm super
super uncomfortable and like slightly breaking out in the sweat,
Like it's like that is that that is what we
feel like we're being told to constantly do. But actually
(30:41):
what works better, I think is if I can tap
into the thing I'm excited about about my book, like
the underlying thing, like like that Eleanor I've been excited
to tell you about Eleanor Roosevelts being an ally and
about how kids can be empowered to be friends to
each other and to stand up for each other, Like
you hear my voice right, Like I am excited about that,
(31:04):
and that can connect with what other people are excited about,
and yeah, the book is there, and it's like that's
sort of like the vehicle for sharing the excitement. But
I'm not telling you buy my book by my book,
by the book. I'm telling you, like, let your kids
know that they can be allies. Let your kids know
that they have power even though they're kids, to make
a difference in our world and make it a little
(31:25):
more fair. That's what I am so excited about. And
when I'm sharing what I'm really excited about, all that
sort of weird awkwardness of like buy my book goes away.
And it's because I'm not even saying that. I'm saying
let your kids know that they can make a difference,
that they can help make our world more fair because
they're gonna see unfair stuff and it doesn't have to
(31:46):
be confrontational the way they make things more fair. It
can be creative, it can be joyous, it can be
a celebration. And I think that that is a huge
breakthrough for me and for those of you doing like
nonfiction stuff. I think that there's it applies as well,
because you can talk about the way that book is
(32:10):
going to help people, like I've done two crowdfunding things
so far, both successfully and the point of it. Like
my very first book, Queer's Five Dollar Bill, was a
y novel and I wanted to crowdfund it so I
could publish it professionally because at IVPA we don't believe that,
Like the term self publishing we think is a misnomer,
(32:32):
and we think that if you're going to publish something
you wrotete, you are the publisher of that. So you
are an author publisher and you need to hire a
team of professionals to help you do it professionally. The
idea that you can do it all yourself, No, don't
do that. If nobody's going to pay you to design
the cover of their book, you have no business designing
the cover of your book. So the idea of pulling
(32:58):
the like you want to empower yourself by not making
it about you, right, Okay, that sounded weird, but like so,
the way I did the crowdfunding is that I didn't
say help Lee publish Lee's book because Lee wants a
published book. It wasn't about me at all. I said, Hey,
(33:19):
I have this idea to do this book that's going
to empower teams. It's going to empower it, particularly queer
and allied teens. And so I have this vision of
raising enough money to produce this book professionally and donate
four hundred and fifty copies of this book help me
do that. So when I was talking about the Kickstarter,
I was actually talking about help me empower queer teens
(33:41):
and allied teens. And that was a message. I didn't
feel awkward about it at all because I believe that
with my whole heart. That's what I want the vehicle
to do. That was contribute to the Kickstarter, help me
publish this book professionally, and it succeeded. And so I
feel like because I didn't make it about me, it worked.
So it's you don't make it about yourself. You make
it about the thing you're passionate about, and that connects
(34:03):
with other people's passion and then it's book marketing. But
it's not awkward, right. That's that's tip one. That was long,
but I had to get there.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
The two is this was a really helpful metaphor for
me that when people don't know who you are, trying
to get them to buy your book is a really
big leap. Like and the metaphor I heard that I
like best is that it's like, imagine it's imagine a
(34:40):
stadium and there are people outside the stadium and they
don't know who you are, and you need to ask
them to come inside the stadium. And then when you're
in the stadium, they're like, there's a stage that you're
on and the people that are up on the stage
with you, they're the ones that have bought your book.
But it's like it's a two part process. You have
to get the people that don't know about you to
(35:00):
come into your universe, and then the people that are
in your universe, you're trying to get them to convert,
to become readers and to love what you're doing. But
to focus your efforts on the people that don't know
you and try to get them to go from outside
the stadium to up on stage with you is a
huge ask and it's very difficult to do, and people
(35:22):
spend a lot of time and energy trying to do
exactly that, and it's a misuse of your resources.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Time and money, right.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Time and money, because it's so hard. I mean, think
about it, when was the last time that you encountered
something that you never heard about before? And you bought
tickets to it, or you bought the book. Like, it's very,
very difficult, right, it's just.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Not how it's not how it works. Then Lee, we
say the same thing. It is, and publishers will say
the same thing too, now that it is more of
activating your direct network and you have to start thinking
through that contacts. You had mentioned the email list, and
maybe that's your third tip, but that's that's gold, right, did.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
I the head it's my third tip? You totally were
reading my mind, Corinth. Yes, so it is lovely to
have a big social media following. Yes, it's it's lovely
to get the hearts and the likes and all that.
But social media platforms can change their algorithms. They can
change how they work overnight. And this happened to me.
(36:27):
I spent years building a big following on Facebook, and
like it was, I mean, it wasn't that big. It
was like two thousand people, but you know, for me,
that was big and I was super excited. And then yeah, yeah,
and then overnight they changed how it worked and instead
of everyone that had already signed up saying I'm interested
in what Lee Wind is saying, seeing it only twelve
(36:50):
people saw it and they were like, well, if you
pay us, we can share it with more of the
people that already said they want to see what you do.
And I was like, wait, what, it's so not cool.
So so really that is when I shifted my focus
to my email list. So social media. Actually, there was
(37:11):
a really interesting study that just came out from BookBub
and they were they were they did it. They asked
authors what do you use social media for? And the
vast majority of them, like eighty seven percent said I
use it to find new people. But then like seventy percent,
so you could choose more than one right, said that
they use it to deepen the relationships they already have
with people that already know about them. So again, like
(37:34):
it's that bringing people from outside into the stadium, and
then it's the people that are in the stadium like
building like deepening your connections with them, and I think
that those are both really valid and helpful. And again,
building the email list is really critical. So like I
my email list is now like twenty three hundred people,
and that's to me, that is way more valuable than
(37:57):
ten thousand people on social media. Not that I have
ten people on social media, but like, because those people
I can reach, and sure they're gonna some people unsubscribed.
That is totally cool. I don't want to be bothering
people like I only want them there if they want
to be there. There's a great quote by m Lamant
in her she talks about it in Bird by Bird.
She talks about how lighthouses don't run all over an
(38:18):
island looking for boats to save. They just stand there
and they shine. And I think about that a lot
for me as an author, like I am going to
shine a light on the things that I am excited
about and fascinated about, and the people that are interested
in that, come to the light, come hang out with me.
And if you're not interested, it's totally okay. Sail on,
go on your own journey. It is okay. I don't
(38:40):
need to convince everyone that I'm right and they're wrong
about history. I just want to share what I'm excited
about and hopefully connect with other people who are excited
about that as well.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Well.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
I hope you have a lot of excited people to
listen to this interview and take some next chats. So
two things I want to hear are where individuals should
go to learn more about we are stronger than censorship
and start to take some of those action items that
you had shared, and also where people can learn more
about like that Eleanor and get their own copy which
(39:14):
is soon to come.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Absolutely, so we are stronger than censorship. It's just we
are stronger than censorship dot org. It's very easy. That's
where you can find all the cool things under get involved.
There's all this cool options, our merchandise, our shopping list
of books, you can sign up, you can share, you
can find discussion guides and for the books, and you
(39:39):
can donate. So that's the easy one. And then even
easier is finding out more about me and my books
is leewind l e w I n D dot org,
which I chuckle about because I feel like I approach
it from a nonprofit perspective.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
Well, Lee, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
This was so lovely to have you on and to
really inspire us to not be an ally just today
but every day and looking forward to seeing the continued
success of the foundation and all the best of luck
in your upcoming launch.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Thank you so much, and thanks everyone for listening.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Smith Publicity.
All Things book Marketing podcast. To reach us and learn
about our many services, visit Smith Publicity dot com or
send us an email to info at smith Publicity dot com.
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