We’ve also spent an afternoon attempting to figure out how to harness Pinterest because I’m convinced we’re one aesthetic book photo away from virality over there too. But if we brought all that back, it means people could be tempted to return to actually checking “It’s complicated” about their relationship status on various websites, and it’s clear from the Lindy West discourse that we’re living in the binary-obsessed bubble still. Nuance, begone! (If I’m going to have to buy a jersey, I’d be Team Scaachi).

If none of this makes sense to you—congratulations, I hope you’re gardening or embroidering or coloring or baking bread and you’re free from the internet lore of all of this, and I’ll catch you up on the point now. But I still think you should watch Summer House from the beginning.

Where all of this intersects with publicity—well, there are a lot of points, but something I’m seeing on my end of pitching is that I’m having more luck (sorry, sorry, sorry), burying the book. (Let me be clear here, this is for national media—not the cooler, smaller places). A la, “and he also wrote a book about x, which comes out in x” at the end of my pitches.

Melisse at posted an interesting note the other day about the presentation of self on the page vs. the persona enacted in public, and how readers get out their pitchforks when those two things don’t align.

When I was talking this week to Zoe about Lindy West, I was thinking West probably set out to write a feminist American road trip memoir (in the past mostly afforded to men who have something to “discover”—externally-driven, where women are expected to check notes hike and gallivant to “wander”—internally-driven), and through persona profiles, West ended up snack dab in a dissected-to-the-nth-degree throuple memoir.

Now most folks would assume that the “throuple” aspect, which has been processed in media through memoirs SO MUCH in recent years WAS the pitch sent out by publishers. But put simply: “throuples” don’t sell. That isn’t enough. Someone sniffed out the drama real quick. I would bet that the publicist pitching the book did not lead with the book. I realize Lindy West is a known entity and so editors are looking twice at a pitch about her (notice ABOUT HER is the phrasing) regardless of what the pitch contains, but in today’s cultural speed, the goal is not to garner interest, it’s to keep it, which is a hard spot for books and their “slow living” purpose, and that usually means a bit of soul-sucking. In this case, West is on Substack and in new interviews trying to lasso her own story back. It’s momentum and publicity at an expense, and as we can see—it does work. If that’s the kind of working you’re looking for.

And anyone can use it (hopefully without setting themselves ablaze). Instead of pitching an alluringly (worked over!) few paragraphs about the book itself and the story it tells, I’m pulling strands out (shout out to my husband’s frosted tips at fifteen, dyed in a cap by his mom) and I’m pitching the author as someone who can speak to the experience. Now before you say, sure Cassie, that only works for nonfiction—this has been working for me for poets as well. The pitches look quite different by genre, but where I’m starting is a similar space.

Like any good querying writer, I have been focusing hours of my life on a starting sentence. Marketer Dean Jackson popularized the nine-word email nine years ago on Medium, and I haven’t been counting my words, but I have been putting a lot of energy toward getting the kitchen sink in that first (short) sentence, or the “who, what, when, where, AND NOT THE WHY—but the tension.” I’m giving the basics + a problem, a mystery, a tension, a debacle, a tangle.

Here is an example of a starting sentence for renowned poet Tom Sleigh’s first memoir ROSIE: “Three weeks before she was set to appear on the Kelly Clarkson Show’s annual educator special, [description of Tom that fits their purpose] Tom Sleigh’s Ma, Rosie, chose to die.”

On the surface this is a “I wrote a book about my mom” memoir. You know how in MFA programs they’re like “oh yea, the dead grandma story.” It’s everyone’s first writing foray to pass go and collect $200 dollars, and you have to get it out before you can move on to what folks believe is the actual writing, well, one of my goals is to steer the reader away from that being that assumption about this book—that this is “another one of those books …”

Rosie could be comped to Molly by Blake Butler (diaries), Amy Bloom’s In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss (medical-aided death), Gavin Newsom’s mom’s story (California, Gavin Newsom’s political name-recognition), and other caregiving books that came out recently (we’re in a kind of boom, which is good because people are losing Medicaid by the speed of light via our current terrible administration). It’s not that THE THING is new, it’s that there is new perspective on THE THING, Tom’s perspective.

Let me break down why this line is working for me (although there is more after this, I think this is the catch-all):

• It starts with timing. I realize this is not a, “It was January 1997” or “It was a dark and stormy night,” but the familiarity and clarity of timing if it’s a before/after or cause/effect is always going to serve. Timing can be used in many ways: name the time, name the before, name a window of time (it only took a month for …), mess with the time (Usually in spring folks are, but x was …).

• I snuck a big name in there (Kelly Clarkson Show), but this could be any cultural touchstone (pop culture, history, etc).

• I linked to a viral article about Rosie in the San Diego Union Tribune under “annual educator special” so you can get a bigger picture without me having to add words to the line. It automatically tells the reader the place—she was covered in the Tribune so you can assume the story is California-related. You can do this with a previously published excerpt, your website, or any compelling link that widens the aperture of the story without you having to explain it all. Alisha has been working on Candice Wuehle’s Ultranatural which is a novel that calls back to tabloid-era Britney. If I was pitching it, I might link (if it doesn’t feel yuck) to a recent story about Britney in the news—it doesn’t necessarily have to be a link BY the author.

• I change up how I describe Tom depending on who I’m pitching. Sometimes I want them to know where he lives (if I’m pitching regional media), or I want them to know about his past writing, or I want folks to know that he’s lauded so I include an award or two.

• I, of course, link to Tom’s website for his name. Update your websites, people! Basic is fine (more than fine, please have a basic website that’s easy to click around), but keep it updated!

• My personal favorite thing about this line is that Tom calls Rosie “Ma” throughout the book, which is so endearing to me as a gal in the South. It has personality in ONE word. She’s not his mom, his mother, or his mama (which seems to be a word like “moist” for most of the population when read on the page, even though it’s definitely what my kids call me). It also gives intimacy to the relationship, again in ONE word.

• And then I end on the WHAT of the book & the mystery. “Chose to die,” can mean a lot of things. Coupled with phrasing in the subject line, Tom as “death caregiver,” I think there’s clarity in what the book might be about, but I am still trying to create that immediate tension in the word “chose.” After everything that came before, “die” is also a surprise: she was going to be sitting on a Kelly Clarkson’s signature velvet green couch, and yet—

And then notice what’s missing here:

• I have not linked to the book, mentioned the title, included the publisher or publication date. You might find this slightly horrific as an author, but it evens the playing field too—they’re not immediately turned off by it not being a big four publisher (it still has a chance), and they’re not thinking about making sure coverage aligns with any certain date (they’re not turned off by a sudden rush of having to get the story approved by their editorial team or producers AND recorded, read, whatever, whatever). Starting here, I’m removing two ways for an immediate no and delete.

• I have not doused the sentence in any buzzy words. I’m not saying “caregiver” or “death caregiver” here. I’m not saying “medically-aided death,” I’m not mentioning Hochul’s signature on the “Medical Aid in Dying Act” recently.

• There are no words that have too-big of meanings like “love” or “loss” or “grief” because they wouldn’t get me anywhere—the definitions are too vast, and too personal, to move anyone by using them.

• And I’m not throwing adjectives at the dart board either, “heartrending” or “tragic” or “complicated.” They also do nothing for me. Saying something like, “It’s a heartrending story of x, y, z” just washes over a reader. We’ve read that so many times. My dad and I used to joke that our favorite was “unputdownable,” but adjectives should come with caution tape. Set a scene, don’t describe one.

Having this basic WHAT IS AND COULD BE HAPPENING at the very top of my pitch allows me to stretch it out afterwards because someone is already following along.

For Tom’s book there are so many tiny, strange details—Tom is an idiosyncratic writer (compliment), that it’s easy to crumb my way home to interest. I also have quotes from Tom from conversations we’ve had that I’ve included later. He’s very generous with his storytelling and sometimes the best thing for publicity is working with an author that’s happy to talk to me to give me nuggets to pull from.

I used to be so embarrassed that my mom (and dad—who would sing at waitresses) would drum up a story with anyone. A few weeks ago she was chatting up the internet cable lineman about his estrangement from his sister and the holiday season.And this is coming from me—personal middle school welcoming committee for every new kid, until at some point in adulthood I kind of lost the ability to be friendly? But lately I’ve been thinking what a gift that is, and a gift that I think the internet has caused a lot of us to lose. Since having kids, and a friend-to-everyone four year old, I’ve realized how great it is to be human-flint. How deep small talk can get in a few minutes. How fun it is to speak to a stranger in the checkout line knowing they know nothing about your life and will not know anything afterwards. It also makes me a better listener, a better questioner, better at my job and momming. My children need to see me talking with people, laughing with people, acknowledging other people. Anyway—random advice at the end of this newsletter, start chatting it up with strangers again. Conversations with real people will remind you what real people desire, and even read.

my current book interests outside of work:

Some books I’m interested in reading and/or have in my cart: Printer’s Fist by Melissa Range (Vanderbilt University Press—discovered through pitching a book to Melissa during her own publicity cycle, ack!), Forest Time by Jeremy Lloyd (Tennessee University Press—was looking for books about outdoor education), The Book of Atlantis Black by Betsy Bonner (from Amber Wheeler Bacon’s dual review in Full Stop), Lost in Summerland from Barrett Swanson (Counterpoint—not sure how I missed this one when it was originally published, but I discovered it looking at folks who loved Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips, which I also love), and when it comes out in July, Shannon Sanders’ The Great Wherever because she’s always posting the smartest responses on threads.

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here (which I need to update), and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

Kate Crane’s WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO EDDY CRANE? is excerpted in Rolling Stone and featured in San Francisco Chronicle, Nancy Lemann and THE RITZ OF THE BAYOU are interviewed in Public Seminar, profiled in New York Times, featured in Oxford American, Chapter 16, The Clairon-Ledger, Hasan Dudar’s CARRYOUT is reviewed in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, RIDING INTO HISTORY is featured in Mother Jones, Maria Nazos, author of PULSE, has written a craft capsule on poetic ethics for Poets & Writers, Synapsis reviewed Jill Christman’s THE HEART FOLDS EARLY, , author of ERASE GENESIS, is featured in Isolation Journals, Lauren Westerfield’s WOMAN HOUSE is reviewed by in The Rumpus, Leigh Lucas is interviewed about SPLASHED THINGS in The Racket, and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.

This morning I came across this post from , about how interviews with authors are boring and I co-sign it.

There are three reasons people are reading or listening to an author interview:

1. they already love the author

2. they want to know more about the book (have likely already seen it somewhere they trust)

3. they already subscribe (and love) the media that’s doing the interview (magazine, podcast, whatever).

4. secret fourth: they’re scrolling and they come across an interesting headline / title. This person likely has no intention of purchasing your book, but they’re valid to include.

There are a few things that are unfortunately going to be in every author interview and that are always going to be kinda boring.

WRITING ROUTINE: Unless your no one cares about your writing routine. Breaking hearts, taking names. Unless you have some interesting facet to your routine like you light a candle you bought at a monastery during a psychic break, on an altar of your milk teeth to exalt the Tooth Fairy as muse and you keep those seven chompers (you swallowed the first one in the grocery store) in a lotion container from 1997 which made your cheeks gleam like a cherub, then the routine—how you sit your ass in a chair (or perhaps you are a Disney adult and you write while riding the Monorail) isn’t going to introduce potential readers to something interesting about you that inevitably leads to a book sale. Why we ask this question in every interview with writers, I truly don’t know. Maybe it’s that we want to know HOW the writing happens in a world of attention monopolies that are decidedly not the page. But that is another group of questions, and in order to ask them, you have to know more about the writer’s life. Literally any question is better than this.

THE BIOGRAPHY: Alys Keys who wrote the post above talks about the instinct of interviewers to try to tie the fictional work (often) to the author’s biography. Of course they must be stealing from their own life, and we must discover the overlap. Except again, it’s boring. We already know the story if it’s in the book, and we’re not going to figure out what subtleties were changed whether fictional retelling of a life event or not. The problem with this idea is that it believes that all writing is “processing” some larger internal emotional truth. That surely, the impulse to write anything, comes from the idea that we must understand our mother wound better through the act of creativity on the page. And that very well could be the impetus for a memoirist, but it isn’t true of fiction. In all the Madeline Cash interviews I read, the tidbit I remember is that she worked in marketing for Jack in the Box (the fast food chain) and in one interview (I could have dreamed this) she talks about finding hundreds of new ways to say the same things about chicken. Which of course immediately I enter the fantasy of Bojangles copywriter and how I would want them to sell me chicken if a commercial were to be made—the only way I could imagine doing that is doing a commercial about how they never put enough seasoning on the fries and in the early aughts they let you season yourself (I know, I drove to Bojangles during lunch in eleventh grade and poured cajun seasoning on every fry individually after dumping them out—even, sophisticated, dusted). Give us the shaker back would be the ad campaign. or Get your shaker back. It would not have the tune of “Shake it Off” by Taylor Swift. It would do some strange interpretation of the early aughts (2013) “Harlem Shake” meme. I often fantasize about becoming a jingle writer.

To prove how boring writer interviews are, If I Google Madeline Cash and Jack in The Box, she talks about it in Dazed, Literary Hub, Byline, the Women’s Prize blog, Bustle, The Bookseller, Milled, and I’m sure others. Why is this bit included in every interview, but not … developed in any way. Is a day job getting clicks? I can’t imagine so.

If we’re looking to learn more about the person behind the book, I’d want to have a good look at their notes app. I’d want to ask them variations on the questions from the Proust Questionnaire. I’d want to know the last time they wrote in their diary, what they title their notes apps, the last time they called their mom and what they talked about, what they thought about on their last walk, their favorite incorrect phrase, things they’ve considered for tattoos, when their house is messy—what’s the mess? A story about your childhood crush. I don’t care if you used parts of yourself or your life in your book, and I don’t care to know which parts are which. I actually would much rather a question be so surprising that an author’s answer devolves into something surprising to them. Interviews that feel like they’re admitting something.

An interview that asks for biography is interesting only when it becomes story. When it spirals into memory. When there’s a moment created. If the answer is too easy, and nothing is unlocked, it’s as boring for the writer and interviewer as the person reading the interview. An interview should have scene as much as a novel should, they don’t have to explain each other.

THE BOOK:

Things that don’t matter unless they’re the reason for the interview:

• how long it took to write the book (this is info for a Substack note, an Instagram post)

• how many revisions the book went through (yes, it’s comforting to know that Karen Russell wrote 17 revisions, or completely alarming that Lauren Groff writes a whole draft by hand and then throws it out) but knowing these details is like seeing a post about someone getting a perfect score on their SAT. Good for them, I can’t relate. (Wow, am I so far from relating!).

• where the book fits in the oeuvre

• what did writing the book look like

• moment of revelation (when did you know you were writing a ______?)

• who did you study, what did you study, how did you study (I understand the push to knowing what your favorite writers read, but rather than a list of names or titles, ask them something specific about their recommendations).

• themes in the general sense (what made you want to write a love story? We’re just never going to get a good answer)

• career questions (questions about being a debut, questions about writing four books, questions about serially writing x genre)

• inspiration (I’m sorry! Sometimes this can be interesting but it can also be such an easy out! Everyone is going to name Toni Morrison (as they should), someone promiscuous, and an important person from their childhood).

• forms or formal craft without including the parts IN the interview. I think we forget that folks are reading interviews from two positions: they might (key! MIGHT) want to read the book, they already love the author and want to look up more info. I often have not read a book when I’m reading an author interview, so talking to them about their use of the Golden Shovel without actually revealing how they use it means nothing to me. I’m not going to read the poetry collection because of its use of the Golden Shovel. And maybe the interview will come up when someone searches for “Golden Shovel” examples, but likely not because the internet is huge and mostly deserted.

So, what can you do to SPICE UP YOUR LIFE (literally and figuratively):

WHAT TO DO AS THE AUTHOR:

• Ask for time. Give yourself time. Do not rush an “interview” for any reason, but especially because you think the publication is bad or useless or small. There isn’t anything better, the better is already here.

• Think about why people are reading the interview—who is the audience of the outlet is IMPORTANT, and give the performance to hook THAT audience.

• I say this with love, but interviews are performances. If you treat them like little performances, they become so much more interesting. It’s how I got through being a high school teacher. It’s how I get through almost any situation where I’m meeting new people. I put on my personality of choice (not in a chameleon, manipulative way, in a costume way!) and I perform. It makes me more charming. It makes me funnier. For me, it often brings the giggles and creates conversation where I’m playing off the other person and not just answering questions. That performance will also help you think about AUDIENCE. Who would this publication’s audience care about hearing from?

• Make chainmail—think about an interview in a meta way. Include more links, include more sources, include more rabbit holes. Make people search beyond the interview. If you’re asked about something you’re really into these days: create a bibliography with the question. What should they read, listen to, what interviews are you reading, what did you hear randomly a few Tuesday’s ago, what’s your favorite conversation on that podcast, what phrase can you not stop saying to yourself. Use all the space you can to create more space, to create a world around the question. The benefit of the internet is that we can connect disparate things in one place, do it.

• Complicate the narrative. Create a conflict. Create nosy readers. I’m going to admit to something here that works (unfortunately) every time for me. I delete Threads at least once a week because I find myself spending too much time there. I don’t have Tiktok at all for the same reason, but I find Threads keeps me up to date on political matters that I can then read more about than anywhere else. But Meta does this thing where when I delete it, they’ll show me half a thread and cut it off at the point that I want to know. Admittedly, these are always about Nicholandria (who I love) and I want to know what they were doing. So, I reopen threads, redownload it, just so I can see that one post. This is not simply intrigue, it’s nosiness. Make readers nosy. Make them want to know what you’re talking about. I’m not saying be vague, I’m saying create a reason to be nosy. What does it for me: obscure things, non-zeitgiesty gossipy things, almost everything I read in the comment sections of Reddit, conflict without a clear resolution, weird little curly-q conspiracy theories—not painful ones, silly ones!).

• Interviews should bring people in, not be a chambered conversation between two people. If you’re going to get into the deeps of some history or some musical subculture or some tv show storyline, you have to get readers familiar with it first. Otherwise people who are out are going to skip right over that question. People who haven’t seen x, y, z, aren’t going to care about you chumming it up with the interview about x, y, z. So, contextualize it (a little! enough!). Otherwise, authors are going to do what they’re especially good at—talking only to the audiences that has already been built for them. If your book is about x, y, z, those interested in in x, y, z will already be buying it. How can you—in an interview—turn someone else onto it? What are the must knows? What gets you excited about it? How you get excited and about what are two different things and both matter. Think about creating belonging, bringing in your people.

• Interviews should be and feel specific. If you’re spanning the globe of topics, it’s too much. Rule of three it. You can have techno, capitalism, and obscure man author #1, but you can’t have seven things. And I understand this isn’t always up to the author, but the author can bring it back around. Use the greatest author (and comedian) technique of the call back. Bring it back. Spiraling into muchness is going to be too much for anyone to read or listen to.

• You don’t have to sound smart. I don’t really have more to say here. Not every (or any) interview has to be about how well-read or smart you are.

• Caring about people and talking about that care is way more important than having a stance.

• If the interview is written: you should have trinkets. Pull quotes should be easy for an editor to find.

• Stop saying “right?” after you answer something.

• This one is really easy for everyone, but say SOMETHING. Just say something rather than generalize. “I wanted to give depth to the relationship.” WHY. WHAT KIND OF DEPTH. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN. WHAT DOES IT MEAN (to you) for a relationship to go from casual to deep. What must happen. How did you manage that with the characters. Blahbady blah!

• I was reading this interview in Brooklyn Rail recently but there’s a part that could be so INVITING where the author talks about everyone waiting for the kiss, “Once the hard definition [of the relationship] is there, all of the amazing nuance and electricity of their relationship would die. So I think I realized that by trying to push for this kiss scene, I would just be killing the juicy part of the book.” First, what parts are electric. Name them! I haven’t read this book, but I might want to! … And then how the author’s goal was to create a relationship that defied easy categorization. They say, “There are so many rules for these categories, the way that you can touch someone else’s body, or the way that you can feel for someone else.” If RIGHT HERE in the interview it went into a memory of when a friendship evolved into a crush, or they went into the ways we touch people with categories in mind. Example: Is touching someone’s knee ever innocent? It reminds me of the way as a teenager that grown men and teenage boys used to squeeze my thigh with their whole hand (c-shape) right above the knee to make me squirm. It’s like a “spot.” (Why were we so obsessed with pressure points growing up? I remember trying desperately to figure out how to put someone asleep behind their ears? WHY). Across the board this happened to me: church, uncles I hadn’t seen in years, boys at camp, swim team buddies. It never felt innocent even when the intention was joking. This kind of devolving is where the interview moves from general to interesting.

• If you run out of interesting things to say—lean on talking about where rules don’t make sense to you. Where x or y does not compute, or can’t. Writing rules, societal rules, good intentions that you can’t for some reason honor, something you understand is generally “good” or “sensical” or “positive” but doesn’t work for x, y, z. Where things break down like this is always going to have nuance. And that’s a place to explore in both writing and the interview space.

And if this all sounds like too much then remind yourself that you can’t have book publicity without interviews and conversations which are not exactly efficient.

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here (which I need to update), and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

Monica Ferrell’s THE FUTURE has been in Literary Hub, Poetry Off the Shelf, BOMB Mag this week, Jill Christman was on WISH8 in Indianapolis talking HEART FOLDS EARLY and in Chicago Review of Books and also Eugene Weekly (including nostalgia photos!!) this week, Lauren Westerfield wrote about Jane Austen for Literary Hub, was reviewed in Shelf Awareness, and spoke to Dialoguing about her book WOMAN HOUSE this week, Anna Rollins FAMISHED was reviewed in Psaltery and Lyre and included on U.S. Catholic’s bookshelf last month, and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.

Before we get going, I want to share the Stand With Minnesota donation directory.

I don’t think you can be too excessive in talking about your forthcoming book. I am not a believer in “too much” and do not follow the Goldilocks formula. Muchness is a state of mind. That being said, I think you have to use your author contacts, particularly when reaching out directly in a mass email (not necessarily a newsletter, but a more targeted approach to folks you’re connected with), in a way that will really benefit you.

Remember when you’re sending emails to your contacts that you have a personality. It’s not all asks and tasks. You are funny, you are quirky, you are an interesting individual. The tone of these emails should reflect that about you. If it reads too normie or too formal, I’m clicking delete.

Also, it’s way more comfortable for most authors if this doesn’t feel like you’re shouting about yourself. So, bring other people in. If your editor said something cool about the book, include it. If your team made a sweet graphic, include it. If you spoke to the designer and they let you share the process, include it. Make it about the community of a book release, and it will feel easier. There are lots of ways to make these emails not “I wrote a book, now here’s what I need.”

I also have nothing in here about subject lines but they should name the title and be FUN. Here are my feelings about subject lines in emails. This was written three and a half years ago which SHOCKS ME to my core.

So, here’s my personal opinion on how to reach your people in the lead-up to launch.

FIRST EMAIL

• is the preorder link and an intimate story about how the book came into being. I include narrative here because people connect to narrative, not preorder links. This email should be conversational, direct, a little bit vulnerable, and include a backstory. It will include:

  • The preorder link and a direct ask to preorder. Consider writing it in one way at the top of the email and in another way at the bottom. At the top of the email it should be embedded in the story you’re telling about the book. At the bottom of the email it should include the many places to preorder (Bookshop.org, the publisher, your favorite independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and a comment that if the person cannot for whatever reason preorder, to please request the book through their local library’s request form).

  • The cover because no one likes an email that is boring. Shout out the cover designer for fair play.

  • You can include blurbs if you want?

  • Ask people explicitly to mark it as “Want to Read” on Goodreads and Storygraph.

    

    

  • Name your publicist for review copies and share their email. If you have no publicist, say, “I have several review copies, I’d love to share an early version with you.” If your book is listed on Edelweiss or Netgalley at this point, share those links (both make widgets, see if you can include that to break up text in the email).

  • The story you will start creating about the book. You should have done work up to this point to figure out the narrative you can create around the book. You should have an intriguing log line (the kind of bold one sentence that goes at the top of your Amazon listing and helps with your metadata and algorithm—yuck all these words). At the very least, you have the following: the impetus for writing the book, the themes in the book, the characters you chose to follow, the story that called to you or ghosted you or you hunted or investigated, and a starting document of talking points around the book’s universe. Consider it all the realm of your book (my spouse will be so proud at the nerd status I am employing by the world “realm"). You have to situate your people in this email AND convince them that preordering serves their needs as well as your own. If you need help with any of this look at your query letter and see if your agent will share their letter to editors when you went on submission. If it’s just you (yay you!) look at how you’ve described what you’re working on to friends.

  • Here’s an example of the top of one of recent pitches that is INTRIGUING. It is NOT a question. I saw this in queries and I see it now in pitches—a question like “What will they do when they find the killer?” or “What will she do if she doesn’t believe in closure?” is actually not intriguing. Cut those. Make them statements. Here is Zoe’s topper: “The year that New Orleans-born Nancy Lemann debuted with her cult-treasured wastrel novel Lives of the Saints, renowned Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown sent her home on assignment. Her task: a straight account of Governor Edwin Edwards’ corruption trial (and retrial–stretching into years). This book is not that book.”

    

SECOND EMAIL

• is 6ish (could be 4, could be 8) weeks out from publication date. This email will be more nitty gritty information about what’s happening. At this point you should have some trade reviews, blurbs you can share, information about your book tour, and more direct deliberate asks. This email will include:

  • The exact publication date at the top of the email and a note that folks still have time to preorder if they would like. Then tell them where to preorder. If you have a preorder goodie, or a bookstore that you’re signing book plates with, you share that at the top of the email.

  • Include if there are any codes that make the book slightly cheaper for a certain reason.

  • If the trades have not come through, share same NetGalley, Edelweiss, or early Goodreads / Storygraph reviews of the book. I like to have a “People are saying” section of those emails.

  • Events (with a tour graphic if you have that sort of thing). Start with the launch and then link to the events in all the other places. Say something like, “I’m coming to a town near you!”

    

  • This is also the email for the street team asks, which can be: Want to have me write a guest essay for your Substack? Could we do an Instagram live to talk about x, y, z? Share the book on your socials and #xyz. If you would like to pitch a review or interview, here’s how to get a copy. (Netgalley, publicist contact, Edelweiss, whatever). Can I join your reading series? Come visit your class? Send you a desk copy? Come say hi to your book club? (I often link to any classroom guides, book club guides, etc, that we create during the campaign in these emails).

  • Make sure your social media handles are in this email so people can tag you if they share anything about the book. Ideally, your links would be in your signature.

  • I include a list of bigger library systems where the book can be requested and link directly to those request forms. This would be bigger city library systems, library systems in your region, any library system that’s connected to the book, or any library that you just love from travels. Make it so easy for someone to say, “Oh! I live in Orlando! Let me request since it’s linked right here.”

  • Finally, ask folks to forward the email to friends who may be interested in the book for WHATEVER reason.

THIRD EMAIL

• It’s launch day or launch week (depending on when things are coming out about the book). This email should be all invigoration, personality, and momentum. What’s happened? Where are you in the world Carmen Sandiego? How did you celebrate the launch? Share your photos! Bring people into your world! What are you most excited about that’s happening? And of course, say THANK YOU. This is as much a YAY! email as an acknowledgment email. Of course, for the people in the back, we need to include another round of order links. Never forget the order links.

  • Something I often see missed in these emails is the specifics. You can say, “I wrote about [insert interesting things] for TIME” and link to that essay. Show your work in these emails. I see a lot of cool girl websites that are just lists of three things in each of their pieces. “Mangoes, Stanley water bottles, and Marxism” for New Republic. That sounds WILD. I’m clicking. Intrigue! Intrigue! Intrigue!

  • Consider this your big thank you letter. It might even be more specific than your acknowledgements. Thank the people who are getting the email.

  • Order links and tour reminders! Where will you be and where should they buy the book.

  • And remember:

If you need Valentine’s Day plans, consider this VIRTUAL past flings & lovers event at Charis Books.

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

Kristen Millares Young’s debut memoir DESIRE LINES was revealed exclusively to PEOPLE Mag, Emma Burger interviewed Michelle Gurule for and Gurule wrote a craft essay on telling your life for Open Secrets Mag, Terese Svoboda’s HITLER AND MY MOTHER-IN-LAW was reviewed in California Review of Books and named unmissable in Electric Lit, Monica Ferrell was on last week’s The Slowdown with a sneak peek of THE FUTURE, Jocelyn Jane Cox wrote about moving her mother in for AARP, Nin Andrews, author of memoir-in-verse SON OF A BIRD, was the poetry spotlight at and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.

The first book I finished this year is The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten. Already an international bestseller, and translated to English for Algonquin by Alison McCullough (who was longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize in 2022), it’s a shortie at 166 pages with a melancholy boatman, Nils Vik, who crosses the Fjord knowing it’s his last day alive and “meeting” the characters of his life anew, including his dog Luna (who talks a bit!), while he searches for his wife Marta who passed away before him. You enter the novel thinking it’s this reflective, scenic route through one man’s memory flashes with the people in his community and learn that what he thought was true, was often a misleading perspective.The image motif between the two pillar moments is a mattress aflame.

This is the only Frode Grytten book at my library, so although he’s an international bestseller, this book seems to have eclipsed even that. Or my library orders most of the Algonquin books because they’re semi-local to us.

Often when I start on a book, blurbs aren’t secured, or there are asks already out, or we’re deciding on who to ask, but in the case of a published book, I have the luxury of blurbs on the back.

Blurbers: Ron Rash, Eileen Garvin, Sarah Damoff, and Donal Ryan. These are curious blurbs. While Rash is more literary-leaning, both Garvin are commercial fiction writers (and memoir in Eileen’s case). Garvin’s last book was called “heartwarming” and “uplifting” and next to the Rash blurb they attribute his novel Serena which is about a couple building a timber empire in the 1930s, but it’s gone this sprinkle of Gone Girl mixed in. Garvin’s book is sweet and Rash is vengeful. Sarah Damoff leans more in the Rash category of a marriage falling apart because of secrets and the unsaid. Two books about collapse essentially. And then Donal Ryan is a bestselling Irish writer that leans literary. He’s also won the Orwell Prize for political writing, so there’s edge. A lyrical novelist, he’s more firmly in the literary camp and probably the closest genre-wise to Grytten’s work. But what these blurb choices tell me is that they’re trying to reach a commercial audience with what is probably more of a Graywolf audience. Grytten’s novel is just out of novella range, and there isn’t much action at all—it resides in memory, several memories. Plot is not the driving vehicle for this one, though it does have the conceit of a life written in reverse.

This is all to say, they seem to be looking for commercial publicity for a literary novel. Fun. And it’s interesting that the blurbs don’t lean more worldly as this is a translation. I also can’t find a ton of connection between the blurbers work and this work, but that’s neither here nor there—sometimes publishers just want a recognizable name in the genre category.

There are two obvious publicity routes with this book: freelancers who read translation (and magazines like Asymptote, Foreign Policy, Words Without Borders, Guernica, Granta, and Full Stop), and folks who tend the wilderness. The whole thing is set on an unpredictable Fjord, which could present danger at any point. So, for that we’re looking at places like Orion, Sierra Mag, Grist (maybe, with his caliber of authorship they would profile him—depending on his other books), Terrain, and others.

After we capitalize on the obvious, we can look at media interested in small towns, novels of marriage and domestic life, work interested in death and mortality. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez comes to mind. But this book doesn’t have a clear spiritual bent or religious intonation, though I think a pitch could be eeked out for places like IMAGE and Christian Century. Talking dogs, we could go towards Claudia Dey’s Heartbreaker, and pitch good ol’ Dog Talk, and the wide world of dog-media. If I was dreaming big dreams, I would want to do some sort of collab with Chewy since they’re known to send flowers to grieving pet owners when they hear why a cancellation to auto-delivery is made for the reason of rainbow bridges. They have a Chewy box, who is to say they wouldn’t put a book in there for a big enough name?

If we’re going to partner with Chewy, we could also partner with different US ferry systems for a flash book club. Google tells me “there is no prominent ferry system book club,” AND YET. My state has the second largest ferry system in the US, and whether we book interesting events with the local bookstores on the islands, or imagine: a ferry scavenger hunt. Something deeply compelling could happen here. People drive onto ferries where I live, and then they’re stuck on the ferry for forty-five-ish minutes for their commute, or to get to a parlay destination. There has to be marketing campaign that involves the ferry, even if it’s just a ferry lending library that has five copies of the book and we ask that folks write in the blank page at the beginning one thing that’s made their life well-lived. Then the books are passed, the messages are shared. It’s a unique experience with the book that tourists can share. Maybe then they go pick up a copy on the mainland or at their library. BIG. DREAMS. PEOPLE.

I’m not saying I would go all Atria and send an influencer on an Atria cruise, but I might hunt and peck for a few boating influencers who might like an early copy, and I would probably also work up a pitch for maritime associations, museums, boating magazines. Can you imagine, for instance, if we got Captain Lee (who loves his wife OUT LOUD on every season of Below Deck) to post the book on his socials? There are sailing youtubers and also many, many boating festivals on our coasts, so surely they exist in other states too. November is probably a bad time to capitalize on the boating festival audience, but perhaps that’s a way to long-game the campaign and give the book new life in the next season.

Here’s where publicity is tricky for this one. I’m assuming Grytten is not doing interviews, but I would be wrong. He did one with his translator on KMUW’s Marginalia. But either way, I’m sure time zones and translations eliminated a lot of options in terms of presenting the book WITH the author attached. And if Bookmarks is correct, the book got the usual suspects of reviews in trade journals and not much else in America.

This is all fine and good, Cassie, you say, but how would you break this book out? I’m tempted to say I would do a few things, but I can’t tell which would actually have an impact until I’m in the thick of it. And there are cons to most of them. So, here are my thoughts:

I would capitalize on the phrasing “a life well-lived.” Before my dad died, a few days before probably, he started talking about what someone in his body might think had they lived his life. He would usually stop the sentence there and make some sort of shocked noise. A Pah! or a Pffhhhhhhhhh! A sound where words couldn’t emphasize the vastness with which he felt he had done it. I can see him doing it from the hospital bed as I type this, the exact facial expression of surprise, flabberghast. He had surprised himself. This is the way of a death bed, a reflection point where the one way of looking is backwards. The Ferryman and His Wife captures this earnestness, except Nils Vik (the ferryman) while picking up his little brother, his best friend, and the nastiest woman on the island, gets to rewrite his understanding of events previously misunderstood. From Nils perspective only, they were one way, but in the clarity of dying—what emerges is a fuller picture. I already mentioned mortality media up there, but this is something altogether different—it’s like one of those trees downtown where they give you a little strip of green to write a resolution on during a new year, this is a question. What does it mean to live a good life? Everyone is asking it, and how does this book with it’s complications and fragments and infidelities still remain in the “good life.”

It’s got a Tuesdays with Morrie feel. It’s a novel, but it’s a novel attempting wisdom. An ordinary life made into art. I’d try to wrap folks’ mind around a #hopecore publicity arc. Sentimental without feeling blanketed. (Not in a self-help way). Someone on Netgalley said the book had a “humble tone,” and that’s this everyday man quality of the narrator, though he had such a foundational presence in his community. I guess another comp author would be Claire Keegan: character driven, quiet beauty, mundanity upended, a bit of devastation.

We would have to, of course, gah, enter the realm of the mythological—Charon and others, those who guide souls to the beyond. With the success of so many books with a mythology bent (particularly on Tiktok), I think we would have to tap into that zeitgeist a bit. Ghosts, mythological transitions, waterways and death. This also means pitching media about thresholds, fables, and fabulism. It has been called “atmospheric,” and sure, if the atmosphere is a Fjord and a soul. The con here is that this is decidedly NOT the witchy mythology or the romance of The Song of Achilles, it’s just the “Cotton Fisherman” Throw of mythology. It’s blanketed over everything, but has no real stakes in the book. So, is this really fast-paced enough for the mythology lovers of social media?

So many of the reviews sound very Hallmark-adjacent. Every Kiss Begins with Kay. That kind of phrasing like “little moments” or “finding meaning in the insignificant.” I’m not sure how to turn this into a greeting card publicity campaign, but I feel like folks who spend a good amount of time picking out the exact right card for every milestone would like this book. Where do they hang out? Folks who get a little … misty-eyed at every “special occasion.” You would think knowing the audience would make this easier on me.

The book, I’ll be frank, is kind of mundane. We’re picking up characters from Nils’ life and he’s talking with them about how they died and riffing out some new truths from moments he didn’t understand before. That is the entire plot. But you know what that means? It has a Plaid shirt familiarity. You know what you’re getting for the entire book from they very first page. People love that. Mostly because predictable feels comforting. We go the new comfort read route then? It also has the archetypal figure of ‘The Ferryman,’ so the predictable is to be expected. It’s not a cozy mystery, but it is cozy literary. And they chose to publish it in the neediest time of year, late November. I love when a book’s release coincides with its vibe.

And lastly, I wish I could just book a billboard that said “prepare to sob” with a big ol’ picture of this cover. I did not sob, but if NetGalley is any indication, there was a lot of sobbing going on. Maybe it’s gentle sobbing, like one of those slight weepings you do in the car where you look at the window and wipe your eyes with a knuckle hoping both that someone notices and asks what’s wrong and that no one notices and you get to become one with the drizzle on the glass. I was an interesting teenager.

All in all, I think the selling points (for publicity) of this one are the interesting conceit: a life told in reverse, the familiarity of the archetypal figure (and for some reason people LOVE a book with “wife” in the title, I really cannot emphasize that enough. In this case, the idea that the wife is going to be as intriguing, maybe more so (often the wife is the BUT) as the mythical character), the timing of the release, and the old-man-holds-wisdom effect. I’m looking at a campaign that taps into two very different audiences: the mythology lovers of social media and the cable knit philosophers of literary fiction. And between those two, well, there’s a voyage. (I am so mad at myself I didn’t include the voyage novel in this plan. Not to be confused with the road trip novel which is drastically different and much more stoner-adjacent. Funny catastrophe looms in the road trip novel. The voyage discussion would probably get very Hemingway, very fast, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s a thing).

I’ve been listening to the podcast The Sacred (which has a British host, Elizabeth Oldfield, iykyk) and flushed from our dog walk this morning, I rushed inside wearing a baby in a gingerbread tutu (important) to write about the episode I had just listened to which features a one hour and forty minute conversation with London Times columnist and author Caitlin Moran.

In one scene (do podcasts have scenes?) she talks about how she got her start in her late teens writing scathing music reviews, which made her wildly popular and fast-tracked her career ladder. But a while into this trajectory, she wrote one with the conceit that she was at the band’s funeral (brutal) and waltzed into the office thinking she was on top of the world only for her eventual husband to pull her aside and say, “hey, that’s not you.” So, from then on, she started being the writer (and a person) who looked at something good and told people why it’s great. The host called this a “posture of hospitality” which sounds good on the tongue.

And so with my charcuterie in place (pronounced chart-eh-hoo-chie if you live in our house—nothing more hospitable than holiday leftover Blue Cheese spread), let me tell you about the good stuff in book publicity.

1. I’m back to handwritten notes. I tried the ipad, I tried a Kindle scribe, I tried the notes app, and I tried just typing into a Google doc while I read, but there’s nothing like generating strategy by hand as I’m reading. In the New Year, I’ll do a post on what my notes look like when I’m thinking about taking a book / author on board. I haven’t written Essay Atlas in a year, but you can catch a glimpse of how my mind works in maps there.

2. Grassroots still sells. Washington Post just wrote about the bestseller status of Theo of Golden which garnered little publicity (though it does have Simon & Schuster distribution which means it got into the hands of a lot of booksellers who could hand sell it). But what I really want to note here is that the author is older and the book is about an older man. It’s giving Tuesdays with Morrie or if The Friend wasn’t about mortality (then it wouldn’t be The Friend). I like to call these types: little nougats of wisdom (I’d also include Thursday Murder Club here). But it also points to something I’ve been eyeing for quite some time—hot girl bummer books, while fun, don’t have to be the whole moment or the only literary and upmarket books (besides “your mom’s book club would ‘read’ that” titles) that get publicity backing. Folks in my parents generation do two things really well: read and gossip. Meaning they have perfected the hand sell. (Good publicity is listening to your grandma try to convince you of something). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned something down (all evening, Trudy) only to leave with that thing in my hands because they weren’t taking no for an answer. Older folks, retirees, grandparents, are absolutely going to tell you about the last good book they read and they’re also shopping for everyone else. It’s not the horror that is trickle down economics, instead it’s the delightful trickle down generational lending library. I still have not read John Grisham (sorry dad), but I have taken Danielle Steel for a spin, and she really does write the book version of a unsatiating cheddar sour cream chip. You do have to eat the whole bag, or in this case finish the entire book.

3. Blogging resurgence. Zine resurgence. Micro creators and communities. Personal recommendations. (I love a shelf talker. I almost always buy a shelf talker when I go into the bookstore. I also tend to argue with shelf talkers). Penpals. Listen, find me a book that I can use those eerie chain mail emails from AOL Instant Messenger days as a publicity strategy. “SEND TO TEN FRIENDS OR YOU’LL END UP AT THE BOTTOM OF A WELL.” A concept! A fear factor! A fairytale glimmer! A tiny bout of superstition and you’re sending to ten friends. I couldn’t take the risk, I shared and shared and shared. I’m ready to conceptualize, just find me the right book. (It might be ’s new novel. I’ll be in your inboxes next summer, people!). It’s the end of the “influencer era” (lol I wrote “influencer error” when I first typed this. Thanks, Sigmund.), and with that we see the return of blogging, zines, community batch-esque creating. When you think publicity in 2026, I want you to think “small batch,” which reads both intimate and exclusive and will help you face away from the junk and towards the niche.

   

4. Barnes & Noble is expanding, which means Amazon is not nearly as close to total dominance as they think they are. I believe in shopping Indie, but Barnes & Noble is a stopgap to Amazon, and it’s also much more available in places that may not have an independent bookstore (rural areas too!). I’ve also seen an explosion on threads of people who want to open bookstores. Mobile bookstores feel like they’re booming (I want one), so give the people what they want: a way to BROWSE.

5. Literary aesthetics. Put that flat lay away and start moving towards a (aspirational) literary lifestyle. This doesn’t necessarily mean any one thing, it can be: documenting a visually literary place, content where you talk to the camera, designing content (Reading retreats went through the stratosphere this year because they had strong design from the start and that’s PLEASING to the eye—check out Page Break as proof). The gals house of Pine State is always sending each other links to author websites that are compelling. Either how they describe their writing, the design of the page, the layout, the weirdness, and this is a part of that sort of zine culture I mention. Making things crafty and unique. I’ve been talking to Zoe about focusing energy on a “Pinterest book” this year, mostly to test out the platform because it’s an underrated book sales schema and we could do some interesting things with certain books over there (re: poetry and memoir especially).

6. We’ve now worked on a few middle grade books (almost always graphic novels or novels in verse, I like to make nothing easy for myself) and dare I say: adult books who want to garner support beyond legacy media should look at how children’s book publicity works. Because there isn’t a lot of legacy media for children’s books. There isn’t a lot of staple media at all, in fact. And so, children’s book publicity has a different focus, it’s people-fronted not media-fronted. I love this about working on children’s books and I want to take a few of the tactics from our experience with MG books for work on adult books. I’ll talk more about this in a later newsletter. (Maybe this is just me giving myself ideas).

   

7. I pay attention to Eli Rallo on Tiktok (literary dial) and I agree with her recent take on relatability being a myth (likability too!) and that audiences online want authenticity first and then aspirational or educational content. The aspirational only works with the authentic (especially being value-aligned, and especially when it comes to politics and human rights). This feels apt for authors who are taking their show on the interview road. Authentic means bringing the baggage with us, it means to strive against the “perfect answer” or the likability complex or whatever people mean when they say “right way to do something.” The strange, the curious, the hmmm…that will help you. We are a society hungering for what’s real across the spectrum, so remember that you’re a weirdo during the publicity cycle, and embrace it. I’ve been thinking a lot about the different personalities of my boys (it makes sense, follow the tangent). My first son is a star, everyone wants to know him, he is a bright, bold, storytelling showman. The other day he told his whole life story to a security guard at the museum and when I lost his brother shortly after, the security guard was like “oh yea, E, P’s little brother? They’re fast huh? P told me …” We had been at this museum … three hours and the team all knew P. My second son is the kid who says, “I want to go back inside.” He’s an artist, he’s moody, he’s got perfect comedic timing. He talks to every animal and cares about the little things. He’s got this face that you just know has flame behind it—ambitious, curious, masterminding a plan. He is also a star, he just keeps the flame in his chest. They’re both interesting and interested, but I have had to do some deep rethinking on what I wanted my children to be (in all cases). So that they could … be. Just be. And that’s what I want for authors too—you don’t have to be a package, you can be a person.

8. Ask this book will fail and human research will prevail. As you know, I’m the tangent’s biggest fan. I need bumper stickers. But there’s something happening online with human research (in a non-academic way, though academically-coded) that is about to pop off for books. Personalized syllabi, thesis journals, instead of “what happened on …” show summaries, we’ll have analysis that moves beyond Tiktok to magazines and pop culture sites—analysis that brings narrative and pop culture together. Analysis with a focus on creating good questions rather than finding simple answers. What Amazon thinks readers want (ask this book) will be met not with easy slop, but with sleuthing. Readers will be looking for less ease, focusing their energy on the act of looking itself: research, note-taking, analysis, culminations or writing essays and videos that bring many things together. All good for book culture at large and people who want a return of thinking deeply.

9. Creating community still dominates, which is near-total in the author’s control (and can be a long game play). I’m not saying you need 5k followers on Instagram, I’m saying you can create your space (anywhere you want including locally and not online at all) and then figure out how to bring more people into that space. It could be a pot luck dinner club, it could be anonymous postcards, a “paint your nails with me and hear about my book” nail polish stand in your local mall, an articles club where you read an article a month related to your content and you write about it on Substack, a stamp or sticker that mentions your book in all the books you take to the neighborhood Little Free Libraries, it could be a scavenger hunt. If I was the publicist of Theo of Golden (keep in mind I have not read it), I would pursue a diner campaign locally. You know who goes to diners, little groups of old men. Waffle House. Panera. Cracker Barrel. A local joint. I’d have to think about stealthing them the book, but I could do it. You know one untapped publicity idea I’d love to pursue if I lived in NYC. I’d get ARCs to thirty subway readers and ask them to all read the book on a specific day and time, on different trains (probably during a commute—book flash mob!). It would also be thrilling to have some sort of “read over their shoulder” campaign, but I’d have to think about how to manage this one successfully. Anyway, I live in North Carolina, so it’ll be tractor publicity for me.

10. Good news! In the same universe as the “small batch,” New York Times Book Review does not sell in the same way it once did. We like to call our publicity strategy a “satellite approach” (I use this language in almost every proposal). Meaning that we’re not trying to get one big thing, or one specific thing, or even five specific things, we’re trying to hit multiple prongs of publicity, vertically and horizontally. I’m looking for the sprinkle cookie of publicity: a dash, a pinch, a sprinkle across media category, across media size, across audience, across community, across venue. I don’t want the sprinkle to ever just be legacy media or social media or bloggers. I want a healthy mix. Here’s a campaign I loved doing for ’s Frontier A Memoir and a Ghost Story from Barrelhouse (she also got good local coverage for events (not listed) and was on several year-end lists).

And … now I have to go watch Stranger Things. Cheers, y’all!

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

A review of Terese Svoboda’s HITLER AND MY MOTHER-IN-LAW appeared in the latest Air Mail, Editors at New Pages recommended Jehanne Dubrow’s THE WOUNDED LINE, Dubrow also has an essay related to trauma writing in the new issue of Rain Taxi, HOPE HOUSE by Joe Bond was excerpted in People Mag, Vol 1 Brooklyn featured a new excerpt from Burnside Soliel’s BERCEUSE PARISH, Michelle Gurule was profiled in the London Times for THANK YOU, JOHN, Austyn Wahlors HOT HOUSE BLOOM was read in The Millions Year in Reading, Cipher by Jeremy Jones is an Our State Magazine book club pick, Southern Literary Review chose Ashley M. Jones LULLABY FOR THE GRIEVING as their 2025 Book of the Year, Nicole Graev Lipson’s MOTHERS AND OTHER FICTIONAL CHARACTERS and Erica' Stern’s FRONTIER are both on the Chicago Review of Books best debuts list, and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.

• I am offering an hour consultation as part of Brooklyn Poets 2025 End of Year Fundraising, and you can also bid on manuscript feedback, consults with writers like Ross Gay and Traci Brimhall, original art, and more.

• The dearest, smartest, most calming presence Johnson-Boria is launching a class in the new year called “Cultivating Your Poetry Collection” as part of Star Shine Arts Collective, you can register for an information session here, but also I wouldn’t wait to sign-up (applications are due by December 5) because Tatiana is a brilliant source of light, poetry, and community & her classes book up quick.

• I had a third baby! Weird to make her a bullet point in a newsletter, but I kept her to myself and our IRL folks for the entire pregnancy and a good bit after the birth, and now I get to share with all of you. She’s a charm.

So, I came across this post. I couldn’t find the artist at first, but her name is actually Helene Appel and she’s AThel_appel on Instagram. I am also obsessed with these dirty sink images, but for me, they are missing that debris and detritus of family plating—the slaw of the sink: four small rice, two kernals of corn, a yogurt glob, murky water, the end-cutting of a packet of meat, my mother-in-law’s sweet tea lemon (squeezed slightly), a slacker onion that refused to char in the pan and went limp, and the two spoons, one pan, and strainer that didn’t make it into the washer’s load. Don’t get me started on the sponge aesthetics, or what scrambled eggs leave behind in a pan. Someone once mentioned the smell of scrambled egg pans to me and I looked at them horrified, having never smelled it. Like walking into a friend’s house for the first time as a teenager and smelling their family, knowing your family (house) also has a smell, but being too familiar with the scene to ever know what it is.

You might be thinking—Cassie, what does any of this have to do with book publicity? And you would be right. I’m grasping at straws a little bit (literally smoothie straws, living in my sink with those tiny, useless brushes meant for cleaning). And yet, prepare to be dazzled by the cleanliness with which I will now transition (unrelated to my home life & its smell).

I’ve been debating buying my two year old his own doll house. He loves the tiny people of it all, his farms, his many animals on his many trains, loves finding a scene setup in the morning which he can pretend was magically placed there for his own storifying. I tried, with very little luck, to find bigger versions of Lego people where you could change out the clothes, the heads, the hair, because dexterity wise they’re still a little small for his tiny toot hands, but the guy loves a stage set. And I hate a drain plug full of meal crumbs, but I have accepted that my life is emptying that drain plug a few times a day and not writing these newsletters until I’ve uncrowded our sink, picked up the many socks, and put all the trucks back in their “garage” (reader: it’s two shoe racks lined up together).

A few weeks back I was talking to the brilliant mind that is Jill Christman (yes, I have galleys), and she was saying something like, too many writers (of perhaps, true things, but I think this applies to fiction & poetry too) think they need to hold back the big moment as the sort of climax of the piece, but her advice is always to just say it. You can write whatever prelude later, but get the big THING on the page, and then move from there. No lead-up, no lead-in, no scene-setting. Maybe Jill is the Emeril Lagasse of writing. I fear this “big thing” advantage, this tiptoeing up to the big thing, this slow roll-out that we have in writing (though not beneficial really, especially if you’re trying to get an agent for opening pages—they must must must have urgency), disappears completely when we move our focus for publicity. Instead, we want the BAM! We want the pitch to somehow land like those superhero comic book bubbles, or the anvil in an old cartoon. This book is about X. Here is the billboard, the headline, the bomb. This, surely, is what the market wants. Memoir of divorce. Generational saga. War. Leaving the church. Trauma.

And yet.

Tis the crumbs that I always find most interesting as a reader. The best thing a book can give me is a rabbit hole to dig myself into. For instance, in Kate Crane’s incredible memoir, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO EDDY CRANE? coming out next spring, there’s mention of a place in Curtis Bay called Valley Proteins. The thing this company did / does, I did not know existed as an industry before I researched the company based solely on a few sentences in Kate’s book in relation to her dad’s murder. The fact that now I do know about this industry in a much larger way, and know Valley Proteins was acquired recently by a company called Darling Ingredients (the irony!) is because I am a nosy, gossip-monger and if there’s one thing about me, it’s that I want to know more. I pride myself on my private investigating (you should see the lengths Zoe and I will go to find an email). I think most readers are voracious in this way. And those crumbs that you sort of disregard as ephemera to the BAM story, are actually where the most unexpected publicity wins will come from.

Crumbs: and I came up with a whole essay idea based on her saying she wanted something weird in a wedding dress, a “crumb catcher.” When I tell you, I knew that needed to be related to writing based on a connection to her memoir, MOTION DAZZLE. Or when, , author of PULSE (April!), wrote this week (as an aside to writing about following her calling) about her dual work-life in Provincetown on a whale watch boat and selling sunglasses. I was a siren blaring immediately—THIS has teeth. Who doesn’t want to hear about the poet who wrote while mopping throw-up off a tourist boat deck, while buffing sunglasses waiting for customers?

And these things can relate to the BAM moments. Something I love about Christopher Hebert’s new novel DELIVERY is the high school boy dialogue. He’s not trying to tap into the Morning Joe author circuit “masculinity crisis,” but in his (to me) incredibly realistic dialogue he does it with ease—how then will I capture that tension in a pitch, these boys riding (literally delivering pizzas) between desperately searching for vulnerability and the layer of glass over everything they’re saying that sounds anything but vulnerable (imagine me reading it while repeating to my three year old who is obsessed with his super strength and his geniusness, “strong people cry! mighty people cry!”).

We watched the new Frankenstein last night (are those Jacob Elordi’s real feet? I have to know), and all I could think about was what exactly was in those big gold tubes of green liquid and why the lightening tower set looked like it could just as easily be part of the Wicked production? (Come on! That circle window! Glinda could have tossed her hair right there). The symbolism of the mother’s red dress against Elizabeth’s dress in the death scene! (The changes to Elizabeth’s death—for why? Did Guillermo Del Toro assume there was a limit to our believing the monster’s good heartedness?) The spirit of the forest! The stick of dynamite (to pieces, I say, to pieces—do the parts crawl over the ice and snow and come back together? HOW). The statue (my god, tell me more about the fiery statue dreams—make a movie about that!). The beauty in the monster’s facial symmetry. None of this is really important to the narrative of man conquers death and is totally unprepared to be a loving dad, so he calls himself a creator to create some distance (ba dump cha!) (we’ve heard this one before). Oh wait, is Frankenstein actually an 1816 story about dead beat men?

I digress. But what I want to say when you’re thinking about describing your book, because everyone will ask, “What is your book about?” I want you to think about texture, not necessarily BAMMING. Sure, say the big thing. Give the formula. But alongside that easy breezy beautiful headline, give it grain.

When I reach my hand into that sink, near that drain plug, one could argue that what’s in there is a representation of my family. What we ate, and how we left it, as who we are. What would it say about us?

That might be a linguini noodle or it might be a oily green onion, those pomegranate seeds are remnants of both of my son’s asking for third helpings meaning they cleaned out a whole pomegranate together after I bloodied my palm’s life lines and the cutting board clutching at those little rubies. Those little bits of leftover meat give me the willies. Rice, must it be everywhere—the glitter of the food world. But all this, it’s texture.

One way I often think about adding it, (in case you’re like, okay, Cassie—make sense, please), is that I love a little rule of three. The book is about X, Y, and Z. X and Y are maybe the pillars holding up the house, the headlines. And then Z is something totally obscure, or weird, or in tension with those two pillars. I’m reading A Silent Treatment by one of my favorite writers Jeannie Vanasco right now. It’s about (X) her mother’s sudden, unexpected silent treatments that could last months, (Y) Jeannie’s fear of writing a book about her mother’s silent treatments, and (Z—tension) how she can’t really shut up about it, to the point the book feels often like it’s interrupting itself. The amount of parenthesis! The phone calls! The replaying of lines in podcasts (Between the Covers). Turns out a book about a silent treatment is quite loudly crafted—it actually feels like a book of all dialogue, which again, is about silence on one end of dialogue (and so forced silence on the other). How, how, how, does it feel like a book of dialogue?

Another way to think about texture is in moments. After you read a book, wait a few weeks—what do you remember about it? Track this in your own reading life. Let me try with popular books I’ve read. Because I guarantee the things you remember feel more like memories than they do a plot diagram. I read Ministry of Time a year ago (I think), I remember the following: motorcycles, the Scottish lady, that the main guy was on a ship in the arctic, and that I wanted them to hook-up for at least one hundred pages before they did. Same with Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow: leg surgery, video game chapter, lying, and that they never really recover from the lies. Educated: her brother (maybe her father) holding her against the wall by the neck, and me thinking about how far her feet dangled from the ground. Also, that her brother worked heavy machinery? Literally that’s it, I read it (according to Goodreads) in early 2018. How do you then use these kind of “memories” as fodder for texture? What does it mean that this is what I clung to? How could I even use the video game chapter in Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow in a pitch without ruining the whole book?

I would have a field day with pitching Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. There would, of course, be a pitch about hot Frankenstein, then I’d have to write something for: bad dads, color symbolism, spirits (spirituality / god stuff), men (sigh)—I could literally write a whole research paper on Del Toro’s need to have a naked woman unnecessarily in Harlander’s home, women as props, and quoting Byron at the end of the movie BEFORE crediting Mary Shelley for writing the book (UGH), confessions, grandness/largess, knowledge (& how we apply “smartness” and its relationship to ambition), cruelty and grace, just the big idea of “man-made,” nature, and that’s just me spinning for five minutes (and having taught Frankenstein as a high school teacher moons ago).

Sometimes texture is also atmosphere: colors, diction, sounds, senses. So many of my poetry pitches are atmospheric, I’m trying to create a feeling with the pitch, not necessarily tell you the aboutness. People kind of expect that style from poetry, so it’s fun to apply those same tenants to a memoir pitch. To focus my energy on creating a ~vibe.~ Emails are notoriously plain, but I love too—as a Wordpress HTML girlie in my past life—a little color, a little indent, photos, glyphs, a little bold here and a little italics there, anything to break-up the monotony. The last thing I want to be in an inbox is a bore.

You can read the first non-trade review of Hitler and My Mother-in-Law by Terese Svoboda in Forward, a Hippocampus review of Gabriella D’Italia’s Getting Dressed in the Dark and her writing, “Dear Jane” in Hobart, an excerpt from Erase Genesis in Air/Light, a review of The Wounded Line by Jehanne Dubrow at Jewish Book Council, another brilliant review of Frontier by Erica Stern in LA Review of Books, listen to Diana Arterian on Between the Covers, and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.

But many readers do read this way—they stick to genre, or even trope and don’t branch out. But I like to think of books much more in the vein of “gateway drugs.” As in, the more you read, the more your tastes become eclectic and roving. You might enter a literary life through romance, and find yourself inhaling Dolly Alderton, then Sally Rooney, then (next year) ’s They All Fall in Love at the End. And slowly you’re a literary fiction reader too. Reading begets reading.

Yesterday, our pediatrician and I had a great conversation about books. She loves reading books where she can then watch aligned documentaries, which means she reads a lot of presidential biographies, and watched most of the David McCullough interviews available on C-SPAN. When we talked, she was deep into Ron Chernow’s GRANT, alongside the 2020 Grant miniseries. Lucky for me, this is what my dad read (well, that and every Diane Steele on the market). And while I don’t work on biography tomes of presidents, I absolutely recommended Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb by (now in audiobook, and in paperback in February, though the hardcover is a thing of beauty) and Ken Burns The Dust Bowl as the television companion. And she said something like, “oh yes, I love reading nonfiction about women who don’t get their due.” Well, Dr. M, I have a catalog of those I can recommend. But how would she find that catalog without a publicist bringing her baby into the office?

THAT is the question. Of course there are Reddit threads and Facebook groups and Substacks and Electric Literature lists and comp titles, and you can Google things like, “books with great party scenes” and you’ll get a million hits for The Great Gatsby, but you won’t get The Weekend by Peter Cameron which has one of my favorite dinner party scenes, but that isn’t really how most people find books. They take on bookseller recommendations, they look at bestseller stickers, they look at face-outs in Barnes & Noble, they hear about it from a friend, or see it posted on social media with the combo of beautiful flat lay + compelling caption-review. Before you can make a love match between reader and book, the reader has to actually find the book. And my assumption is that they’re never out looking and searching. I truly think most readers “happen upon” their next read.

For instance, when my husband and I have a few hours without kids, we always pop into our local bookstore and walk around quietly with our hot coffees *bliss*. He ends up with some computer science nerd book on SQL, we have four kid’s books, and I get a paperback of whatever book I haven’t seen a million times as I’ve researched for our books. When my mom is trying to find a book for my sister-in-law for the holidays, a supremely picky reader, she’s all over the map. One year she bought a southern woman’s memoir (it didn’t work out), then she saw on my sister-in-law’s table, Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff and went the biography of historical, famous woman route, and after that was a hit, she tried some Donna Tartt, which seemed in the same realm.

Books are a form of entertainment where decision fatigue is kind of the point. I want to roam a bookstore and read the back copy of twenty different books, carry four around, put two down, pick two more up. I want the scavenger hunt. And in that case, the publisher’s definitions need to be accurate. But when I’m working on a book for publicity, I’m often confronting something else entirely, which is the question of what’s interesting here? This is the question I find, maybe because writers have now heard their book defined a certain way, or they’ve spent years defining it for themselves when people ask what it’s about, at the querying stage, in talks with their agent and editor, and then seeing how it’s being marketed, that writers don’t know how to answer. It’s also not an objective question, it’s subjective to thinking about audience and community.

I don’t always get it right at first, and the answer often develops throughout a publicity campaign, but when we’re not sure what’s interesting about a book or story, I find that writers end up answering a lot of questions about their “process” rather than literally anything else. And while I’m interested in the occasional process-oriented interview, something Zoe said yesterday about Chloe Caldwell’s Trying is that rather than hear again about Caldwell’s process (which I think is maybe the copy’s fault on this one), she wanted to know the opposite thing—what was Caldwell choosing NOT to write about because her process was seemed so wide-ranging. I have the same question for a book that feels similarly inclined The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits.

And this question of what’s interesting is not a broad question, though that would be an easy target. It’s not a question that can be answered with, “oh, well I’m writing about grief.” Or “oh, I use writing to process my messy life.” (To me, that’s journaling, and it’s also what every writer ever is doing on some base level). For me, the question of interesting leans more towards how we ask questions when we look at visual art. Think: what’s interesting about “Winged Victory?” If you look at the statue without any background knowledge, it’s headless. The body isn’t whole. The base looks like a ship. It’s made of marble. It is marble in movement, it’s not in a static pose. When people describe the statue in conversation, they use “she/her” pronouns.

There’s so much to notice without looking anything else up about the history of the statue or what’s around the statue (how it’s placed in the museum, where it’s placed in the museum, why it wasn’t stolen via ladder in seven minutes, what it says about us that we display this statue so prominently, etc. etc). This is the kind of: what’s here at the notice & wonder level, and what’s missing, that could help everyone think more deeply about “the interesting” of their stories. Think of your book as a piece of visual art, and make yourself a little list as if you’re standing in front of the book at the museum.

If that’s an unhelpful place to start, then investigate the copy the publisher has written.

Copy and paste it into a word document (alongside your blurbs too), and ask as many questions as you can about each sentence (each word!), about how they’re defining the book. What does it mean for a story to be “powerful?” What does it mean to “investigate”—what does that tell you and readers about how the narrative is written vs “explore” or “navigate” or “search” or “examine.” How are they defining the characters and what’s missing when you think about who you’ve written? Why is it missing, and what does it say with how they chose to define them vs. you? Where is everything less clean and tidy? What’s too quiet here, or not included? What’s loud and might be too broad to be meaningful from a publicity standpoint? What’s in the “Great Green Room” beyond what they’ve written—objects, adjectives, verbs, what’s the larger landscape of the book? (I.E. what’s around “Winged Victory” and what does it tell us?)

And then—what can you create from this list? Are there essay ideas here? Talking points? Is there a way to pitch an interview? Are other writers having conversations about x, y, and z from your list, and can they do a conversation with you, interview, event? Are there magazines or podcasts interested in these specific things you’re finding? What are other words you can associate with the bigger tentpoles you’re seeing in the copy—motherhood is also caregiving, parenting, maternity, matriarchy, rearing, kinship, family, nurturing, etc. Have you expanded your searches for media to help you see more of what under your umbrella?

Why is Melissa Febos’ Girlhood a “searing anthem?” What does it mean that so many novels are being written about women who want to check-out? Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Austyn Wohlers’ Hot House Bloom, and others. What’s in the water?

It’s not that Jocelyn Jane Cox is writing in Motion Dazzle about her career as a nationally ranked ice dancer (though come on, what a dinner party story!), it’s that she spent that career partnered to her brother, who was also her caregiving partner during her mother’s dementia diagnosis, and a time when “performance” is a necessary distraction.

It’s not that you’re writing about your sister, it’s that you’re writing about your little sister (and what all does that imply? How does that change the narrative? So simple!).

It’s not that Gabriella D’Italia’s marriage was polyamorous, it’s that she quit cultural constraint in so many realms of her life before it blew up (and not because of her abandonment of “norms”) and she had to learn to get dressed in the dark through crisis. She does it through art (and not just art but shifting the materials of her world—gardening, design, styling), what had always steered her.

It’s not that Margo Steines is writing about violence in Brutalities, it’s that she learned violence was a way to soothe, and when tenderness appeared—she had to walk through a new matrix of knowing herself. What does that kind of shift do to and for a person? How are their old defenses made meaningful or meaningless?

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

You can read an essay from Erica Stern, author of Frontier in Wall Street Journal (in print too!) and read a new (stellar!) review in LA Review of Books, listen to Ashley M. Jones, author of Lullaby for Grieving, on WHBM, an interview with Michelle Gurule, author of Thank You John, in Jezebel, Jehanne Dubrow wrote about “The Scent of Trauma” for Writer’s Chronicle (alongside her new craft book The Wounded Line), Jeremy Jones wrote about his “Long-Lost Cipher” and was interviewed in Off Assignment and his book Cipher was reviewed in Post & Courier, Jocelyn Jane Cox, author of Motion Dazzle, has new essays in Jenny Mag and Mutha Mag, listen to Diana Arterian on Between the Covers with David Naimon, and read THREE STARRED REVIEWS in Shelf Awareness for Margot Kahn’s The Unreliable Tree, Ashley M. Jones’ Lullaby for Grieving, and Michelle Gurule’s Thank You, John, and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.

It reminded me of this brilliant response from Jen Hatmaker in her interview with The New York Times a few weeks ago. THE POWER. I can hear her saying it, dropping every little period like an anvil.

Instead of devolving into a long sordid answer about her approach to faith (what I would absolutely do because I’m a nervous nelly), she said, “I don’t care.” And while I can’t say apply a carefree attitude to your publicity journey, I will say—this is a hell of a lot better than disappointment, which is (friendly reminder) inevitable. Getting everything an author or publisher wants, even when everything feels like it’s happening, would be akin to having birth go exactly as planned in the parent’s birth plan. It’s messy, there are surprises, there are expectations and then no’s that squash them. There are things that feel unsure (or sure!) up until the last Hallelujah pass (more and more the timing of everything is happening in the last few weeks). There are yeses that feel huge and no’s that feel like, “why would THIS media outlet say NO to ME? Don’t they publish everything?” and sometimes those two things will come on the same day making reason a thing of the past.

You know how I know I’ll never get it all, because I always find a perfect reviewer or freelancer months after I finish work on a book or with an author. And every time, I take a few seconds to think: should I pitch them anyway even when I’m not working with the author anymore and we’re far out from pub? Sometimes I do! And there’s always more! (Which let’s be real, is a great thing. There’s always more! The laundry is never done! You can always find another reader! That should make things feel good, actually).

Publicity is also a game where more pitches (or more requests for the book) doesn’t necessarily mean more coverage, which feels shifty too. What I’m saying is, there is going to be disappointment. There is going to be the moment you crack open the cold box of Instagram thinking you’ll be tagged in thirteen posts about your book and you’re met with silence. It can feel like no one in the world is reading, and that would be a lie. It can feel like another book, a different book, is hoarding all the book coverage. Currently that book is Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness, which I can’t wait to read, and also feels like it’s been coming out for the last two months.

River Selby (BUY HOT SHOT) recently wrote something great on this feeling—they say, “I scrolled scrolled scrolled on social media, refreshing pages and hoping for big book reviews or media hits and then thinking god, how mindless, how strange that I created this book as a vehicle for connection and education and I’m just over here obsessing and comparing. In this state of mind nothing will ever be enough. It was little me, wanting to be seen. Longing for acknowledgement and validation.” And Erica Stern (BUY FRONTIER) wrote about “A Book’s Postpartum Blip” saying, “I was warned by sage writer friends to expect a weird feeling of absence about six to eight weeks after my book’s publication. You’ve been writing this thing for years, living inside it. Then there’s the sort of frantic lead-up to the pub date followed by (if you’re lucky) some publicity blitz. And then, suddenly, the world moves on. Attention spans are short and media jumps to the next bright and shiny thing.”

And it feels like this on my end too. Yesterday I got all snobby to myself alone in my office when a publisher posted that another book on their September line-up was an Indie Next Pick and not our book. BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR BOOK. Granted, the other book was fiction, and we’re working on a memoir. I made myself feel better by re-reading the memoir’s NetGalley reviews and reminding myself of the excitement that’s coming in the next few weeks. I have to make myself feel better a lot because my inbox is like a small glass castle of disappointments. If I had a publicist cam in my office, you would hear me regularly throughout the day look out the window and say “Just SOMETHING, PLEASE.” The leaves are out there like “rustle, rustle, yea, girl, have you seen the sun?”

This is not me saying go outside and touch grass when you feel this disappointment—both the after-publication silence, and the “nobody likes me, I guess I’ll go eat worms,” months-long journey of trying to get folks to read and engage with (in a meaningful way) the book you likely spent years honing, revising, crafting, writing, and a lifetime to muster up the whatever-it-is-writers-contain to write the damn thing, but there are a few things to combat the worms.

COMBATTING THE WORMS:

• GET WITTY. No seriously. Turn that frown into sass. My most unhinged (okay, … unhinged within reason) moments often turn into something glorious. It often happens when I send an email with nothing left to lose (excerpt perhaps a little dignity, but the receiver gains so much great personality, right?) and I’m just out here saying it. Example below: my email to a national news editor after a morning where I learned that I cannot in fact protect my feral children from wildlife. They’re now covering a POETRY. COLLECTION, though he did ask me not to send the snake along with the galley. (That could have been fun though, maybe just a little skin).

  

• This also brings us to the camp of JUST ASK. So many writers I know are disappointed in their publicity journey because they made a decision not to be annoying and/or not to mention things to their publicist, and so they rely on the team to just know. The other thing I hear often is that writers feel some sort of coldness / shortness / closed door situation in the initial emails with their team, and so they lay back instead of speaking up. So, here’s a little story: I got an interesting novel in my inbox a few weeks ago that recently came out, and because of bandwidth I couldn’t work on it. But the email query from the author was so much fun that I sent the author a few bullets about what I thought they could do after having only read the description of the book. Last week they sent me a video made by a creator with 860k followers on Tiktok. The author had sent a cold email partly based on one of my recommendations. The book has been out since the beginning of July. 860k new people considering her book! Weeeeeee! (If you are this author, I’d love to share more details but since I didn’t ask, I don’t want to blow up your spot!). ASK. SEND. INITIATE.

• COMMIT TO COMMUNITY. Are there other books coming out at the same time as yours that you’re seeing everywhere? Are you in one of those debut Slack channels? Are you in Facebook groups with other writers? Are you commenting on newsletters? Do any of those folks have any overlap with what you’re working on? Can you be in conversation with the author, do an event, shout them out on your socials, interview them, highlight them in your newsletter. It’s better when you’re in it together. How can you create bridges with other people who are likely having a lot of the same feelings. has been so great about shouting out books on her social media that have made a difference in her writing, and it’s come with a few exciting opportunities. Now, we don’t do this for the selfish gains, but anything to make you feel less alone makes you feel less alone!

• LET YOUR MOM. This week I had a mom of an author reach out to a local cultural organization—a magazine she has received from them for the last twenty years, and guess what, that book is in their next newsletter now. She cc’ed me on the emails, shout out to moms! Let your friends, your moms, your local waitress who gives you extra bread from their daily bake to make french toast the next day (too niche?), connect you to opportunity. When I was a literary agent, my mom talked so often about what I did that my actual childhood dentist queried me with his book. (Shout out to Dr. Sykes, the best around). Nothing like a teeth cleaning, query drilling. I realize this can come off in ways that are not in-line with boundaries (I would not say, for instance, to ever have your mom write an email to an editor at HarperCollins), but it can also come off as beautifully genuine.

• SHOUT SHOUT LET IT ALL OUT. Turns out YOU can still talk about your book when no one else is talking about it. Turns out YOU are the person who knows what you wrote best. You can still pitch essays that align with the book. You can still see news to peg that aligns with the book. Once the book is out for however long, you can use the book as leverage toward your expertise. River is an expert to me on wildfires, so if I see in the news something about fire fighting and wildfires, I’d imagine they would have something to say. Erica is an expert to me on the unexpected in childbirth, so anything I see related to that, I think of her and Frontier. For fiction, you can use what’s hot as plugs for your book. (Love this? Try this. Listen to this? You’ll love … Oh, you’re obsessed with that thing, well you’re going to be obsessed with …). Think about how Tiktok essentially relaunched The Song of Achilles years later. There’s also so much coverage that isn’t aligned to publication date (podcasts, newsletters, being an event moderator, festivals, panels). Are there anniversaries coming up that align with your book? Holidays? Cultural moments? If you have the time to pay attention, then you can recommend yourself and your book.

• (From the brilliant mind of ). DON’T DWELL. I am a hyper-fixater, particularly if I think I’ve done something wrong that I must fix. But you can’t fix a book review. Trade review publications (especially when anonymous) are known for being snarky. If you’re someone who pulls out the one snarky line amidst the glowing rest, then my recommendation is you never get on Goodreads. But you have to have some sort of slate-wipe tactic that makes THAT one painful jab go away so you can live in the abundance of other things. Never getting over the first or second review, when there are four others that loved the book, is going to hurt you and hurt the publicity.

  

• KEEP A HIT LIST. I have a little label in my inbox that I search when I need a reminder that I am THAT GIRL. Wild success deserves to be accounted. We have hit lists at the end of all our campaigns so writers and publishers can see how much really did happen. Look at that list. Frame the review in print. Save all the kind emails somewhere. Make an album of your book tour. Have material evidence of your wins.

• BUILD A BIRTH PLAN. You’ve done the thing now. You know how the thing moves. You know the game of the thing. Now, what do you want to do next time. What should you do earlier? What can come later? What is actually the priority? What are the new goals (how have the stakes moved from one book to the next?). What did you find enlivened you and what exhausted you? What was worth your time and attention and what can you let go next time? Who do you want or need in your corner to put all the pieces together? This reflection will prepare you for your potential paperback OR the next book, depending.

• BUILD THE NEXT THING. Everyone always says to write a new book while the book of your heart is on submission. It’s kind of the same advice here, BUT, join the workforce? You’re an author, you did it. Now, how can you support other authors to continue the reciprocity and community you wanted and needed in publishing your book. Do you have a newsletter? A blog? An Instagram? A Bluesky? A local bookstore? A library? A community workshop idea? A local humanities center that would have you for a craft lecture? An AWP panel idea? Can you write interviews or reviews (a byline with your name on it, a connection to an editor for your next book). You don’t have to suddenly become an art critic, but you can look at the landscape and make a place in it that suits your time and interests. The goal, again, is not to line-up a group of people that owe you something, but to build better community.

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

You can read a piece from Michelle Gurule, author of THANK YOU, JOHN in Slate, Mary Ardery, author of LEVEL WATCH, did a Labor Day list for Electric Lit, Dr. Melody Glenn, author of MOTHER OF METHADONE was interviewed for Filter Mag and on KJZZ, Keetje Kuipers, author of LONELY WOMEN MAKE GOOD LOVERS was reviewed in Gay & Lesbian Review, New Mexico Magazine is reading Daisy Atterbury’s THE KÁRMÁN LINE, recommends THANK YOU, JOHN for the month of September, and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.

Local and regional news sources are a beautiful publicity engine if (big if) you live in a place that has supportive (local author &) book publicity. There are states that are supportive of local artists and then there are states that either have nonexistent local news sources (so sorry!), or just don’t support books as an “arts & culture” feature. It not only varies by state but it varies by city. A robust local NPR-affiliate can do a lot for a book, likewise a paper that still runs book coverage regularly. (Shout out to WPR or WUNC or WABE or Star Tribune or Pittsburgh Post-Gazette!). But to be able to have this, we actually have to read the reviews, click the links, share them, write to the paper even—when you think a review gets it right (or wrong). Someone on Tiktok (and maybe Substack too) recently said engaging in a community means accepting annoyance, inconvenience, and irritation. So, then the extra inconvenient step of listening, reading, engaging with the work around the work (with our precious use of time which is being decayed away in seamless fashion), is necessary to maintain the community!

When the Associated Press internal memo to end weekly book review coverage surfaced a few weeks ago, it was obviously a bummer. (You can complain to them at this link). The Associated Press is one of the bigger book review outlets, and because the reviews are often syndicated to local papers they have a wider reach to general public than say Literary Hub (which wrote about the ending here). They also more frequently than the other coveted national papers covered books that weren’t only commercial standouts, contracted to big four publishers, or by authors who had already published a handful of books. In fact, they sometimes reviewed poetry, often reviewed university press books, and covered larger independent presses regularly. They could be convinced is what I’m saying.

Nothing grinds my gears more than media that relegates all “indie” books (not talking self-published here) into one category, which they then will not cover.

In the larger landscape of book review publishing, I’ve seen the “traditional book review” which is what the AP typically wrote be replaced by the not-exactly-a-profile, but a sort of hybrid “book story” that isn’t a review at all, but an attempt to influencer-infiltrate an author into the literary landscape. There are obviously profiles of authors who are famous, but this reads as something different—it makes the story behind the book, often some angle of the author’s journey to writing it, the book coverage. And I don’t mean “It took [insert author] fourteen drafts to get to a finalized version of her debut novel,” or well, anything that has to do with the actual writing of the book at all, and more so the intrigue of the author’s story that led to the book story. I see this across the board, regardless of genre. Look at the coverage for Anna Marie Tendler or Sarah Hoover’s Motherload. Look at Texas Monthly’s recent piece on James Wade’s debut fifth book (Thanks, Kelly Turner) Narrow the Road, or coverage of Kate Riley’s Ruth.

Vanity Fair has stated that they’re moving toward this sort of coverage—the story of the story, and I’m not going to lie, I like it, but it’s more work. It makes the author’s web of story much more important to the publicity of the work. We’ve been saying this for a while, but it’s telling authors that the work does not stand alone (not even fiction or poetry), it will not at least, in larger book coverage, be able to stand on its own. Yes, of course national reviews (straight reviews) still exist (Washington Post, LA Times, New York Times Book Review, Book Forum), but as messaged me last week—there were only six reviews in the NYT Book Review on Sunday (wild!).

If you like this cover, might I recommend Michelle Gurule’s THANK YOU, JOHN. Out the end of next month and so good we’ve gone through multiple galley runs! Also, the Netgalley reviews are a state of wonder: comparing it to the best memoir since The Glass Castle, requested it be made into a movie, and how it will “revolutionize the world of memoir.” Readers get it.

Media now demands the author cannot be divorced from the work, unless we’re talking about the success of anonymity like Letter to My Transgender Daughter or Tart by “Slutty Chef.” It was bound to happen with the proliferation (I originally wrote prolifery, which I think should be a word) of influencer books, but writers are not (usually) influencers (in fact those are stereotypes awfully divorced from one another), and marketing a self is a skill (that can totally be taught and teased, AND takes a lot of effort).

So, what’s the point of knowing all of this? (Get to the point, Cassie).

My hope is that through the rescinding of book reviews at Associated Press we will see a few things happen, the first: a flourish in local and regional book coverage (and that it’ll arrive alongside a flourish in embracing local and regional communities to protect and brace ourselves from inverted totalitarianism); I miss when my local paper did book reviews—my dad used to save me the pages, even before I entered the world of publicity (alongside comics for my fridge!).

The second is that we’ll see innovation in book coverage at large (I’m looking at places like Zona Motel which are covering book events—creating a “scene” (that I hope for outside of NYC!). This is not to say that I want authors to become traditional celebrities (well, maybe I do, HA!), but I do want the art of writing to be as respected in media as say a movie star. (As much as we shame the movie-star-esque profiles of writers, they’re fun. The lipgloss conversation went on for weeks! It’s good that authors be treated like people with interests behind sentences).

I realize how much aesthetics are involved in those choices (beautiful movie star), and also there’s the mystery of the movie star, that we’ll never really know them like a regular schmegular person writing in their little closet (it’s me)—we’re always given bite size pieces that are often meaningless or scandalous, and authors don’t have that kind of “curiosity luxury,” but can it be created? It can! (it can! I say to myself again for encouragement). That’s the question, that’s what I’m interested in exploring in the next few years (maybe I want to break the system? Maybe we’re in a break the system age, and I’m choosing hope & wishful thinking).

Before I get into Taylor Swift, read this post by Candice Wuehle.

Okay, here’s a starting point on the author branding / author as brand conversation: I mentioned on notes that I might write about Taylor Swift’s obsession with archetypes and how it could help you in book publicity. That caption was ridiculous, let’s be honest. It immediately made me think of my “cheerleading shorts” from high school. (Shout out to the Soffe warehouse right next to South of the Border, iykyk). I hated trading out those little folded-up, triangle cut shorts for required gym wear during gym class and then there’s my best friend Ashley and I walking the track, but running when we got near the teacher. Sigh.

I think archetypes (while relegated to the high school classroom usually) are a great place for authors to start in their “branding” journey. Figuring out where you fit into a sort of stock mold (or where you might be relegated to stock mold is probably a better way to say that—something as simple as “crone” or “shadow” or “everyman” or “maiden” (here’s a big list, and you can also find these in things like Tarot! or just culturally “girl boss,” “unlikeable woman, “golden retriever boyfriend”)—gives you options to figure out what people automatically think of the state of life you’re in (and your characters are in), or the placeholder of life, and then where there are similarities (where does your story align), and of course, friction with the archetype: intrigue, curiosity, untangling, contentiousness, down right abrasiveness (I wish I could share here a recent essay by Gabriella D’Italia, author of Getting Dressed in the Dark on Doubles, but it’s not out yet—soon!). This is to say: ideas in conflict are hot! Assumptions being broken are hot! Finding out something you thought was A has a B side, hot!

It works for characters too, and is an easy way into creating a framing or angle because I’m sure you’ve thought about it while writing—what are you writing into and what are you writing against. I mentioned Tart up there, look at the coverage—what are the assumptions about chefs, then women chefs, then how is she breaking them or agreeing? How does Narrow the Road coverage look—he’s writing into the Western tradition, road trip novel, but with a “vulnerable and sensitive hero.” So, then what are ways in for publicity—he’s attempting to break the stoicism (toxic masculinity) of the Western while writing into the tradition, there’s a diary in the book so getting into the internal negotiations of the narrator instead of just the external conflicts being the thing that potentially drives momentum in the story (Cormac) etc, etc.

What I’m saying is that using the archetype is a starting point. Taylor Swift is well-known for this, and I imagine it’s how she does a lot of her writing. It makes her writing both familiar in that attempt at universal experiences and stock characters (heartbreak, revenge, want) and also a place to be narratively specific to her own bread-crumbing of what actually happened.

The stock archetype is never enough from an author branding point, but it does give you a place to say okay, I or my characters or my story or my plot devices fall into this umbrella, what questions can I ask about that umbrella to come up with angles that add something to the story around my book, that offer me talking points and framing. One goal of publicity is to create conversation, this framing might help you start to look at what conversations you’re already in (having a brief David Foster Wallace (I KNOW) “This is Water” break here—what water are you in, how are you managing it and subverting it), and what conversations can be untangled from these larger containers.

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

You can read a review of HOT HOUSE BLOOM by Austyn Wohlers in the New York Times, in fact all the great reviews for this one are on Bookmarks, and here is a conversation with Austyn in Baltimore Fishbowl, Ashley M. Jones was in conversation about her new book Lullaby for the Grieving on New Books Network, Michelle Gurule’s THANK YOU, JOHN is on the hot summer reading list (& also someone on Netgalley just said they haven’t read a memoir as compelling since The Glass Castle! WOAH!), Jocelyn Jane Cox was interviewed about MOTION DAZZLE in Mer Literary and featured in the Mount Horeb Mail, and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.

You’ll be on a walk and notice a strange mushroom patch on a stump that you’ve never seen before and the image will belong in the stuck chapter or essay. You’ll be cooking your mother’s broccoli cheese casserole and the smell unlocks a scene. You’ll be listening to Dolly Parton and suddenly Jolene’s story is your sister’s. It’s the great whirlpool moment. I like to think of it like a runner saying they get “runner’s high”—when running starts to feel good (I have never had this experience, is it the short legs or the dry heaving? But I trust the people who put themselves through marathons and those weird little energy packets in their vests).

It takes a certain level of consumption, as in it only happens for me when I’ve been fully consumed by the writing. Devour me, you little shop of horrors. I’m dreaming about sentences. I’m keeping a notebook by the bed, in my purse, in the glove box—this is no time for notes app, but it’ll do. Brain to hand vibrating. I’m scribbling on my arm or a crumpled purse receipt, in desperation at my own forgetfulness. I’m repeating the phrasing I heard from (should we call it the muse?) at swim lessons over and over so I don’t mess it up. It comes at you perfect sometimes. It’s like an itch, or when your foot falls asleep, painfully, obnoxiously yours.

I’ve never felt it any other time in my life, until I became a publicist. (I hate to say I dream about work, but here we are). At the stage of book publicity, lots of folks recommend jumping into another writing project, or having somewhere to put your mind that isn’t on the anxiety of what won’t happen or what isn’t being done. Writers have been, perhaps, a year or more out from drafting and copyediting, a year or more out from being IN the book. It’s like a yield sign time, they haven’t closed the project— they still have interviews to do and talking points to craft, but the conversation turns from the thick molasses of writing and editing to aboutness, to trying to describe the art in some practical, intellectual way. The writing becomes an object, not a project.

But, in the land of good publicity, the stew is just as necessary. Sleep with the book under your pillow like we did textbooks to hope it seeps into our brain before the test in an act of osmosis. Just kidding, but I do recommend—unfortunately in the world of news media that we’re in—trying to figure out your angles. Imagine, you hold your writing up to a mirror and you turn it slightly (stop-motion style) and each turn presents a new angle for, well, not your consumption this time, but media consumption. You’re taking in the news, you’re reading threads, you’re watching Tiktok, and scrolling notes, and commenting on Substacks (you should be commenting on Substacks!), and you’re noticing the way other OBJECTS OF ART are being talked about, you’re watching people (not just authors) spin the same topic fifteen different ways. This is a publicist’s job, yes, but it’s also a way authors can feel fulfilled in the process.

Think about:

• what is coming towards me and my story

• what is going away from my story

• what are people missing in this moment that my book taps into (nostalgia? saving money? recession indicators? slow living? nicholandria? AI models in Vogue).

• who is writing about similar ideas? who is writing opposing ideas? who do you agree with and who do you disagree with? (Is there an argument to be made? do you have an addition to the argument that’s already out there?)

• what makes you say hmmmm, or ehhhh, or make that skeptical face?

• who has written within your themes before and what have they written? We had the great divorce memoir wave and then the great “is it cheating” / “he is cheating” memoir and novel wave, and then the great women being despicable wave, but what’s missing in each of these conversations?

• I don’t know about you, but in college it was grinded into me to “look for the gaps in the literature”—those damn annotated bibliographies—that is a model of mind-mapping book publicity too. What’s the annotated bibliography of your book, but instead of asking “what literature built this book and my story?” (an honest to goodness question, but not the exact one that’s needed), ask what am I seeing that lands in the Black Widow web of my book’s universe. Keep a journal by your bed. What enters the whirlpool and how does it come out on the other side through you?

In the opening sound bite to David Naimon’s podcast Between the Covers, an author talks about seeing what comes out of the washer machine of his brain. (And Karen Russell talks about working as a vet tech, which is my favorite line). The washing machine guy is talking about the stewing part of writing. A lot of writers come into book publicity as an answer—I think (insert media) or (insert audience) would like my book, fin. But true publicity is in the washing machine of ideas—a way to make connections and brew possibility. A lot of outlets, influencers, media, could be into your book IF it’s angled the right way for them. The job is not making an author or their story palatable, interesting, scandalizing, aligned for a specific talk show, it’s the opposite actually. The arrow goes the other way—from media or person towards the author.

Not to end on a depressing note, but I did see a Tiktok recently where the micro-influencer acknowledged that she understood people didn’t follow her page for her. That’s such a specific level of “star power,” (if I can call it that) to be interested in one person enough to engage with their content. And often when I do this, I get some sort of secondhand disappointment at one point and end up unfollowing, it’s not a long-lasting source of publicity. Authors who expect that won’t get very far unless they’re career authors, and even then audiences connect more to the type of story than they do the author as person. Look at James Patterson, he doesn’t even write his books anymore, but his formula remains. People have stayed for the formula.

Audiences are drawn to STORIES that engage their desires, questions, interests, curiosities, and concerns. We have so much content, it’s overwhelming and trivializing, but so few people “make it” on ego-driven narratives. It’s no ones obligation to care about the story, so what do they already care about that turns them toward a new version, a new history, a new narrative, a new gradient. Aren’t we always quoting Dickinson when she said “tell it slant?” Find the slant.

I wrote this from “vacation” (is this possible with small children?) where I can hear my husband saying “PLEASE” in grander and grander tones to our toddlers from the porch swing. I’d say it’s glorious—cellophane full of cheddar sour cream chips on one side of me and a gallon ziplock of sunscreen on the other, but I’m a better woman when I’m working AND all the other things. Vacation feels unnatural, actually. That’s probably a sign of problems with my nervous system, but I’ll be in lifelong learning to understand the power of relaxing. In other words, I snuck away to write this half-caff newsletter. Sending you all ~vacation mode~ from whatever ails you.

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Whitney Gardner was interviewed for The Week Junior about Free Piano (Not Haunted), Terese Svoboda got a ✨ STAR ✨ in Publishers Weekly for Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, and so did Bella DeSendi for Someone Else’s Hunger, Dr. Melody Glenn was interviewed in Culture Study about Mother of Methadone, as well as Tucson Weekly, Flourishing After Addiction, The Addicted Mind, and The Border Chronicle , an excerpt of Cipher by Jeremy Jones is in this issue of Writer’s Chronicle and was recently featured in Longreads too, Nicole Graev Lipson was interviewed for Assay Journal, Margo Steines was interviewed about Brutalities for KJZZ, Lauren K. Watel’s Book of Potions was reviewed in RHINO poetry, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

I don’t mean authors who are a nobody (everybody! is! a! somebody!), but I mean the kind of thinking in publicity where at some point in a book campaign (if that’s what I’m working on, primarily a “product,” for months before the release of said product)—I often have a moment and a think to myself: should I focus on marketing THE person or THE product. Of course, it’s always a mix of both, but the framing changes. And sometimes, it’s more advantageous to market THE person, and sometimes it’s more advantageous to focus on the materials, ahem the book at hand.

Now, I’m not typically working with “experts” in the traditional sense—historians, politicians, doctors, folks in decades-long academic careers with titles ahead of their names. This is to say I don’t often work on “serious nonfiction,” where the point of the book is also a point towards a certain degree of professionalism—an area of expertise. Thus, I’m not speaking to that sort of “platform” of an author here. I’m speaking to the memoirists who have something specific to add to the body of conversation and literature, less an anecdotal experience and more a truth so relevant that it demands testimony alongside what we call “fact,” (truth and fact, woof the connotations) or a poet-with-a-point, or a project book (writing on a specific job, experience, culture, sub-culture, grouping, identity marker), a story collection embedded in a cultural moment or created to give an idea, perhaps fringe, actual space in culture.

We’re living in the time when most books that garner publicity of the national kind point towards a more obvious “take” or surface a specific sub-culture story. It is what it is for the publicity machine. I’m not saying the stories that get publicity are all scandal and intrigue, but they often have cultural resin and are not simply well-written. Though we do always hope the book with voice and verve (and not just the aboutness book) finds its people, of course. Fine, fine, fine. So, we use all that resin to publicize the book, but what happens when within framing the book, the author is actually the necessary ingredient. When I inevitably look at this question at any point in a book campaign, or simply thinking about building a platform for someone who eventually wants to write a book—the question it always comes down to is: how many degrees of separation can this author be from their book?

The questions:

• Can the author simply backseat and answer the Google doc interview questions?

• Must the author write about aspects and adjacents of the experience in the book?

• How does the author’s career play into the story?

• What about the author is IN the book, but not IN the book—experience outside the realm or scope of the text, but necessary to understanding the story of the book.

• Are there experiences not in the book that apply to the development of the themes in the book?

Famously, Suzanne Collins wants very little to do with publicizing her books. She does the occasional interview, but you’re not going to find her on every magazine or doing every interview like you would, say, Emily Henry. Her degree of separation from the books is that people know her name as the writer of The Hunger Games, and that’s that; her website even reads quite distant—as if she just approved the copy (minus the rat photo, that’s fun).

So much goes into this degree of separation thinking—the tone of your metadata (book description, blurb banners on Amazon (colors, fonts, quotes chosen—often dependent on the cover of the book, which also plays into the closeness readers feel to an author), level of author photo seriousness or friendlessness (Zoe and I joke that EJ Koh is the queen of her books match her author photos), how conversational is the copy on your website (closer to readers=more conversational, further from readers=more direct, often third person, often professional and not whimsical), what dominates the book pitch (summary, blurbs, previous publications, shock factor, intrigue, dynamic questions, depth, wittiness, cattiness, etc), all of this should be in the recipe of how you’re thinking about an author’s relationship to their publicity campaign and how the campaign is framed.

Everything in publicity, (yea, I can agree with myself here, I just nodded alone on the couch, well the cat is here) is about framing. From the bookstagram flat lays to which central questions go in what pitch, to the section of the book that gets asked about in interviews (and focused on in reviews), to the theme or thread pulled out by the publicist for which critic (and which audience), to the way you introduce the author in a pitch (—does “Guggenheim fellow” do more than “acclaimed writer?,” (does “acclaimed writer” do ANYTHING) does this critic need to know more about the author’s identity, etc). I’m working with an author right now who has written over 22 books, and I hesitate to write that anywhere because does it weigh her down? (Fell obscene? Is her muchness going to be taken the wrong way? Why do we only love when people do this in the mystery or romance categories, but for literary fiction it’s seen as kind of obscene? “Your art should take longer!” the critics rejoice. But folks, that’s a CAREER. It’s all picking a frame (I guess literature prefers that I use the word lens here).

It’s true that you don’t have to sell your soul for good publicity, you don’t have to write personal essays that should have stayed in your diary, you don’t have to schlep yourself across the country for events (unless you’re a poet, and then we can talk), you don’t have to answer EVERY interview question asked of you (you’re allowed to have boundaries around the kinds of things you want to answer, especially if you’re a memoirist), but does WHO YOU ARE (in quite literally any way) matter more to the book than it might another book? Perhaps.

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And this isn’t about whether an author can magically turn into an influencer on any specific platform. I repeat: you do not have to launch a Substack, an Instagram account with ATfirstname_writer, a Tiktok (though I’ll be the first to tell you that Jodi Picoult is that girl on Tiktok), but you do be do be do have to think about why a reader might go to your website and what they should find there, what about you elevates your books, are you the bridge between what you’re writing now and what you want to do / write next (how can you cross that bridge with publicity for the first project?), what do you want the book to do FOR YOU—and how can you use the publicity process to get to that point?, and again, what frames the book project?

WAYS OF FRAMING:

• pop culture / current events (example: “Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story, disrupts the cultural narratives of birth, and the language of women having "sacrificial instincts" (Idaho legislature) particularly when it comes to motherhood.”)

• setting (example: “Deep in the rhododendron tunnels of the Blue Ridge Mountains, poet Mary Ardery writes the history of soaked feet on a five mile hike in winter’s gray excuse for daylight.”)

• rituals and practices

• philosophies & spirituality (example: “Nocturne in Joy is séance, Elizabeth city sidewalk crack, and growing with an absence. Johnson-Boria writes into the drunken boat of her family home revealing that she is the sea her ancestors called to and wade through. Breeding butterflies in freezer bags, the book lives between downpour and daylight.”)

• past lives: past careers, past work, past identity

• compare and contrast

• an argument & a talking point

• a question or more than one (example: Through her interior investigations, Lipson removes the moral cloak of motherhood to claim imaginative control of her life. For under that cloak, isn't everyone, "a damp, matted down, trembling, very small thing?")

• a moment in your life, a moment in history, a moment in the book (example—the roller skates scene still stays with me: “Yet the new feelings of cessation from homeland (she can't speak Twi or Ewe, can't cook the old ways, can't, can't, can't) and the unshakeable memory of her daddy’s voice after her first fall on roller skates, makes it difficult to gather her selves.”)

• a personal history

• a crisis point (a before and after)

• voice (you’ll notice this with someone like Patricia Lockwood)

• repeated subject matter (Melissa Febos, I wonder if it’s easier for her at this point to write a book proposal because her work stems from following a similar thread),

• a feeling—rooted in time or place, or feeling through tone

• a time lapse or time crunch (I kind of love doing this in pitches, example “What is left at this time, but the ordinary? Burn piles from raging Pacific Northwest brushfires, yarn around her fingers, oranges at her feet. She has sown her oats–on a blanket in Maine, against a sink in a yellow Brooklyn bathroom, and now fifteen years into a marriage, the oatmeal pot is cold film in the sink. She wasn’t sorry then, and she’s not sorry now.”

• lists

• a recipe or formula: a little bit of A and a little bit of B gives you C (you can do this with comp titles—though it’s not my fav thing to do, or adjectives, or themes, etc). (example: “Heir of Elif Batuman & Melissa Bank…”)

• deja vu or backtracking to forward track (example: opening line, “In 2017, in an exquisite hotel spa—soaking in a hot tub surrounded by opulence she had no business being in—Gurule confronted her sugar daddy, John, about his support for Donald Trump, hoping she could open his mind…” [three more paragraphs then], “In that hot tub, months later, Gurule tried to prod John more about his support of Trump.)

• describing the reading experience (example: “As I began reading Brutalities, the spit gathered in my mouth and never left. There is no swallowing it down easy. My heart rate increased, my chest flushed with heat, and I couldn’t find a comfortable way to sit in my chair, to sit in bed, to sit in my body.”

• Accolades (From NY TIMES bestselling author …)

• Labels (example: “Described as an “intellectual sensualist,” Jehanne Dubrow conveys how our sense of taste is our bridge to community. Navigating honey and the Holocaust, the kitchen table and garden of Eden, Persephone, sweat, HIV, Proust, and the Campbell soup can–Taste is for culinary exhibitionists and poets alike.”)

• Titles (Dr., award-winner, this year’s ….)

• central image or metaphor (“Like a perfect apple, to simply exist.”)

• how the book is DIFFERENT from the trend

• juxtaposition of unlikely words /phrases together (example: “Hilarious and bristling, Son of a Bird is Nin Andrews' memoir of emotional dehydration on her family's dairy farm in rural Virginia.”)

Okay, that’s probably enough for now. I need to finally shower for the day and spend some time with the trees, and this smiling guy whose leg surgery is finally healed and he’s back to chasing deer. (Kids are at their grandparents and we plan to eat all their popsicles).

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Lauren K. Watel’s Book of Potions was reviewed in World Literature Today, and she wrote behind the scenes of her poem “The Island” for Poetry Society of America, Diana Arterian was interviewed for Academy of American Poets’ “enjambment series,” Michelle Gurule’s Thank You, John was reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Whitney Gardner was interviewed in Publishers Weekly about her “pop star with big hair”, Dr. Melody Glenn wrote about motherhood in the emergency department for TIME, three Pine State books are in Debutiful’s MOST ANTICIPATED for the second half of 2025, Erica Stern’s Frontier was featured in Psychology Today and you can read an excerpt of the book in The Sun, Esinam Bediako was interviewed in Split Lip’s newest issue, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

It all started, according to internet sources and sleuths, with a woman named Allison Parliament who wanted to spread a little cheer during the pandemic. I should note here that we love Allison because she’s Canadian. Here’s a little video.

And I don’t mean to cause a calamity but EVERY jeep owner is in on the ducks. It’s a full-blown movement. There are Facebook groups with around half a million members. My friend Christine carries extras in her stowaway cabin where I keep gloves and receipts and a fourteen year old granola bar and a diaper that’s somehow covered in pine straw even though it has never been outside. The Jeep manufacturer rented the largest rubber duck for their annual auto show in 2022. We’re in top-to-bottom ducking around here.

And I’ve been thinking about what the equivalent of the Duck Duck Jeep would be for book publicity. How to create a movement essentially. USA Today recently wrote about the “galley brag” phenomenon, but that feels influencer and exclusivity driven in a way that’s not quite the same as Duck Duck Jeep which has a kind of team sports intrigue. And you might think, okay naturally author’s support authors, which THEY DO, but the hierarchy isn’t in your head. It’s not the automatic—we’re both writers, let’s support. Or we’re both literary fiction novelists, let’s geek out. Or we are attempting to gateway drug more folks into horror from thriller, here’s what we’re going to do. Where as the Jeep people are like “jeep folk? yea, jeep folk. Duck? Duck.” It’s like a language—and it can cross between a beater and a brand new 2026 Wagoneer.

And of course it’s not the same because we’re making art or we’re making entertainment or we’re facing awards seasons, or we’re trying to get a film deal, or we’re competing for shelf space, or we’re hoping for foreign rights. Books are a team sport with an individual score. So, maybe my analogy is a lost one, but I can’t help but think that Duck Duck Jeep has larger messaging in publicity. And I think it’s turning the mindset from “this is mutually beneficial,” as in the ecosystem mindset with things like (1) you review me, and I’ll return the favor, or (2) let’s interview each other about our books, or (3) switching conversation partners at bookstores for respective releases. All of these things are beautiful and important, but they’re trade, they're give and take.

And I think the Jeep mindset, though easily abused, it’s true, lends itself to something I strongly believe from my time teaching high schoolers that I tattooed it on my arm—give anyway (yes, my girl, Mother Teresa). If I had students who were assholes, that doesn’t mean I withhold pencils that they needed to learn. If a student sucked the day before, that doesn’t mean they come into my classroom with that burden the next day—clean slate. If a kid felt I wronged them, I apologized. Grandstanding never worked. If I didn’t believe an excuse, oh well, I set the expectation that they came to me with a reason and I’m going to go down that path until it’s unbearably clear that I can’t.

I am not great at it, though better. I needed the tattoo as a reminder, TBH. And no one can be 100% perfect with kindness without expectation. I still feel personally affronted by things like the freelancer who responded to my pitch email three separate times last week to tell me I missed the word “of” in the title of the book (I did)—first telling me I made a mistake, then telling me that wait, he’s wrong, and then finally following-up with just my subject line bolded in the third email to point out my egregious error. See, I’m still thinking about it even though I wrote back, “Thanks _____, sign of the times.” Because holy shit, have you read the news? The thing I’m both most worried about and least worried about is the syntax of my emails, and yet—last week I had trouble emailing at all.

So, my PSA in an America that crushes my soul every single day, is about the lost art of duck duck jeep culture—giving without expectation. Leading with what will come back to me is like trying a boomerang for the first time.

Good will with the universe, putting out good energy, saying yes without the expectation of return, aren’t lost causes, and don’t have to feel like free labor, and don’t look like hustle culture because when you work this way—doing the good will that feels good (this is key) and not the kind that feels like, okay, I’m going to do this now and then in six months it’ll pay off in dividends—does, most of the time for me, pay off. It’s just that I’m never thinking of the pay off in the moment. I’m just thinking, yea, I do want to talk to a class of college students on Thursday and I have that hour spare.

And this is how I want you to imagine platform too—not this sort of salesy Shark Tank space where you choose a social media that you love most or feel best at and that’s where you set down your campaign roots, selling selling selling (monetizing monetizing monetizing). Platform starts with giving, not selling. (And I don’t mean giving advice). What can you offer, and how can it bring people in? Crochet patterns. Sweet! Advice on how not to kill that plant in the room you never go in? I need it. Star Wars conspiracy theories? I would send your socials immediately to my brother. Breaking down the latest episode of traitors? If Britney doesn’t vote out Danielle, I SWEAR. Is your dream job a museum docent but you’re an introvert—start a channel, docenting us through your favorite art. Where are you your goodest?

All of this also aligns you with your best self (not to get too woo woo)—the way Jeep drivers get to be weird little duck harbingers in community with other weird little duck folks. (Who doesn’t miss Duck Duck Goose though as an adult?).

So, email that author that you love about their work without adding them to the list of folks you’ll ask to blurb your next book. Go to silent reading night at your library, not to connect with book club folks, but because you get to silently read with other people like you in the quiet of all of our favorite places. Go to the author event when it’s raining. Say yes to that random person on Bluesky that says they need someone to read a poem for them and give a little feedback. Figure out how to put your favorite book somewhere in your dating profile (do you know how many people scroll dating profiles?). Have a list of books you read each year on your website with a small note about favorites. Review the book on Goodreads or Storygraph. Write the newsletter about the best block towers for four year olds alongside the books they’ll love for each tower, shamelessly. Cold pitch the editor, expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised by the yes, yes, of course, yes.

And listen, the funkier the better—who thought rubber duckies in Jeeps would take off? (excerpt Ernie).

(A little lore for the people wondering: I would never drive a Jeep because I’m a loosey goosey around the curves having learned how to drive on a Ford Explorer that I WHIPPED around that high school parking lot with my pink dice and my mixed cds. We bought it from our neighbor, the ultimate mom, which meant there were tissues built into the center console).

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Nicole Graev Lipson is on fire and you can see mentions of her debut, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, in Slate, Judith, Brookline.News, Our Town, and Boston Globe this week, Sarah LaBrie and Hyeseung Song are both on the longest for Reading the West, Emily J. Smith talks to Crime Reads, Sarah Lyn Rogers made a list for Electric Lit and your fav Scorpios, Jehanne Dubrow gets direct with North Texas Daily and her poem “Civilian” is featured in Verse Daily, SJ Bennett’s A Death in Diamonds is toasted in Washington Post, Nothing Serious is reviewed in San Francisco Chronicle and recommended by the New York Times, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

There’s a very popular book I’m seeing all over Substack (Zoe and I would pay money to see the proposal for this one), with an author that has a pretty large platform. So, perhaps platform sold the book. But as I got on my little complaint high horse in Google chat with Zoe and whined that I wasn’t sure what the book was ACTUALLY about even though I’ve seen it everywhere (and the cover everywhere with title + subtitle explaining it’s “aboutness”), I still am lost as to … the point?

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And that’s because it’s a headline book. I have not read it (so grain of salt over my shoulder), but Goodreads reviews keep saying that it’s very repetitive. That is a sign to me that the research doesn’t have enough breadth and depth. That the points need more turtles all the way down—that the argument hasn’t reached its reaches.

As Zoe puts it here: there’s the media headline (imagine it the length of a “get ready with me” video) and then there’s the actual book, which is you talking for an hour with your friends about what you’re writing at a coffee shop.

But, BUT, it’s everywhere because of platform AND because media likes headline books (they’re easy!), and readers like depth. The headline or idea is the way INTO the book, but readers stay for the surprise, the side quests, the research, and writing. I don’t believe readers actually want the trite and trivial when they pick up a nonfiction book about IDEA, I believe they want to be (lacking a word here) spanned—across time and place, people and cultures, fact and folklore. The problem is, often books that do that harder work, are also harder to whittle down to a headline.

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So, publicists pull strands, like we’re working a loom. We try to glob one of the books strands to a contemporary cultural moment (or a clash with a cultural moment), we try to unweave the book nightly (heyyyy, Penelope) so that we can find the trap doors for media, the reason to take on the whole from one kernal of the cob. I am all over the place in my metaphors today (I may or may not have a fever). We collaborate with authors to come up with “talking points” and strands that they can write into (companion essays) that are parallel to the book, but perhaps not IN the book.

As an example, check out these talking points for Nicole Graev Lipson’s Mothers and Other Fictional Characters (which is out in two weeks!). It’s a memoir-in-essays and so it spans many ideas from one central beating heart—mothers are thinkers. I also love Hyeseung Song’s talking points for Docile. Thinking about your own talking points will get you closer to transforming the ideas in your book to headlines, which will get you closer to pitches that might work for your book. I dare to say that you have to do this for your book.

What we ultimately came to in our conversation about this, Zoe and I, is that the headline and the talking points and the get-ready-with-me are TALKING AT / (TO) people about the ideas in the book, and the book is about engaging WITH the ideas.

The difference is: a headline, a sort of flat argument or point, and a book, it’s round—it’s earth is not flat. This is why sometimes when you read a book you think, this could have been an article or essay. There’s simply not enough meat to it. And yet, media likes bites. The Big Idea Book Club has lots and lots of lists from authors on the bite-size points of their book. Here’s one for Raising a Rare Girl (I was looking at this book yesterday as a comp for another book).

These bite-size pieces are talking points, headlines, essay ideas. They do, in my opinion, flatten the ideas in the book a little bit, but that’s what MEDIA wants—digestible. The conversation that comes from your digestible pitch / headline can be nuanced, complicated, interesting, surprising, but to get to that part, you need the headline. Your corkscrew of a book, digging deep into the earth’s core (I’m freaked out by all the news that the core is transforming—can you tell?) is not what an editor at a magazine wants in a pitch. They want a couple paragraphs on a bite size idea, the point behind a headline, or even better the story behind a headline. Not necessarily a less savvy idea, just a smaller chunk of it.

Anyway, this is all to say—to get a bigger platform, you have to think in smaller pieces.

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

Coming soon (in MARCH!) to a shelf near you:

• Mothers and Other Fictional Characters | March 4

• Big Money Porno Mommy | March

• No Small Thing | March 15

ICYMI: Mothers and Other Fictional Characters got a “stunning” and “sparkling” review from Joan Frank in San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, Jehanne Dubrow’s essay on a friendship ghosted in The Conversationalist is a must-read!, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

I’ve never been good at this. Whatever chaotic good is on the impulsive side, that’s what I have. I’m methodically impulsive. I know almost immediately if something is for me, and I follow that gut-instinct as far as it’ll take me. Sometimes I consult the higher powers—the ancestors, but mostly I move with haste. Yesterday an author asked me if I feel settled after returning home from Lauren K. Watel’s incredible launch for Book of Potions (see video!) and I said, “I'm unsettled by nature, haha. As my husband likes to say, "you can lower your shoulders."

Just a quick note about Watel’s debut book. For the third time this week, someone said to me, “I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like Book of Potions before.” If you could see me I’m doing an evil little finger tapping. Yes, yes, my dears. It’s truly brand new, and I’d like to giveaway two copies to subscribers here—all you have to do is comment below & share your thoughts in review form once you’ve read it (on a retail site, please, or Goodreads). (We’re going circle of trust here).

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Blame my wonky nervous system, but (hyper-controlled) chaos and impulsivity has always been my go-to. It’s what I can lean on, actually. But I realize this style of doing doesn’t really fit the publishing mold, but rather than adapt, I’m going to make a little argument on behalf of folks who move this way—folks who are eager.

I know almost immediately from an initial email if I want to work on a book. We read every book that comes in before scheduling a call (at least typically) so I know before I schedule that call whether my instincts were right. And because I’m an obsessive control-freak, I usually respond to those emails within fifteen minutes. And I respond eagerly. I also know almost immediately after a call with an author if we would work well together—in a collaborative, creative way. I usually can tell if I’m the right (or not) person to publicize a book and promote an author for the next several months. I’ve honed my skills in figuring out energies over the last several years. If I leave a call and think, “huh, that’s going to be a lot,” (in a way that feels heavy and not thrilling) or I think, “that was really awkward,” and we just weren’t jiving, then I know I’m probably not the right person for that author to work with.

But this … sometimes doesn’t serve me. I mean when I’m leading with anxiety (rather than impulse) it definitely doesn’t serve me, but sometimes I can feel authors who were excited in initial emails to query us about publicity, pull away because I’m too quick and/or too eager about the prospect. As if I should be reigning that in for exclusivity. As if, I’m desperate. And I don’t want to conflate this to romantic relationships (though they can work the same way), but I only work on books that ping something in me—we turn down … too many books probably, so many books it makes me a little uncomfortable if I’m honest, but I always leave room in my schedule for a gem that comes to the inbox late, or an author whose career I’ve watched and wondered if we would make a good partnership. I can be booked up for a season or a year, but I make room for projects that soul-heart-gut are books I want a hand in bringing into the world.

And I guess I’m writing this because I wonder what it means to be immediate in a publishing landscape that at every turn is kind of (or unbearably) slow. To have an idea and pursue it (though I am often convinced to sleep on it). To say yes rather than maybe. To gut it out. I don’t have exclusivity in me, which leads me here. I know eagerness is “cringe”—I know to be excited about something has gone out of fashion, I know we no longer hear squeals of delight from anyone over the age of eleven, (if this doesn’t bring you squeals of delight, I truly don’t know what will), but it’s time we brought that back.

The world (let’s be real, the US) is cruel, cruel, cruel right now. It’s time we put a little stock in enthusiasm. We embrace passion, and not the instagramified “passion project” of coloring with the expensive markers, but the non-lucrative hobby—the hobby you don’t have to post about, you just do in your little quiet corners. (The Little Mermaid was so good at this she dedicated a whole cave to forks). Not the girl-boss “I’m just really passionate about building a conglomerate,” but true, this is what I love, this is what I’m trying, this is what I’m a beginner at.

This reminds me of this video about toxic masculinity and male birds. (LOL). Embrace the male bird strut and stroll.

When I’m eager about a project, I want to be able to say yes immediately without an author feeling like I’m too-eager? Eagerness is a sign of appreciation, get-up-and-go, hustle, a gut-yes. It’s not some weird sign that the club of Pine State isn’t exclusive enough. There’s no club. We work on books that strike us, surprise us, give us that buzzy feeling.

What I’m saying to authors too—post about your book a bunch. Send that letter to librarians. Visit your local bookstores (even if they’re kind of assholes to you—we can talk more about approaching independent bookstores). Post all the things that happen for your book. Write that perfect caption for your Publishers Marketplace announcement. Do that keychain giveaway. Make stickers. Be annoying about it, it’s your thing, and you worked hard. And if it feels good, embrace it. To me, it feels good to be like yes! yes! 100 times yes! I’m cheering at my desk. To put out that sort of energy in a world that is hell bent on making us hate things (not to be confused with being a hater, which I loooooove for you).

I’m going to share a not-so-secret secret with you. More happens for a book, the more you try, and the more you put yourself out there. I always tell inside publicity teams (teams that work for the publisher) that I work with on a book, I’m FOR overlap. I want people to hear about a book from a few different sources so they’re like okay, OKAY, I get it. There’s a fine line, right? I don’t like reading books when they’re SUPER BUZZY. I still haven’t read the latest Sally Rooney, for instance, even though I do love her. But I also do want the books I work on to feel a little overwhelming, a little domineering, a little … shall I do it? EAGER!

There are thousands, thousands, thousands, of books sold every year. Some get not a ping of recognition in the media landscape. Some people feel successful with a review and a podcast interview. Me, I kind of like a flood—a strategic flood. If you don’t put yourself out there, no one will look for you. It’s okay to have a billboard on the side of your metaphorical highways.

My husband’s brother works at our local science museum (yes, he is a celebrity in our house). And he brought us these sample bugs, we call them “buzzy bugs.” My toddler hated them immediately—he has never liked mechanisms moving that he doesn’t control. My seventeen month old says, “buzzy bug” every time we get on the changing table. So, we pull that little green bug out of its home (a change canister on our mantel), we flick his little switch, and he buzzes. And my baby squeals. And he buzzes the bug on his belly. And he buzzes his chin. And he buzzes the soft pads of his baby feet, and that’s how I want to feel when I work on a book, and how I want you to feel when you put one out into the world.

(He’s also very good at saying no, he must get that from me too).

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Electric Lit and Skylar Miklus named Lauren K. Watel’s Book of Potions a “Most Anticipated Poetry Collection of 2025,” and you can read an essay by Watel about the simmering anger of the collection in Adroit, Publishers Weekly & Geoff Graser interviewed Lisa Russ Spaar about her debut novel Paradise Close, an excerpt from Nicole Graev Lipon’s Mother and Other Fictional Characters is in this month’s issue of Boston Globe Magazine, Mom Egg Review also put it on this month’s bookshelf, Jesse Lee Kercheval has a new graphic piece in Solrad, a new (truly beautiful) review of Jessica Jacob’s unalone is up at Christian Century, Dr. Melody Glenn wrote about “wellness farms” and RFK Jr. for TIME, and Sanora Babb gets her due at the Academy of American Poets, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

I don’t know when agents became the top of the publishing food pyramid, maybe it’s because they’re the first line of defense with publishing a big four book, or agents feel like a coveted part of the publishing process, or it’s that all-consuming yes from someone who “actually knows what they’re talking about.” It feels like everyone wants to know the secret sauce to writing a query, and I could give 2734 talks on this and still not give you every ingredient). But somewhere along the line, the agent is what we’ve made pinnacle (and then perhaps that wonky screenshot from Publishers Marketplace after that).

But I would argue, far more important than thinking agents as soon as you finish a manuscript, is thinking about publicity—not searching a database of agents, not reading the 3798 Substacks on how to land an agent, but really sitting-in and stewing on publicity. This is not to say you should be researching publicists, this is to say thinking publicity FIRST will help you understand the ways to market your book to an agent or publisher.

I know there’s a whole conversation about how much work in marketing and publicity writers should be doing (I recommend the recent Lit Hub piece from Kevin Maloney), and whether I agree or disagree with the fact that writers are artists absent from the publicity machine (although storytelling is inherently marketing …), we still live in a time when publicity and marketing is partly up to the writer. I can run a whole campaign without a writer speaking to me about the book, but it won’t be as good as the collaborative campaign I do with a writer where we’re working in conjunction to hone our messaging and ideas.

I sent holiday cards this year, so I’m feeling all-powerful, and in my late-night-pre-birthday-doom-saving-efforts, I ordered myself this little snail mail mad lib from Pipsticks. (I, too, lose myself to an Instagram ad with the ease of Shop Pay sometimes).

And in looking at it again this morning, I thought to myself—what might a mad lib be like for someone who is trying to figure out a bit about their own books publicity BEFORE writing that query, SO THAT they can take a more holistic approach to approaching “the machine.” I also need to note here that publicity is a long game, please do reach out to publicists early, but not too early. I can’t in my brain carry a 2027 book right now, but I also can’t take on a March book—you’re already too late.

Here are a few things I would include:

But first a question: when you have finished a book, whatever genre, I want you to ask yourself if you’ve done everything in your power to make yourself intriguing to a publisher? We are, however you feel about it, in a time of platform. We can complain all day about publishers missing the mark, betting on the wrong books, etc, but if you’re coming to the table with nothing for them to work with (and nothing for your publicist to work with—you, an unknown entity, how do you expect them to magically snap you into breakout stardom?). Have I done well with relatively anonymous authors? Yes. But it’s harder to pitch them. I have to use my own work to build on that work, I have to get things moving earlier for those authors—attempt to get some hits before publication, I have to rely more on their regional and hometowns uplifting them, or their identity-communities (which is a whole other conversation). It is more work, more time, and therefore more money.

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MADLIBBING:

For novels: readers care about characters & conflicts (not themes, though publishing cares about themes). I know every synopsis on every book is trying its damndest to get readers to care about theme, and this word just feels like a relic to high school English class. In this same line of thinking, some readers (and genres) care about tropes. So, you’re going to need to figure out, what do your characters want, what are their tensions points, what’s the central conflict of the book (where the desires and the tensions meet).

Questions for the mad lib:

• OMG, Did you hear about _____? (Make the desires and tension GOSSIP)—see what comes of it? Everyone loves gossip and most people love a scandal.

• Can you believe she/he/they ______?

• I can’t believe [insert character] did when …

• Who do they think they are? …

• I totally agree with [insert character] about …

• I think [insert character] is wrong about this …

• What would you have done if ….

For memoir: agents and readers BOTH want to know why you and why now? Go back to elementary school and think: who, what, when, where, and how—you need to be able to answer every question, and then frame your query in your story’s importance RIGHT NOW, for readers RIGHT NOW.

If you find yourself unable to answer “right now,” or you’re using some sort of canned language without specificity, then you might not be a ready to query. Canned language would be things like “as we reckon with trauma with books like Body Keeps the Score and the #metoo movement…”—y’all the #metoo movement was years ago at this point, still VERY relevant of course, but it’s not a thing to tie a book to at this point unless you’re to add to that conversation in some new way (but I would still say think long and hard about that).

If this is you, my suggestion on the publicity side would be to start doing some pop culture (Substack, Instagram, magazines, Twitter) and news deep dives. What are people talking about? What’s in the news? What are the headlines of magazines that include your readers? What are “influencers” (using it in the broadest terms to also include cultural critics) talking about (folks that have platform interests that intersect with your book’s story and threads SPECIFICALLY). HOW are they talking about the things that intersect with your book? It takes a lot of work to figure out why your story matters over everyone else’s story (yes, I mean “over” in terms of market—there is only so much room), and the work will be so helpful in the long run if you do it.

Questions for the mad lib:

• I deeply connected with what [cultural critic] said about [topic], but I wonder if we’re not done thinking about …

• In thinking about the [insert movement / topic], I found myself thinking about … [interesting side quests from your book] …

• For me [thing #1 ] and [thing #2 ] are absolutely connected, I cannot think about [thing #1] without thinking ….

• What changed my perspective on [thread] was …

• It was in [insert moment] that I knew I would never feel the same about [topic]…

• I love thinking about [topic] and how it’s intimately tied to ….

• When I talk about my story, people most often connect with ….

• Part of writing about [topic], is that it leads to [other threads]…

Which leads me to think before all this, you’re going to need to figure out what your book IS (in the genre categories of the marketplace, not in the genre categories of your heart).

Pitching a book as literary fiction when it’s upmarket is unhelpful to you and agents / publishers. You HAVE to figure this out.

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Defining your genre, BISAC codes, and categories for the marketplace: My MFA thesis was this weird Cornell note looking 200-page document of essays where my current self (at the time) was on the larger side, and my eleven year old self’s dialogue was on the smaller side (the year of tragedies in my life). It has no market at a big four press. In the genre of my heart, I thought I was doing something innovative and it would be revered in the land of Lydia Yuknavitch’s, Sheila Heti’s and Kate Zambreno’s. I haven’t opened it since I graduated.

In terms of genre, a few ways you can define this is in trying to figure out what writers align with you (not writers you’re inspired by, but writers whose work your work reflects in some way), and see how they’ve been defined by marketing teams.

Lydia Yuknavitch and Kate Zambreno’s work have both been labeled “manifestos” (funny), Kate Zambreno (Amina Cain, Maggie Nelson) all infuse some term related to “literary scholarship” or “personal canons”—that is using literature as a means to navigate the terrain of the personal. Zambreno’s work has been called “layered, meditative, mode-warping, inventive” etc. On Amazon, her latest book The Light Room has been labeled “memoir,” “nature writing & essays,” and “motherhood.”

So my query is going to translate all of this to something like, “structurally inventive” (will not help me get an agent: an agent will see this and think intriguing, but independent press—they might open it, but it’s going to be a hard sell), “essays,” (another hard sell) and “girlhood” (oversaturated market).

I feel like it’s important to say here that almost every writer in the list above started at an independent or small press and with more books, moved to a big four press. So, I am aware of my future journey should I find myself in the page again.

Yuknavitch’s memoir The Chronology of Water, has been called “memoir” alongside “highly unconventional,” and “not your mother’s memoir.” As in, this is memoir, but it’s not really memoir you’re expecting (lots of readers enter memoir (or do not for this very reason) expecting this sort of summary of someone’s life, and I’m so glad we’re moving away from that on the memoir front. In some lists, Chronology of Water been called “narrative nonfiction” which I find to be much more journalistic than memoir. On Amazon it’s under “women’s biographies” and “LGBTQ biographies.” Do you see how these labels are like herding cats? I would not say this book is either of those things, and yet—these categories determine how you find it on retail sites and in the library, they’re so important to a book’s sales. Also, this book is TOO old for me to be comping. 2011 is TOO long ago, the marketplace was so different and readers were different too.

So, if I’m looking at all of this from Lydia, I might translate this when approaching the next stage of publishing as “fans of narrative nonfiction’s layered storytelling, memoir’s deep bravery, and unconventional writers like (insert list) will love The Green Glass Door (my thesis title). This is super generic, don’t quote me.

Questions for the mad lib:

• I’m writing for readers who love … [THINGS, not necessarily books]

• Some imaginary shelves I would put my book on …

• If the bookstore wasn’t in order by last name, I’d loved to be shelved with authors like …

• Browsing the library, I want to find my book in …

• In looking at Amazon categories, it looks like I fit in …

• People who blurbed [insert comp] were …, and they might have been a good blurb because …"

Differences and stand-outs: If you’re not approaching comps as, “yes, my book is like XYZ, but it’s different in these ways,” you’re doing it wrong. I’m working on quite a few motherhood books. As someone who avoided motherhood books at all costs for the last several years, the flood gates opened with Nicole Graev Lipson’s Mothers and Other Fictional Characters which quite literally taught me that I can have an intellectual life while being a mother, and those two things weren’t mutually exclusive (maybe it’s misogyny, and the sad thought that I never thought of my own mother as a “thinker” before I had kids—WHY—but I spent my first few years of motherhood wanting to keep my intellectual life completely separate from mothering, and so I literally NEVER bought motherhood books. And when I did, or they were sent to me, I was real snotty about it).

So, what makes your book stand-out in the sea of _________ books? This is going to help you in pitching your book at all stages. I’m seeing the next phase of publishing saturation being “midlife books.” Last week I had to Google, “what age is midlife?” only to find that I am in the age of midlife. I do not feel “midlife.” Most of my friends (mid-thirties) would not define themselves as midlife. A book marketed as “midlife” would not find us.

Questions for the mad lib:

• Readers who didn’t like [insert comp], said …

• Readers said they learned from [insert comp] …

• [Book speaking], I’m not like other books because …

• People who love [insert NON BOOK RELATED THING] will love my book…

• People who want to understand [insert NON BOOK RELATED THING] will love my book …

• People who want more [THING] in their books about [THING] will want my book because …

• People who want less [THING] in their books about [THING"] will want my book because …

Making “trends” work for you: A hint would be, if it’s trending now, you are going to need a new way to approach the current trend (because in terms of publishing, you are frankly too late). If you’re writing for “midlife” readers (All Fours is the current headliner here), how can you help writers see you in that category, but above the fray of the trend—beyond the trend? One way would be to publish a few essays in conjunction with your book’s topic that you can use in pitches.

Anna J Rollins (who is on Substack here) is one of my favorite writers who GETS IT. If you read through her headlines, they’re formulaic (and often not chosen by her, but I’m sure she knows how to write a headline), but she’s writing about things that I care about—like her recent TODAY essay on giving up extracurriculars for a year—as a mom with toddlers, I’m already trying to figure out how my mom did it all, and how I’m going to manage our family’s life with the extracurricular pressures.

Read READER reactions: Read why READERS loved a trending book. Spend some time on Storygraph and Goodreads. Spend some time on Bookstagram reading captions. Spend some time searching Substack for reviews. It’s one thing to read what critics said about a book, guarantee there’s a “dazzling” in there, but what you really want to see is why ACTUAL readers loved a book.

While they’re not always in conflict with critics, reader reviews are way more earnest. They’re not trying to “prove” something, or do some sort of convincing. They are leading with feeling, not with sales. Critical darlings does not a sales lead make. Reader reviews on the big platforms are trying to build community. This is where the good stuff is in terms of how to think about marketing your book for the query or future readers.

Questions for the mad lib:

• Five-star readers said …

• 1-star readers said …

• Three-star readers said …

• Readers loved this book because of its …

• Readers didn’t like this book because of its …

• Lines I loved from reader reviews …

• Things I disagreed with from reader reviews …

• Things I agreed with from reader reviews …

Fun stuff to think about:

• Where might you find someone reading your book? Is it in the bleachers of their kid’s soccer match? Is it in a quiet cafe in a corner with a cappuccino? Is it in a book club through the local library? During their commute? Before bed TBR pile? This is going to tell you so much more about your readers and your book than you might expect. (This question can lead to answers to: how much time your readers have—is your book structured to fit that lifestyle (I’ll admit this is a crazy question), what they want to be seen reading, where they want to be seen reading, how they find books, who they trust with recommendations, etc)

• Rather than adjectives, think in nouns and verbs: Rather than hoping your book is described as “unputdownable” (though a girl can dream), think about describing your book in ACTIONS and CONCRETES. Think about senses and adding texture to your queries and pitches. When I read queries, I read a lot of writers focused more on getting a point across, than tangibly centering me and bringing me in with graspable language. It’s not description of feeling that moves readers, it’s descriptions of grounded things.

• Write a letter ABOUT your book to a friend: While every agent I know describes queries as a “business document” so I wouldn’t encourage you to write to them like a friend, though I would say stay friendly—an interesting activity might be to write a letter about your book to a friend. What would you tell your closest friends about your book? Your parents? Your dog walker? Your favorite podcast host? Your local coffeeshop barista? A stranger who asks what you do?

  Different from an elevator pitch, what would you say to people who are both already invested in you and folks who you don’t know at all? What’s between those two letters that you can use to your advantage in a pitch?

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Nicole Graev Lipson’s Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is on The Millions Most-Anticipated List, Jason Friedman’s LIBERTY STREET is reviewed in Tuscaloosa News and on Alabama Public Radio, Jessica Jacobs, author of unalone, is “Queering Genesis” on Christian Century’s Queering Contemplation podcast, Christian J. Collier, author of GREATER GHOST goes deep with Andy Fogle for Salvation South, Jenny Sadre-Orafai, author of DEAR OUTSIDERS, builds an immersive narrative world for Electric Literature, Sarah LaBrie, author of NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART, talks letting love happen in Creative Independent, Chelsey Pippin Mizzi, author of TAROT FOR CREATIVITY, navigates creative seasons on the FEMME ON podcast, Tatiana Johnson-Boria will be at the Woodberry Poetry Room with Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Saeed Jones and porsha olayiwola on February 12th, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

I’m intrigued about this as a publicist, the space between marketing and the truth of a book. Mostly, the ways in which we try to make our marketing descriptions match a book or, when we purposefully try to omit certain aspects of the book especially if they don’t fit a current narrative. For instance, if I knew the “satire” in Madwoman was that the main character is a “momfluencer” obsessed with “wellness” I would have never picked it up. The marketing team might have known it would be hard to pitch that alongside a domestic violence narrative (though are we sure??? because look at Colleen Hoover), and so they held back on that aspect of the book in the description, even though Clove (the narrator) is 70% supplement.

On the other side of things, I’m the first to admit that I can’t really take on any books that feel too heavy at the moment. So, when I think about working on intense books at Pine State, I think about the ways in which I can approach readers that won’t immediately say “discomfort!” or “this book will make you uncomfortable.” There’s a lot of good writing in other newsletters right now about the lack of criticism in criticism and the move to having authors write reviews rather than critics, as professionals. Ross Barkan’s recent Trust the Critic?, Elizabeth Kay Cook and Melanie Jennings on The Big Five Publishers Killing Literary Fiction, Brandon Taylor on Bringing back FICTION, in general essays by Naomi Kanakia and Angelica Jade Bastién. All of this has also found its way into marketing and publicity—it’s a kind of placation. I fear it, I loathe it, and I have also felt myself trying to employ it in pitches (particularly when a book isn’t easily palatable, but also doesn’t fit an on-going popular narrative of the moment).

I say I can’t really do heavy, and then there’s me last week picking up Fi by Alexandra Fuller from the library—who do I think I am? Fuller has a disordered writing style. Her train of thought is not sentences as stepping stones leading to a river. It is jarring, even jerky—like you’re in a car on a rough terrain. It would be incredibly hard for a marketing team to match the style of Fuller’s writing in a book description. At times, I feel jumbled reading her nonfiction—it’s purposeful. While I would love the challenge of describing her book in a pitch, it would be a feat. I can’t find an excerpt or I would share it.

Here’s the book description from Grove:

“Fair to say, I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday.” And so begins Alexandra Fuller’s open, vivid new memoir, Fi. It’s midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel.

And then – suddenly and incomprehensibly – her son Fi, at 21 years old, dies in his sleep.

No stranger to loss – young siblings, a parent, a home country – Alexandra is nonetheless leveled. At the same time, she is painfully aware that she cannot succumb and abandon her two surviving daughters as her mother before her had done. From a sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve herself whole. There is no answer, and there are countless answers – in poetry, in rituals and routines, in nature and in the indigenous wisdom she absorbed as a child in Zimbabwe. By turns disarming, devastating and unexpectedly, blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine of painstakingly grieving a child in a culture that has no instructions for it.

In the book description, it’s definitely being marketed as a grief book. I would normally say grief is a hard sell, but we’re in a time capsule of grief. And it may be that grief is a hard sell to readers, and not a hard sell to critics and magazines. (In general, there’s always a boundary line for books about trauma (how much folks can take)—but trauma does do better with critics). I wonder if Fi’s book description is trying to follow our past few years in grief memoirs like of Amy Lin’s Here After, Kathryn Schulz’ Lost & Found, Us, After by Rachel Zimmerman, and others.

However, In the first 30 pages, Fi is a breakup, campout, rusty truck, memories of childhood book. It’s interesting to open a memoir thinking you’re going to immediately get one thing, and instead your thrust into the world in another way. I love that art does this. I’m not saying start “in media res” blah blah blah, I’m more interested in the routes writers take to get to what a publisher thinks is the “heart” of the narrative. What then, becomes the gut? the brain? the limbs? the toes? And how much space writers are given to get there. All that advice on the internet says that agents make their decisions about books in the first ten pages (can confirm) and I see writers complain on social media that their story doesn’t even start there—so what’s the happy medium? And are prolific writers given more elasticity on how long their central story takes to a develop, or more leeway in what other cilia they bring into that cell (look at me, being all biological!)

That leads me here.

A few weekends ago, I read this incredible essay in The Cut by Christina Rivera, “My Connection to Corky the Orca and Her Glass-Shattering Cry,” from her forthcoming book My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women. And I thought to myself, “this is one of the best essays/excerpts I’ve read in a while, and I don’t think I could handle a whole book of it.”

But the question that plagues me is that Rivera got this big publicity hit in a New York Mag publication, an essay full of emotional tenacity and very clear, time-in research, and yet—will it lead to a sale? (My sale?). This is the book, I don’t need to read the description because I read the excerpt. I don’t even care how they’re marketing it, because the excerpt is so absorbing.

BUT let’s take a look for purposes of writing a newsletter. Here are my little thoughts on the book description (my thoughts in italics / parenthesis):

An urgent exploration of caring and mothering on a planet in crisis (this is purely trying to fit a narrative we’re overflowing with at the moment (I am not complaining)—mothering + climate / braiding caring for the planet with caring for the people). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a climate crisis book without the word “urgent” as a descriptor, so it’s time to switch things up. I am wondering too about “exploration” here, which is an interesting choice in a book of sea narratives and the connotations of that word. I also wonder with this tagline—who are we leaving out or who will read that one line and not think twice about buying).

In a swell of sea-linked essays (sea-linked is cute! + swell, I love the call of the sea in the language here), (they should introduce her since this is a debut and she’s got a fierce background for writing the book. I know this is not the traditional way of “book description” but no one reads an author’s bio). Christina Rivera explores the kinship between marine animals, humans, and Earth’s blue womb (Earth’s blue womb is stunning! 10/10). Rivera’s investigative questions begin with the toxic burden of her body (but what does this mean? “toxic burden of her body”) and spiral out—to a grieving orca, a hunted manta ray, a pregnant sea turtle, a spawning salmon, an “endling” porpoise, and the “mother culture” of sperm whales—as she redefines what it means to mother and defend a collective future. (love ending on “defending a collective future” right after sperm whales, and I also love the list of what’s ACTUALLY in the book).

Braiding memoir with embodied climate science (I think we all know it’s “braiding memoir with …), Rivera challenges that it’s not anthropomorphism to feel deep connection to nonhuman species and proposes that gathering in collective grief (would have found another way to say this because grief makes people nervous—grief is a HARD sell, and “collective” is so strongly used in the first paragraph) is essential amid the sixth mass extinction. For ecofeminists, fans of Rachel Carson (intellectual) and Terry Tempest Williams (memoir)—and for anyone who feels themself disintegrate in the presence of the sea (We need a new comp beyond Terry Tempest Williams for the eco-memoir, and I love the phrase “disintegrate in the presence of the sea”—who among us have not felt its largess? This phrasing brings people in, while the rest of the description niches, it’s a nice component)—My Oceans offers a timely and wondrous descent into the deep waters of interconnection in which we swim. (Let’s retire the word timely, everything is “timely” in its time).

It looks to me like the book description matches what I read in the essay, BUT the emotion of the essay went to the wayside for the intellectual in the book description. The closest we get to emotion in this book description is all metaphorical and/or language-driven. A bummer. The book description is saying THIS IS A CLIMATE BOOK BY A WOMAN WHO IS A CAREGIVER, when I wish it had a little bit more of the actual urgency of the essay.

I’m being picky, but saying “urgent” and feeling the urgency are two different things. This is what agents mean when they say they want the query to share the stylistic vibes (& language & voice) of the book itself. That’s what I want our pitches to do too when they land in inboxes. If you want to call your book urgent, agents (& all the turtles all the way down) want to read a query with that feeling of urgency, rather than the description of urgent.

Full disclosure: I wouldn’t have bought this book if I had only read the book description. I needed that excerpt, Rivera’s voice and the way she argues her point, to preorder the book.

It’s interesting because I did buy The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush, which feels in conversation with My Oceans. I think it’s because that book was marketed similarly but as “hopeful,” which I need when reading about the climate crisis. Also, the book description from Milkweed tells me exactly why Rush is the person writing this book—she’s on a vessel seeking, “the elusive voice of the ice.” The framing here is appreciated too, “a new kind of Antarctica story”—which speaks to the fact that this is a woman’s voice in a narrative space traditionally “claimed” by men, and gives historical-context to Rush’s narrative. This is what I was trying to say about the word “exploration” up there in the description of My Oceans—it’s calling to that history without giving context or explaining why.

And for full, full disclosure: below is my “general” pitch for a poetry collection I’ve been working on, Jehanne Dubrow’s Civilians (if you want to check out the book description or buy a copy). I don’t like pulling apart someone’s hard (and good) work without being vulnerable with my own. I hope this pitch speaks to what I mean when I say the way that a book is described should be a voice in harmony with the book, not “about” it. I also realize a book description is doing something different in marketing than a pitch is meant to do, so they are serving two different purposes. It’s an apples and oranges predicament.

And please know, much of the language in this pitch is directly from Dubrow and the poems. She is a brilliant, particular writer with a voice that always moves me. There’s a poem in Civilians about Odysseus in older age toiling in his orchards that I think about (still!) daily.

General pitch: “Following Stateside, which was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, added to the US Naval Academy studies, and made into a one-act opera, and Dots & Dashes, featured on This American Life–in the final book of poet Jehanne Dubrow’s acclaimed military spouse trilogy, Civilians (LSU Press, February 2025), her husband returns to land, all his history precarious, her gaze splitting him into shards. Here, the loom of our wars is untangled through the story of marriage.

“I bring our war into my bed each night and barely

move in its trembling light.”

For two decades, she pinned ribbons to the hull of his chest. Yet when her husband leaves his uniform for the last time and returns to her in Texas, the ship inside him–full of passageways and shifting lights–remains afar.

In the long parade of after, there is discomfort, the word divorce, repeated moments of “Thank you for your service.” While he feels for the blade his body was, she feels in the dark for the iron edge. A candid look at a loved one transitioning to a new reality as a noncombatant, Civilians attempts to chisel down the open spaces large enough to hold all kinds of absences. Whether he is beneath the low rumble of a ship engine, or folded velvet in their shared sheets–there is a cleaving.

In conversation with the classics, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Homer’s Odyssey, Euripides’s The Trojan Women, and Sophocles’s Philoctetes, Dubrow carries her love like a blood diamond too tight on her finger–too pristine for this new kingdom with her husband, in conflict with himself.”

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Sarah LaBrie’s No One Gets to Fall Apart is named New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2024, LaBrie was also interviewed by Brad Listi for Otherppl, Booklist says A Death in Diamonds by S.J. Bennett reads, “With gripping intrigue from the very first page, this could easily be read as a standalone,” Christian J. Collier, author of Greater Ghost, is named as part of Poets & Writers annual debut poets list, Sarah Lyn Rogers’ Cosmic Tantrum is on the Debutiful Most Anticipated List for 2025, NY Sun gives Sanora Babb her due with review of Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb, Jessica Jacobs publishes an essay in Niv Magazine, Boise State Public Radio listeners recommend Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb, Inquest names The Warehouse a top book in their Year in Books, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

And then sent me this gem from our very own North Carolina Zoo, a zoo I frequent with my toddler and one year old just so I can hear the toddler say he wants to see, “ephalints!”

I have my own weird history with THE Nicholas Sparks (I coached his college roommate’s kid in swimming & that’s the extent of the story I’ll be telling here today). But I’m mystified at the excitement I have if this is a real publicity hit for his book publicity team. And it, I think, surely is.

No, truly, we’re mystified:

If you see me trying to place rare animals from Pine State Pub books on mountains with names like “Purgatory Mountain” know it’s both a sign of the times, and you saw nothing. There’s no shame in book publicity, say it with me.

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This week I got to talk to a few writers through Brown Bag Lit (you can watch the playback here and Subscribe to their Youtube channel or follow their newsletter) and the number one question (well, there are two) that I always get on Q&A’s like this is: (1) why didn’t it work? (2) what if nothing happens / is it worth it?

Publicity of any sort is a game of chance, right? Every publicist’s contract says so with some iteration of we cannot determine the outcome of pitching. You’re paying for trying (and hopefully transparency). And in that case, you want to work with someone that has the following qualities: hustle, ingenuity, relationships, (comedic) timing, collaborative spirit, and an embrace of the mad idea!

Can I spend time building good relationships, writing great pitches, perfecting essays and op-eds, making cool press kits, brainstorming talking points, helping to define the many, many, many micro-audiences, imagining newsletter schedules or social media schedules, yes, of course. This is the bread & butter, this is the everyday.

But the mixed bingo card and game of CLUE of Nicholas Sparks at the zoo with a genetically-rare deer sighting for his new book, is the X factor of publicity—it’s like publicity-potion making.

Shout out to one of my big winter books (& the best author to see in my inbox because I cackle at every email), Book of Potions by Lauren K. Watel.

So, do you want the team behind your book that is going to pitch a rare deer to the NC Zoo in hopes this strange and ephemeral moment can be captured and plugged for a book, yes! And I get it, he’s Nicholas Sparks, so he doesn’t really need the publicity in the case of a debut author. But because he has a mass commercial audience that may not be reading the latest New Yorker review, and he’s not necessarily the hot Bookstagram / Booktok author he (perhaps) might have been ten or twenty years ago, the way you remind his audience he is still publishing your favorite picket-fence-romance, is by going to where his commercial appeal has a crossover audience—the NC zoo—where white moms plan their fall photos. (It really is so beautiful there, it’s me, I’m the white mom).

107k followers, and almost 7k people hearted this photo. It doesn’t even have the book cover in the main image (a cardinal sin of book publicity!) and yet, everyone will want to read the caption to know more about this special fawn. (Yes, it is also tapping into everyone’s favorite form of social media joy—small, odd animals).

This is like … winning Plinko, and then spinning the wheel and winning the showcase levels of book publicity.

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And these ideas don’t come from nowhere. Back to our two questions—why didn’t it work (which really means, “why don’t I have sales when I did all the traditional modes of book publicity?) and there are 1000 different answers to that.

In this season, it could be timing (election), genre, what your cover looks like, what the hook of your book is (I had to turn down a book yesterday that sounded interesting though traumatic because I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to take it on), hitting only a specific audience—or one tier of that audience, relying too much on one angle of book publicity (bylines, events, reviews, availability in bookstores, etc), not sharing your good news (don’t shame spiral about the amount of things you’re sharing on Bluesky about your book, we need you to share your good news, your audience continues the messaging-spread), genre, but most often I think—why it didn’t work is because you got stuck in the “this is what book publicity looks like.” I get a review here, I get an interview here, I make a few anticipated lists, and I do five tour stops in my bookstore region. While those are all beautiful, good, celebratory things, I’m positive in a society where book-banning is going to continue ramping up, we have to find other spaces to celebrate and demand literature. The zoo has never been on a media list for me, but why NOT? Maybe the question isn’t “why am I doing this?” and it should be, “why wouldn’t I try this?”

And the second question, “what if nothing happens?” Well, what if nothing happens? How would that feel for you? Is the trying worth the possibilities?

And I mean that in the myriad of ways:

• physically—schlepping books to a bookstore or the post office or writing 100 cards for booksellers on the chance that you get picked for Indie Next?

• emotionally—how would it feel to put so much work into something and see it sort of dashed. And I say this because I talk to writers all the time that are on publishers mid-lists and want to talk about post-release publicity (which exists for poetry and doesn’t *really* exist for other genres. We try it, and we have had success, but the current publicity cycles just don’t cater to this timeline. So, we have to do an interesting OTHER thing to make the book have the same splash or momentum. That’s sometimes more, and very different work than pre-release publicity).

• mentally—what might this mean for your career? for your next book? for the ideas of this book?

I’m biased obviously about the amount of work and the outcomes, and I know that all publicists are built differently, and whether you have an outside team and/or an inside team, you’re a big fish or a mid-list, a poet or a romance author, a chapbook or a celebrity memoir, all makes a big difference in what those outcomes look like, but I always land on the effort side. Is this because I got awards for participating growing up? Maybe. But wouldn’t you want to say, I did as much as I possibly could instead of “I could have done more.”

(And shout out to every publicist I know who will inevitably find the perfect reader or critic exactly seven months after finishing a book campaign. I see you, you are loved).

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s biography of Sanora Babb got this beautiful review in New Republic and this thoughtful review in LA Review of Books, Margaret Ross’s Saturday was also reviewed in LA Review of Books, Kelly McMasters had a stunning essay about bats in Orion Magazine, Sarah Beth West at Chapter16 interviews Christian Collier, Esinam Bediako was interviewed in The OC Register, Ruben Quesada was interviewed for THEM and Creative Independent, Chelsey Pippin Mizzi was on Unleash Your Inner Creative & talks with The Wild Hunt, Sarah LaBrie’s No One Gets to Fall Apart is a New York Times Editor’s Choice, Margo Steines was interviewed for The Racket, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

ICYMI, her original essay is here:

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But before we get into that, I (Cassie) want to talk a little bit about the publicity essay, and perhaps why it gets a bad rap as a useless sales tool, or an annoying ask at the height of book release anxiety, or that its just a puff piece written in haste.

Part of the problem is the way we frame these essays on the outset. Writers seem to think that any essay written as part of book publicity must mention the book or the book must be anchored to (anchored in, even!) the essay. That’s simply not true, (please, gah!) and would be to your detriment to write ABOUT the book because that limits the placement for the essay (Literary Hub, Writers Digest, CRAFT Literary, Fiction Advocate).

In fact, I want writers to steer clear of their book almost entirely when writing a publicity essay. Sure, I want the book mentioned in the byline, but if I had it my way, I wouldn’t even want an editor to be able to sniff out that we’re using the essay for book promotion. (Though I do mention the book forthcoming in my pitch, but it’s at THE BOTTOM or it’s just “author name, author of BOOK TITLE,” in the beginning).

Should the essay overlap with the world of your book in some way? That would be amazing.

Does it matter if it doesn’t at all? It doesn’t!

Will it relate to the themes of your book anyway? It will, because you’re a person with a writing scab to pick. You’ve probably been writing about the same things for most of your career. We obsess.

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I would say Raj Tawney (not my client, I do not even know him!) has the publicity essay down to a science. He has two books out—a middle grade novel forthcoming later this month, and a memoir that’s food-related, and his side-essay writing absolutely relates to the book, but relates more to the world as we’re living it day-by-day.

His middle grades novel is called All Mixed Up, and he just published this essay, “As someone who is mixed race I see myself in Kamala. A largely unseen bloc of voters will too” in San Francisco Chronicle. It’s an identity-point essay that relates to the book but is not about the book.

His memoir published in October of last year is about his multicultural identity too, and he published essays around publication about The Beatles and his father’s journey from India to New York (identity), celebrity chefs selling out (food memoir), his eyebrows (embracing the self), his family’s search for a specific meal (food memoir + searching—very memoir), flour’s power (food memoir), Tony Bennett (family nostalgia, introducing his family), brotherhood and basketball (introducing his family), and HERE is a book essay where he writes about the publicity behind his book (identity + writer).

I share all of these because I think if you scroll through Tawney’s body of work, you’ll see his obsessions and repeated themes, the same way you would see those things in an author’s body of book work. Sure, he’s connecting what he’s writing in essays to what he’s written in his book, but if you look at the span of media outlets: The Comeback, Bloomberg, Business Insider, NBC Think, The Sun Sentinel, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, The Spectator, New York Times, USA Today, you’ll find there’s such a range for him to build a new audience with each publicity essay. He’s bringing new people into different facets of his book. And perhaps, he (like Lilly) thought about what audience he needed to connect with for each essay and then pursued those media outlets with purpose.

A few of my favorite publicity essays from clients are deeply-felt, beautifully written essays. Cynthia Marie Hoffman’s “The Beast In Your Head” at The Sun (to go with her memoir-in-poems Exploding Head; Eugenia Leigh’s on othering mothers with mental illness for TIME (to go with her poetry collection Bianca); Margo Steines on exercise addiction for The Guardian (to go with her memoir-in-essays Brutalities: A Love Story); Susan Ito on allegiance for Guernica (to go with her memoir I Would Meet You Anywhere); Beth Kephart on wasps for Orion Magazine (to go with her bibliomemoir My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera). They’re all just great essays on their own, and happen to relate to their book projects too.

Publicity essays are not meant to be fluff pieces, or underhanded, or click-baity at all, but instead meant to do several different things at once.

In my perfect world, those things are as follows:

• Build an author’s portfolio & resume / for career things, for status things, for future grant and fellowship applications, for future jobs or tenure, for momentum for the gigs after they’re working with me, for more freelance work, etc.

• Build platform / And I don’t mean Instagram followers (though that’s an added benefit), I mean platform as in folks start thinking of them as the writer on (insert niche)(insert trend)(insert idea). As the expert on (insert niche)(insert trend)(insert idea). As someone willing to speak on (and speak on well) … insert …

• Build associations / I want that platform and those connections to be less, “oh Lilly is writing about this …” and more “oh, Lilly Dancyger is the writer you want if you’re thinking about doing an issue on Friendship.” Or “I’m building an AWP panel on [this thing], I must have [this person] on it” or “I’m starting a salon and I want the first conversation to include [this person] who writes about [this idea.]

• Build connections / each publicity piece is a chance for a writer I work with to get to know an editor at another media outlet that may lead to future relationships, connections, and work. This is true for passes too, especially kind passes. When I’m not being paid as a part of the book’s publicity, the success of the book and the author still feels like success to me (and perhaps for me?). Whatever I want to build for an author on the publicity side, I want it to continue living for years after I’m done. I want invitations to continue for them beyond my work.

• Build pitching strategy / the more you pitch, the better you get at pitching. Literary magazine submissions and pitching media are such different animals, and it’s great practice to try to figure out your own angles with a book, project, or yourself. What can YOU say and say WELL. What do you have a say on? What do you care about, and how do you get that across to an editor in a pitch? How are pitches organized? All of that is a benefit to a writer after the book publicity churn is over.

• Build chatter in the silence / the last month before your book comes out is QUIET. You might be recording podcast interviews, pre-recording interviews, or answering endless coordination emails, but mostly you’re gearing up for a rush of things in the month post-book-release (in our current cycles). One way to keep from unraveling, is to put your energy into these essays. Lilly said it’s an aspect of publicity that she had control over, but it’s also something to think about that is yes, still book related, but also not anxiety-inducing.

• Build social media momentum / we all know the algorithm is nicer to us the more we feed it. The folks who go viral, go viral over and over and over again because they’re constantly pushing out content. Authors ask me all the time what they should be posting to their social media for book release, and publicity essays are a way for you to talk about your book without being like, “Remember I’m giving away stickers if you preorder!” As much as you think you sound annoying, you don’t, but you can talk about your book in a different way by sharing links to your publicity essays and even expounding on what you said in the essay on stories, Tiktoks, Substack posts, etc.

• Build writing / like the algorithm (I feel gross saying this), for me, the more I write, the more I think about writing. So what if you don’t publish every publicity essay, but I bet, I WOULD PUT MONEY ON IT, that when you try to write those publicity essays, you have ideas for four more things you could write, or do, or say, or create as a talking point connected to your book. Everything is fodder. As your community publicist, I want you to look like this:

So perhaps this essay isn’t going to sell 5,000 more copies of your book (but hey, the right essay could, it has before), but it is meant to do so much more than that anyway.

Onto my conversation with Lilly!

1. The first spin-off essay you published in Elle came from cut material from the book. How did you sort of sift through the cut material to figure out what might make for a good spin-off essay, and then was there an element of trying to fit that material into pop culture or the zeitgeist? I guess I'm curious both how you chose the cut material to work with, and how you managed to make it work somewhere else or the thought process behind making it work?

Most of the things I cut from the book were smaller fragments—a paragraph here, a scene there. Excess, but part of larger stories or threads that survived in the book. But both the Elle piece about romantic friendship in Broad City and the Offing piece about motherhood books grew out of entire threads that were cut from essays—so not just a single section, but an entire idea or topic. The romantic friendship thread that I cut from the essay “Partner in Crime” and reshaped into that Elle piece was actually something like twice as long as the resulting spinoff essay! So it was a matter of which cut material felt substantial and complete enough to be reshaped into something new, as opposed to smaller fragments that weren’t enough to stand on their own.

For the Elle piece I knew that the anniversary of Broad City was coming up (I always look up anniversaries of older pieces of media that I’m writing about because I know they can make for good pegs), so I decided to reframe the romantic friendship material into an essay about the show. I rewatched some episodes, and wrote a little about how I think romantic friendship shows up in the show, and then pulled from the romantic friendship thread that I’d cut from the book to contextualize and bolster that argument.

The Offing piece was even simpler—I just polished up what I’d written about the various books, and then wrote an intro and a conclusion to sandwich that material into a more complete-feeling essay.

2. Have you heard from any readers who found you, the class you mention, or First Love through the spin-off essays?

People definitely came to the braided essay class via the Brevity essay (I was promoting a live version of the class at the time, but there’s also an independent study FWIW!). And I heard from a lot of people who read the various spinoff essays and responded with something along the lines of “I’m gonna check out your book!” though who knows how many actually did… but people who reached out to me after reading First Love didn’t usually mention where they’d first heard about it, so I’m not sure how many (if any?) came to it directly through the spinoff essays. But I like to think they helped keep it afloat in the general conversation, at least.

3. How much control did you have (or your team have) over timing the essays? Were editors willing to work with you?

A lot of the timing was dependent on how long it took me to place some of the essays, so that part was out of my control—but once the essays were placed, the editors were all great about coordinating run dates. There were a couple that I asked to hold because I didn’t want them to come out too close together, or on top of an excerpt, etc.

4. A few of these essays became published through connections you already had (I’m thinking about Writer’s Digest soliciting, the tweet about “Reading My Way to a Decision About Motherhood,” publishing with Elle for the second time, and Jane asking if you might want to publish something in Beyond), is there advice you could give to writers about building those connections early (perhaps, particularly before the book is even started?)

This comes back to the idea of “platform” vs. something more long-term and authentic and ever-evolving, like “community.” This is what I mean by the bigger picture ways that putting yourself and your work out there consistently will help you in the long run, and people should zoom out from the question of how many book sales an individual essay will lead to, or if a particular essay will land them an agent, etc. etc. This is a long game! Building real literary community and connections with editors and other writers and people who want to publish your work and read your work takes time, and consistency. I’ve been publishing shorter pieces in various outlets for about 15 years now, and each of those shorter pieces has been part of the larger thing I’m trying to build—whether you want to call that larger thing a body of work or a career or yes, even a platform.

5. How many times might you pitch an essay before you either shelve it or return to the drawing board (thinking about the Slate piece here).

If I believe in a piece, I won’t give up until I literally run out of places I can think of that might possibly take it. I’ll only stop submitting a piece if I decide during the process that I don’t actually want to publish it… like there was one flash essay that I cut from the book and thought maybe I’d place as a stand-alone, but when I got a rejection for it I realized that I felt relief, so then I realized maybe I didn’t actually want to publish that piece (at least not yet, or not in its current form). So I took it out of the rotation. (But I stashed it away for later—who knows how I’ll feel about it next year, or if I might think of a way to rework it.)

But of the published spinoff essays that I pitched or submitted, only a couple ended up running at the first place I tried. Most landed on the second or third pitch. But one took seven tries, and I would have kept trying if I needed to! I always start with a list of potential outlets for each piece, so as soon as I get a rejection, I send the piece back out to the next place on the list immediately. No time to wallow or second-guess.

(I keep that list in another column of the same spreadsheet as the essay ideas, so while I’m collecting essay ideas I’m also collecting potential outlets for each one.)

6. How long would you tell writers to give themselves in order to produce strong spin-off pieces, and/or do you recommend thinking about them while you’re writing like you did?

I’d say start working on them, or at least brainstorming ideas for them, as early as possible. I think collecting spinoff ideas while you’re working on the book is great, but if your brain just doesn’t work like that (or if you’re reading this now and you’re already past that stage), starting as early as you’re able is good. Drafting spinoff essays is a great way to keep yourself busy in the weird dead zones of publishing a book where there’s lots of nervous anticipatory energy but nothing to actually *do.* But definitely don’t wait until a month before your book comes out and go, “I guess I should publish some shorter pieces.” That’s how you end up churning out subpar work and also how you make it feel like a stressful chore rather than an organic part of the process.

7. It looks like you placed most of these essays, how involved was your publicity team in the process. Did they edit? Did they send a few out? Did they give you any ideas for what you could write? Did they expect spin-off pieces as part of your publicity campaign and process? There’s collaboration here in your knowing of them pitching Elle an excerpt and the friendship package, but how involved are they on the editing and submitting front?

The publicity team at my publisher arranged the Times essay, but they were not involved in any of the other pieces at all, either writing or placing them. I tried running some ideas by them, but I guess it was just outside of their purview or what they’d planned to focus on, which was getting reviews and more direct coverage of the book.

8. I’m so curious about the essay cut at the last minute–what brought you to that decision and was it a hard one?

It was hard! But I think it was the right call. It was just a little too far outside the central focus of the rest of the book, and I think it would have pulled too much attention away from what I really wanted people to talk about when they talked about the book. I was thinking ahead to reviews, and which details reviewers would latch onto. I know I’m being vague, but I have a newsletter post in the works that goes into more detail about this choice, that I’m planning to send out when the essay eventually finds a home somewhere else! It was actually a pretty fraught and somewhat political decision, so I think that backstory will be interesting to share once the piece is out. (Back to the idea of always collecting new ideas, I consoled myself about cutting the essay with the idea that I could write something about why it felt necessary.)

9. One of the frustrating things about book publicity is when the topic of your book is getting buzz before or after the release of the book, and you are left trying to find a way into that buzzing conversation. I just saw your recent tweet about every publication covering friendship right now, and I’m curious if you feel like spin-off essays are a way to catch that wave or if it’s just luck of the draw?

I’ll be honest, I was a little salty that The Cut ran a whole package on friendship breakups and didn’t ask me to contribute to it when I’d pitched several of these spinoff pieces to them, and my publicist was in touch with them about covering First Love, so they knew I just wrote a book about friendship! But so it goes. I think part of publishing a book is contending with waves of envy and covetousness and feelings of entitlement. Like yes, I felt indignant when I saw that package come out, but also… The Cut doesn’t owe me anything.

But yes, more broadly I do think that publishing spinoff essays is a great way to chime into cultural conversations like this—it sucks to feel like you’re begging for scraps by trying to get people to include your book in things they’re writing on relevant topics. I would much rather just contribute to the conversation directly by writing something new myself.

10. I agree so much with the notion that writers think these essays either need to sort of summarize the book, mention the book beyond the byline (which almost immediately puts these essays into a Literary Hub place, R.I.P Catapult), or repeat a message from the book, when really they are their own off-shoots, growing separately from the original plant, but also in conversation. You already answered this a bit with “getting another crack at the subject matter” but while you were writing, were there techniques you used to notice potential in an idea that could be a spin-off essay? I guess my question is, were there any brainstorming techniques, rituals, writing practices, or prompts you used to arrive at ideas that might help other writers find their spin-off topics.

I write down every hare-brained idea that comes to me. Most of them never get used, but then I at least have a trove to sift through for usable ideas later. The way my brain works is that the more I’m writing, the more new ideas I get. So I just try to catch those random offshoots, and then decide later which are worth pursuing. During the course of writing the book and all of these spinoff pieces, I must have come up with at least three dozen other ideas that didn’t go anywhere. Most of them were bad! But there were some usable ones in there too. So I’d say don’t dismiss an idea right away just because it feels silly or not fully developed or whatever. Save them all, and see which ones take root. That includes every tangent you find yourself tempted to go down that doesn’t quite fit in the main project, every show you watch that could tie into your book topic but that you don’t want to write about in the book itself, other books that come out close to yours that feel like they’re in conversation, etc. etc. etc.

When I was ready to start actually drafting these pieces (when First Love was in copyedits) the first thing I did was organize my spreadsheet of ideas—moving the ones I knew I definitely wanted to write and/or that felt the most developed to the top, and moving the “maybe”s and the “what was I even talking about here”s down. Then I just cranked them out.

11. I often warn writers that the lead-up to a book release can feel quiet (which can in-turn feel desperate) because critics have to engage with the book before they pitch it out wider. Do you find that working on these essays lessened some of that anxiety to the lead-up of publication, or is that my wishful thinking?

Absolutely! That is without a doubt a big part of the reason I leaned so hard into writing these pieces. I am constitutionally incapable of just waiting patiently for things to happen. So much of the emotional nausea of publishing a book is that something that was entirely yours is suddenly out of your hands—there’s a whole team working on bringing it into the world, but you only get glimpses of what they’re doing. I unfortunately am not someone who can just say, “I’m sure they’ve got this!” I needed to know that I did everything in my power to help support the book on its way into the world.

My toddler has added Where The Wild Things Are to our nightly reading rotation (nothing beats Dump Truck Disco though), and every time I read this page, I think of those notebooks. “Through a day … in and out of weeks, and almost over a year.”

During graduate school I filled my preferred notebooks with maps, quotes, thoughts, lists, drawings, whatever routes my brain was taking that week. The accumulation helps me write my own work. I haven’t kept the practice up over the last few years of birth and grief, but I’ve been returning to it recently. I also rarely read these notebooks back unless I’m looking for something specific (Leuchtturm1917 notebooks have a table of contents and I am religious about filling those in precisely), but there’s something to the act of writing each sentence deliberately down into my notebook-of-the-self that keeps the ideas or phrases locked away within me.

And while I read in a similar way when I’m considering taking a book on as a publicist (I’m still *** my favorite sentences and writing my marginalia), there’s a difference to the two reading habits.

And so today friends, here’s to reading like a publicist.

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While I’ve struggled for the past few years with reading as a pleasure or leisure activity (sigh, publishing jobs and an MFA), I still read very differently when I’m reading a book for work or reading a book for funsies. At the most basic level, I’m reading for me when I read for pleasure—my own tastes, my own interests, my own obsessions. When I read for work, I’m reading to be able to talk about the book. While I used to put everything in Goodreads, I don’t even record my reading there anymore, and so sometimes I’ll read books and never mention them aloud to anyone but my library requests list. For work, my job is to figure out how to tell the most people about a book. And that starts with my first read and how that read then shapes the way we strategize.

said sometimes she feels like, “in pitching the subject of your book I will douse the spark you’ve set with craft.” I’ve felt this too. I’ve sat on writing pitches longer than I should have because I’m not sure how to get across the essence of the writing (particularly over the medium of email). I also see this idea crop up by concerned querying writers that their query letter won’t do their pages justice, that the spark of the book is “in the read.” Here are some thoughts on that:

• It’s true for every book on some level that a query won’t do it justice.

• Being able to tell people what you’re doing in your art is a skill separate from the art itself. One, I believe, also takes practice.

• Recently on a phone call with a writer we talked about how she wanted to have an intimate connection with her audience that didn’t fit well within the “brand” or “platform” or even “publicity model” that we’re working in today. We talked at length about writers who has been able to foster that intimacy. Who came to mind the strongest is Anne Carson.

  When I “discovered” Anne Carson, I thought I was the only person on earth who loved her. I immediately evangelized her work to friends. And then I went to graduate school with my pocket Anne Carson, imagining myself so learned, so artistic, so unexpected, only to realize that everyone loves Anne Carson. Not only that, but everyone has a very similar experience of reading Anne Carson for the first time as I did. She’s created an intimacy with readers as if she’s ours alone.

  It’s true that what Carson has created with her work could be generational, or an anomaly, or the gift of anonymity (and therefore intrigue), but I think there’s something to Anne Carson’s relationship with readers (perhaps that she refuses to imagine them or define them? I can’t say) that I’ll be studying. Her work goes against our current publicity cycle, and against the distilling of the texture of the work down to description, summary, or market. It is what it is, she is who she is. (Worth noting is Carson also that studied a subject (Classics) rather than studying writing).

• One of the things I always encouraged writers to do when I was agenting is try to evoke the tone of their novel or memoir in their query or book description. Yes, queries are business letters and should do a few pre-fab or formatted things (as requested by agents), but that doesn’t mean they’re without voice. Same goes for pitches.

  In a recent pitch for a book coming out in February, I wrote “This collection moved over me like hives.” It did. I shivered reading it. I felt measly (in the late 16th century measles sense). When I’m writing a pitch for a book, I’m not only thinking about describing the book, but the experience I had with the book. The feeling, the sense, the somatic, the physical symptoms of reading.

Part of writing pitches is simply paying attention. I’m paying attention to my body while I read. I’m paying attention to what I’m paying attention to throughout the book (what hooks me, what moments take me out of the pages, what moments cause me to read faster, what scenes reveal my absolute lack of poker face).

I just read a scene this morning where a character I ached for in one chapter turned out to be loathsome in the next. I was so taken aback by my own foolishness, my own love of his thoughts and daydreams, my own associations towards his goodness, only to find that he’s rotten six pages later. Plus, reading in the car, I couldn’t escape my false gut reaction to this character. It was a claustrophobic experience. I was unprepared. I could use that in a pitch. The surprise, the turn, the tightness.

When I asked my talented, clever, dazzling colleagues and Alisha Gorder about how they read as a publicist vs. reading for pleasure, Zoe said:

This is where you will note that I laugh all day in g-chat with Zoe and Alisha.

I think if you’re a writer who works in publishing (there are so many of us), then what Zoe’s saying about expanding the bibliomancy of your own work, no matter what you’re reading, feels true and maybe poetic here. But I love that she says she’s trying to “open a dialogue with my own work,” because in both reading for pleasure and reading to tell someone else—it’s a dialogue. You know yourself best, obviously, but I wonder sometimes if the way I read a book makes me much more pointed at what I’m looking for (it depends so much on what I’m working on at the minute) than reading with the expansive lens of, this whole book is a potential for dialogue, this whole book is an opening.

And I’m leaving the Hinge part in on purpose BECAUSE a publicist’s job is to absolutely treat a book like a (beloved) nickname.

Nicknames are terms of endearment, our job is to endear a critic, reader, bookseller, bookclubber, talk show host to what an author is doing, to find it important, powerful, or interesting enough that they want to talk about it. We aren’t drilling books down to some five paragraph summary, some stuffy, buzzy, pop mantra, we are bringing who we’re pitching into the group chat, into the inside joke, sharing our nicknames.

Alisha said, “I’m not sure how much I’m thinking about publicity when I read a book for pleasure, but when I read a book for work it’s a totally different reading experience. I almost wish I could have the experience of reading Sarah’s book not as her publicist. It’s a book I would love, and I do, but it’s different reading it through the lens of publicity—what stands out to me is different than what would otherwise.”

Alisha’s exactly right here, and I totally agree. When I’m reading for pleasure, I’m trying to turn off publicist brain. Same with when I read for pleasure during writing school, I was trying to turn off craft brain, in so much as you can. (Also FYI: she’s talking here about Sarah LaBrie’s brilliant memoir, No One Gets to Fall Apart). Mostly my brain is blaring a siren saying, “you should be reading for work right now! you have six books in your queue! stop reading for fun!”

Sometimes those differences in reading-for-what are subtle. I’m always reading for sentences I want to keep saying aloud or that strike me a certain way. Oddly enough, in books where I dog ear the pages with sentences I love, sometimes I’ll read the pages I’ve cornered back at the end to write the sentence down and I won’t be able to find the same feeling. I won’t know what sentence hit the me of that day. (Is this a case for re-reading books?)

But when I read for work:

• I’m reading for what’s trending, which is why there’s so much value in having a diverse team on a book. We can only know the trends so far as they reach us and our core groups. I also use this trend argument when I can only delete the Tiktok app from my phone for a week and then I need either a recipe or to “know” what’s happening “for work.”

• I’m reading for references (books mentioned, places mentioned, famous people mentioned, audiences mentioned). I know the genre before I start reading, but I’m reading for moods underneath that genre. Last week, a writer and I came up with a new-to-us term called “Island Gothic” or “Island Noir” for her sophomore novel. That’s mood.

• I am, it’s true, reading for a basic plot summary that includes moments that I think are substantial enough for one of the book’s pitches, especially if they’re not included in the “main plot.”

• I’m thinking about the type of readers that would not only love the “plot” or “story” but love the vibe. I don’t mean a mood board vibe, though more power to you, but again, once more with feeling!

  This is probably where comps come in, but an example, I’m reading a book right now for work that feels like a classic (Rebecca, Emma, Persuasion, Wuthering Heights), but it’ll be published in 2025 with today’s audiences. So, where do those readers … read? Where do those readers find their books? That’s my job.

• In the comp section, I’m reading for style. That book I just mentioned reads very rural to me, a little pastoral, but has this intriguing mental health component that reminds me of a Jayne Anne Phillips book, and maybe a little Shirley Jackson too. There’s a sinister moss to this book (which I LOVE as a reader), that I have to get across in a pitch without calling it a “thriller" or even a “suspense-driven debut.” BISAC (& genre) codes are not able to match that mix of mood and craft.

• Reading for publicity, I’m reading less for answers or to find out what happens (like I would when reading for pleasure, HAVE Y’ALL READ THE MINISTRY OF TIME, SPEAKING OF FINDING OUT WHAT HAPPENS) and more: what questions is the book asking of a reader, of society, of truth or grief or love or some big theme, of its characters, of what can be done uniquely. Questions of craft, believability, structure the human condition? I am AP Englishing the books we work on. That is to say, I’m reading deeply, more slowly.

• I am reading for where a book goes against an idea. Next summer, Zoe and I are working on a middle grades graphic novel (save middle grades!) with a pop star ghost—so, a sweet, not scary ghost. This is so simple, but it goes against the traditional narrative of scary ghosts (hi Casper!). I like to figure out what narratives the book or the author are subverting, and how intentional is the subversion?

  Zoe is the agent on a book that I think will be HUGE next year, Lauren Haddad’s Fireweed, because it has the potential to be unsatisfying. Yes, you read that right. The book is doing what it’s supposed to against a reader’s expectations of what books are supposed to do. I’m actually so excited already that the reviews are kind of mixed because in my mind, they should be!

• I’m reading for quirks. This might actually be my favorite thing to read for in any book. And I read for it when I’m reading for pleasure too. But it’s the part of the book that your entire workshop told you to delete and you couldn’t let it go so it made it to final print. For me, those are moments of the heart, they’re where the book is most itself. I love them, I search them out like Gretel crumbs.

• And of course, I’m reading for audience. As an agent, I often thought if I didn’t immediately have a list of editors (or at least houses) where I would try to sell the book, then the book wasn’t right for my list. I think about this as a publicist too. If I don’t immediately know at least a few pitch angles, a few editors, a few media outlets, a few magazines, that might like the book, then I shouldn’t be working on it.

• I’m reading for ideas for the writer, and brainstorming: talking points, companion essays, craft pieces, interview questions. This sounds more like I’m reading for the book’s world-at-large and that’s true. What’s in the stew of this book? What does the world of this book look like and who lives there (audience!)? What world is it against? That’s the sort of brainstorm that leads to really interesting work with a writer, the kind of work I love.

Remember when we did these? I miss it.

If you want to learn to read your own work this way (or you’re starting to think about non-obvious publicity for your book), I would encourage you to read a book you already love through the marketing lens. How would you angle it? Who would you pitch? How would you summarize it? What parts stick out to you? What and who does it reference? What’s the mood? What questions is it asking? I bet you’re better at this than you might think.

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As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Poetry Foundation reviewed Didi Jackson’s My Infinity and Hyperallergic featured the book, Fare Forward reviewed Christian Collier’s debut Greater Ghost, read two pieces from Jesse Lee Kercheval in Short Reads and Orion, Christian Collier was interviewed in Southern Review of Books, SF Chronicle Datebook called Sarah LaBrie’s No One Gets to Fall Apart an anticipated fall read and so did Camille Styles, Hyperallergic reviewed The Warehouse, Jessica E. Johnson was interviewed by Four Way Review about Mettlework, Esinam Bediako’s Blood on the Brain was excerpted in Literary Hub, Tiffany Troy interviewed Tatiana Johnson-Boria for Tupelo Quarterly, Chelsey Pippin Mizzi was featured on Tarot Lady’s substack, Christian Collier was on Drunk as a Poet on Payday and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.

This is a text from my best friend who is a seventh grade English teacher and the person I foremost trust with YA and MG recommendations. To me, an industry insider (xoxo, gossip girl) this book was everywhere, and rightly so:

We Deserve Monuments was: Winner of the 2023 Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe Award for New Talent, an Indie Bestseller, #1 Kids’ Indie Next Pick, an Indies Introduce Pick, Named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and Bookpage, and got six starred reviews. Hammonds was also on All Things Considered, she got a coveted children’s spot in an interview with Roger in Horn Magazine, and was in Shondaland (which has since discontinued its book coverage for more of an emphasis on Shondarverse).

So, not only critically-acclaimed, but bookseller-beloved, and good publicity—it has a winning forumla. While this isn’t true only for children’s books, I do find that the divide in “media coverage” and sales is especially vast in children’s literature. There are not that many outlets (or nearly as many) that cover children’s authors and books as there are for adults. Bloggers actually have a lot of pull in children’s books for this reason. And if there were, we would mostly still be relying on adults to find those books for children.

Having a conduit to finding books IS the whole point of publicity, and having a conduit to a book that’s another person you trust is much more successful than finding a book through media. However, the outlets to reach the core audience here (children) are nonexistent. Where is Highlights Magazine when you need them? Teen Vogue does excellent work, but not much in books. I love Samantha Balaban’s Picture This at NPR. Maybe Dolly should start putting a Dolly’s picks book guide in her monthly book picks at Imagination Library (Dolly, call me!) or National Geographic could do one in their Nat Geo Kids Magazine. Or simply imagine if Ms. Rachel put out a seasonal book list like Obama.

That all being said, my best friend was reading We Deserve Monuments almost two years after it debuted, which told me it didn’t infiltrate her networks of middle schoolers (and their parents), librarians, fellow educators, and regular NCTE-goers. I know the book sold well because it was immediately followed-up with a deal for a sophomore novel, Thirsty, and which (from my vantage point) got less coverage than We Deserve Monuments. So, I can say that the hype sold the next book because I have no sales numbers (but I assume they’re good!)

There is sometimes a difference between good publicity and good readership. I really love this piece from Rob Hart on his “splashy book deal” and then being dropped from his publisher.

You’ve heard me say it before that my publicity goal isn’t actually coverage—just because you’re anticipated on every list, doesn’t mean you’ll have stellar sales too. My goal for publicity is building-onwards (building a career, building a platform, building towards something larger for the author, community-building, building a bigger portfolio of work, something something something) and I think that takes the work of a full team (including a publicist), and can’t be done by coverage alone. To do that, I find myself having to build a small world for the book, a book’s very own Truman Show. A wide, wide, worldly net of publicity.

Before we get into more tangents, what I’ll say with my whole chest is that publicity cannot determine the merit of your book—that happens internally. No external goal will tell you, “I’ve done it! I’ve written the best book ever,” other than yourself. Like writing goals, publicity goals often move. Once something big happens, the next dopamine hit needs to be bigger. And you can’t judge your book by that feening in a market that actually isn’t looking for the “best art” or the “most entertainment,” but an amalgamation of buzzy fuzzies that have nothing to do with merit.

*

Of course hype matters, but it’s conversation > looking. Talking about a book is far more important than seeing a book, and the way we talk matters. This is where authors have a stake in their publicity process.

Authors need to understand how to talk about their book beyond platitudes and theories. The job in marketing a book is to take the story beyond checkboxes and themes. It’s good to know those of course, but what can you say about all that stuff that’s unique or interesting or compelling or tension-driven? We’ve all read interviews that say nothing. We’ve all read reviews that overgeneralize, summarize the book in a five paragraph essay, and/or are simply “I liked it” with a lot more words.

This review of Creation Lake was all of my feeds this week. Brandon Taylor has the it-factor, so he is read regardless of what he’s writing about, but I think this review might actually spike Zola sales? And he says so many interesting things about so many interesting things, it would be hard for me to narrow that down here. He builds a world for that book (regardless if he demolishes it). That’s the work you want to do for a book.

Publicists don’t always do the work of media training (which is more how to talk than it is what to say), but one thing an author has to do when they’re in publicity mode is come up with talking points, so they can be interesting (characters) to talk with and about. If there’s no pull quote, there’s no pull quote. If there’s no quote tweet, there’s no quote tweet. I’m not saying create drama, though my therapist is always telling me that the negative is heavier than the positive so we pay more attention to it unfortunately, but I am saying you have to do the work of being captivating, no matter the platform—literary mag interview to Entertainment Tonight.

You might be overwhelmed with interviews during publicity, but it is your job as a writer to make each one less-boring than the one before. Talking in Hallmark-greeting-cards about your work will give that work no legs.

MENTION IT ALL as Bethenny Frankel would say (she is, whether we like it or not, the queen of staying relevant—my girl is reviewing expensive chicken salads on her Tiktok, I’m sat). I can’t tell you how unbelievable interested I am in which chicken salads she likes. Why am I like this? Why are any of us like this?

Name-drop! Embrace what’s strange about you! Bring in more stuff (movies, music, books, fashion, hobbies)! Think about the girl who was trying to promote her music on Tiktok and started showing everyone her homemade puppets—launching her music career.

Talk about your other interests and their relation to the book. Read any interview with Hanif Abdurraqib and see how much he brings into the world of his interviews. Name one time he doesn’t mention something fascinating about Ohio. Ohio! He’s beloved because he’s interesting, and he makes us feel interesting when we read him. There’s a magic there.

What I’m saying is refuse to stay general. Refuse the easy craft talk. Refuse the answer you think you “should say.” Make each answer a moment instead. In the snow globe of conversations, yours should have all the little figurines you can think to bring in, and then shake, shake, shake, the wonder of SNOW!

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I’ll give two examples on how we attempted to bring the world in this week (the world into an email, what am I even saying?).

I wish I could find the tweet from last week that had thousands of likes about how when you’re in the middle of writing something it feels like the whole universe is speaking to you sensually about that piece of writing. You’ll start noticing relevant things everywhere. The trees are speaking. The bus ads are worth quoting in the essay. You read an interview and it says exactly what you needed to get writing on the next part. THAT IS BOOK PUBLICITY. Finding and using those universe tinglings.

Last week (when everyone was ooo) we weren’t getting a lot of responses, so Zoe had the brilliant idea to send the below meme as our follow-up on a book. In a sort of “if this resonates … we promise you’ll like this book.”

And I followed-up with a clip from KeKe Palmer and Amy Poehler talking about “inside work” or work we do on ourselves to be better, mostly so I could use the subject line, “Keke Palmer & Amy Poehler call it the "inside job," [author] wants to help you harness it.”

We both got many more responses from that follow-up. I got more responses because I brought in celebrity culture and Zoe got more responses because the meme is fun, and it took three seconds to read both our emails. Plus, both add just enough interest to lead to wondering about the book.

If we hadn’t been living (scrolling…), we wouldn’t have either of these follow-ups. You need to bring your world into book publicity, hype is created by network, by community, by mycelium. Touch everything like you’re the grass.

As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.

ICYMI: Sarah LaBrie’s No One Gets to Fall Apart named as a Best Memoir of 2024 by Nicole Chung in Esquire, and is on Zibby’s Most Anticipated List alongside Abigail Thomas’ Still Life at Eighty, Kelly McMasters & Hyeseung Song were on C-SPAN Book TV, Jesse Lee Kercheval writes about the mind & body of drawing & writing for Writer’s Digest, Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb is an LA Times must read for fall, Didi Jackson’s My Infinity is on the Write or Die September list, Esinam Bediako and Toro Bassey are “sisters in arms” at World Literature Today, Christian Collier is the poem of the week at The Atlantic, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.