PULLING AN ALL-NIGHTER
on the "homework" involved in bringing a book into the world
I’m wildly exhausted from having a three week old and making the very sound decision of getting my flu shot and Covid booster in one go yesterday, in other words it’s the perfect time to write a newsletter. Let’s make some sense of my nonsense brain.
If you haven’t preordered Susan Kiyo Ito’s debut memoir I Would Meet You Anywhere, might I suggest you get on that? It just got a ⭐️starred⭐️ review in Library Journal from Amy Cheney, “The tension and fear of wanting to tell one’s story, to be seen, to know and be known are palatable throughout Ito’s stunning, brave, extraordinary book” and has been called “highly-anticipated” by San Francisco Chronicle and Hannah Bae.
And when I saw this tweet earlier today from Susan, I had a good little no-sleep laugh for myself.
Unfortunately, finishing the book (editing, copyediting, packaging, unboxing) is not even close to the end of the work authors have to do during the promotion cycle of the book. It’s an exhausting whirlwind (especially if you’re not a bedazzled write-for-a-living writer, and you have a full time day job).
This is particularly true if you’re working with an outside publicist. I say this because sometimes the inside team is a little covert on the goings-on of marketing and publicity. They’re doing work behind-the-scenes to get the book in the hands of media, but they’re not super forthcoming about that work until there’s confirmation of coverage. They also don’t really have time to brainstorm ideas with you (they have a whole season of books to pitch), and so unless you’re bringing the homework to them, they’re not making more work for themselves by making many extra suggestions.
A little elaboration on the suggestions & homework:
So, here’s what you can do BEFORE you get to this stage to prepare for ALL THE THINGS.
Pick a few windows of time (each week ideally) that will be your interview windows and tell your publicist the following: when that window is (a window of time you’ll likely always be available), whether you prefer a zoom, email, or phone interview (sometimes the choice is not yours), and if there are any questions that you would like to be asked, or any topics that are off-limits or need some context before you’ll answer them. Now this won’t work for live radio or time zone fluctuations, but it will sometimes save you the ten emails deep chain for coordinating all that. (And as someone who gets severe decision fatigue, saving that chain does me wonders).
Come up with a list of essay ideas that are in conversation with the book (lists, essays, playlists, whatever!) and write a paragraph framing each essay idea. Your publicist is already writing 19374 different iterations of a pitch for your book. To pitch another handful of essays out is more work than you might think. I’m reading the essay, making comments on the essay, reading the revision, figuring out what editors or media outlets might be interested, and then writing a pitch (or twenty) for that essay depending on how the pitching goes. If you have already done the legwork of framing the “what is this and why does it matter” paragraph, it’ll help us both and save us time.
However, sometimes we have to write essays or op-eds or come up with pitches on the spot (a news story goes viral, or you’re the perfect person to talk about A, B, and C). This happened recently with Tuberville’s comments about the military to Fox News, “"We've got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction that we're headed in our military, and we're headed downhill, not uphill…” You know who is the perfect person to talk about those comments? Jehanne Dubrow. Her most recent book Exhibtions: Essays on Art and Atrocity came out earlier this month, and you should get a copy because she’s one of the most particular, intimate, moving writers I’ve ever read.
So, in a timing pinch (truly the speed of light before the news cycle moves on), we’re working together on pitching an op-ed or radio segment where the author can speak and continue being the expert she is.
Conversation partners is also a huge thing, especially, especially, especially for poets. Please hear me when I say this. It is so much easier to book you into a bookstore (if that’s the kind of event you want to do—reading series are a different animal), if you have someone to be in conversation with (and arguably someone who will bring in their own audience). This means if you want to do an East Coast tour, you have to know, or reach out to writers, in each place that you want to celebrate the book. If you live in the Bay Area, how are you going to get Ohio readers to come out to their bookstore for your book? Yep, a local author with maybe a sprinkle of prestige too.
It doesn’t even have to be an author necessarily, or a writer that shares a genre with you. It can be an activist, your editor, a political figure, a journalist, an actor, just an artistic human of some sort. L.S. Mckee, author of forthcoming Creature, Wing, Heart, Machine (winner of the Zone 3 Press Poetry Prize) is chatting with her friend Ben Williams at P&T Knitwear (happy hour!) on September 29th—Ben is an actor, sound designer, and video designer. There will be poems to sound at this event!
Think of this and inquire those folks early. Come up with a rough timeline of how you’ll move through the tour spots (the region!). When I tell you that you won’t want to do three book events in a row or in one week, I really, truly mean that. A girl is tired!
Come up with desirable dates for each place (a range is always helpful), and reach out to folks with those dates and places in mind. On my end, I usually let authors handle communications with their desired conversation partners—that initial ask particularly. Sometimes if it’s a big name author that they want to invite into a conversation, I’ll reach out to their agent or publicist on my author’s behalf. I do this for blurbs too.
A few of our authors will pair themselves with another writer who has a book coming out around the same time and try to do a few different events together (or at least two events, one in each hometown location). This is where having a literary community or a cohort of writers around you (people who came up alongside you, folks who mentored you or you mentored, folks you know through literary magazines or media or working together on side projects) all help bring a book to its arrival. Like blurbs, you don’t want to overextend anyone, but I do find that at least with conversations (in print, live, or virtually) people love to talk about themselves and their work—you’re likely to get a yes if the thing you’re asking for works in their schedule and it will also be promotion for them.
Your publicist is also going to need promotional materials for all your events—get everything in a folder beforehand. The folder should have: (1) your author photos with credit in the name of the photo. I like something like MargoSteinesheadshot(c)AidanAvery.jpeg. This makes it so easy for anyone working with that photo. (2) Your 100 word bio and your byline bio (super short, 1-2 lines). (3) Your high-res cover image (300 resolution is ideal). Share that whole folder with your publicist or publicity team.
Margo has the coolest headshot anyhow. Buy her book, Brutalities: A Love Story, which comes out October 3 from Norton!
All of this, I promise, will make your life easier in the long run. And believe me, it’s a long run. The months leading up to publication are some of the longest months—not because you have that holiday morning feeling of the book’s arrival (which is maybe more queasy for a book release than hot cocoa and chestnuts by the fire), but because there’s so much to do and there’s a timeline (a deadline!) for each thing.
Be thoughtful about the work you can do. If you don’t have time to turnaround an essay or op-ed after your publicist has pitched it, then maybe that shouldn’t be a part of book promotion (or that process needs to start much earlier). If you won’t have time to ask each conversation partner, then you’ll need a list of their names and contact information or your publicist will spend less time pitching your book and more time looking each individual up.
You want your publicist to be pitching, not coordinating, not event planning, not getting bogged down in nitty-gritty (finding the name of the credit for your author photo). That is the goal, that is why you hired someone.
As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here. Request books for review & interview & feature here, add yourself to our reviewer list here, and buy our books here! You can also contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Ross White at Scuppernong in Greensboro | Thursday, September 21
Kate Doyle at NYU (The New Salon) in NYC | Friday, September 29
L.S. McKee at P&T Knitwear in NYC | Friday, September 29
Margo Steines at Prairie Lights in Iowa | Friday, October 6
ICYMI: Dedication reveal for Brian Allen Carr’s Bad Foundations (maybe my favorite pleasure-read of the year!) went live at Vol. 1 Brooklyn—it’s hilarious and honest, give it a read; Maureen Langloss interview Kate Doyle about her debut story collection I Meant It Once for Split Lip Magazine and the book got a beautiful little write-up next to four other story collections in Washington Post from Annie Berke; Asa Drake reviewed BIANCA from Eugenia Leigh for The Rumpus (one of the best reviews I’ve read recently!); Claire Matturo reviewed both Hillbilly Madonna by Sara Moore Wagner and Dear Outsiders by Jenny Sadre-Orafai for Southern Literary Review; Jehanne Dubrow was in Guernica’s Cutting Room for September with an essay about design as revolution; Cities of Women by Kathleen B. Jones was reviewed in NY Journal of Books and Jones wrote an essay about the beauty of physical encounters with rare books for Literary Hub; and for what’s coming soon, read about Cynthia Marie Hoffman’s forthcoming collection EXPLODING HEAD in this exclusive cover reveal with Electric Literature!
<3 great! imma def keep up w/ this newsletter online & appreciate u for putting it together!