“That’s Life!” | A Conversation with Alisha Gorder

Please welcome our newest Pine State publicist, the fabulous Alisha Gorder!

I’m so pleased to tell you that Pine State Publicity is growing and we were lucky enough to convince POWERHOUSE publicist to the literary stars (she reigns from the Catapult umbrella), Alisha Gorder, to join our team.

Right after Alisha and I spoke for the first time about freelance publicity (high-pitch enthusiasm and lots of giggling), I immediately thought, “I’m going to make this new friendship weird by asking her if she wants to come over and work with me and Zoe.” I watched her do incredible work on books in 2023 and was in awe of what she accomplished over and over, and even more importantly, how people spoke about her. Adam at Debutiful, praised her at every turn, and her infectious positivity and humor, alongside our mutual Capricorn tenacity, made me want to work with her, and at the very least know her. She’s so smart, so vivacious, a gifted writer herself, and I’m thrilled that y’all are going to get to know her here, and you’ve been along for the ride as Pine State grows. Also, this means we’re officially on dueling coasts—California and Carolina!

Please enjoy her brilliance, I hope you learn as much from her as I have and (I’m sure) will continue to do.

Cassie Mannes Murray:

Good mooooorning, and happy almost 2024.

Dearest Alisha, something I found immediately charming about you is from reading your Modern Love essay where I learned that your background is in flowers (as a florist!). 

How (& maybe why) did you move into books from flowers, and do you think there is some sort of beautiful (should I include terrible too?) overlap between the two things?

Alisha Beth Gorder:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! May 2024 bring us the projects and publicity hits of our dreams (Fresh Air, Fresh Air!!) 

[Please note Cassie’s goal this year is to get a debut book on Fresh Air. (Catch me in January 2025 checking that off my list). Now back to wonderful Alisha]. 

Wow, what a great question. Starting off with a banger! Well, for starters, I majored in English in college and knew I wanted to work with books, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it or what exactly it entailed. I didn’t know anyone who worked in publishing and was living in Portland, Oregon where entry-level publishing jobs, or internships even, were few and far between. At the same time, I’d always wanted to work in a flower shop, so I applied to a shop thinking I could work there while I figured out what to do next. I went into flowers pretty naively—which is, I guess, how I went into publishing too. I thought my flower shop job would be cute and easy but in reality I ended up grimy and dehydrated and having to hold space for customers who were going through major life events, good and bad. I was bowled over by how unprepared I was, but I did recognize early on the connection between what I loved about books and reading and what I loved about working with flowers, in that both required a certain openness to the world I was otherwise lacking at the time—first towards characters in the books I was being assigned, and then, in real life, towards customers.

CMM:

you brilliant angel!

Okay, I am so keen to discuss this idea of (personal?) openness, because we work in an industry built on exclusivity and gatekeeping, and here you are, saying that the florist and the publicist (they should make a You've Got Mail movie about you) are both acts of making space for the feelings of others? Which *I think* is what books are meant to do. You can totally redefine this, but that’s what I'm reading in your response. 

I have never worked with flowers, and I feel very rose-colored about the idea of it (like you did before the thorns--pun intended, ba dum cha!), but the idea of "romanticizing your life" is so important to our work (and work in general).

Do you think at the center of both flowers and books is this bid for connection, or maybe it’s more reciprocal than that? This idea of connection that I'm reading as a thread through your whole response is something quite important to what we do. 

And maybe why I always want to fight the urge (this is hope speaking) to view our part of publishing as marketing (because it comes with that scheezy connotation). We are a sticky part of a book’s life, maybe what writers would call the rising or falling action–the lead-up to the big moment of publication, and I guess I feel like publicity is more a mutual cooperation than anything else. And I mean that all around, with the inside / outside teams working together, with an author putting their trust in a publisher or publication, with the often unpaid labor of reviews and interviews, etc. 

ABG:

Okay, don't judge me, but I did have to google "romanticizing your life"—I have heard the phrase and understood intuitively what it meant, but just wanted to be sure. But anyway, now that I'm an expert (lol), it is so true that what keeps me feeling connected to and excited about my job is focusing on the small wins, like when the exact right person for a book responds to a pitch, and remembering that I somehow managed to land the job I always wanted, which can be easy to lose sight of sometimes given the many problems at the industry's core, like you mentioned. I see it as a both/and situation, in that there is so much about publishing that is broken—the lack of diversity, the unlivable wages, how hard it can be for people without a financial cushion or family support or certain education to break into the industry, etc; but also it is a vessel for work I care about, and, at the end of the day, I do love my job and find it fundamentally meaningful to champion books and authors. 

Talking about this reminds me of how, when I lost my in-house job last spring, I had this panic of like, oh no, I haven't pitched my July book enough! and I started sending off these unhinged emails like, "As you might have seen my position has been cut and my last day is Friday but would you like a galley of ___?" I was a mess but alongside my own disappointment and hurt and cynicism about the industry at large was this deep commitment to my books and authors. It wasn't their fault I was losing my job and so I still found myself wanting to do due diligence and honor the time and energy writing a book entails.

This is a long way of answering your question, but I mention it as an example of the mental gymnastics that  go into making sense of and maybe even peace with my job. It's interesting to think about it in terms of openness or connection, and I think you're right, in that ultimately why I continue to show up is to connect with writers, and to connect those writers with the right readers. I feel lucky to get paid to cheer on authors and offer the support I'd hope to have should I publish a book one day, and while of course that enthusiasm and care can be and is often taken advantage of in the industry—I've definitely worked for less than I've wanted to or has felt doable in a way I don't think I would outside of publishing—it is very cool to be able to help launch someone's writing career and to make real friendships and connections that outlast a campaign. 

CMM:

I love that you googled "romanticizing your life" because I am all over "slow-living" Tiktok where people live on an actual pier / house boat and just cut oranges all day in daisy dresses. And yet, here I am nodding along like "yes, yes, yes, this is my dream job and how lucky are we to do that?" Though, I could definitely use more daisy dresses and bright colored jelly shoes. Yesterday, my friend sent me a video of duckling feet on a roof, and maybe that is also a dream life? DREAM ITERATIONS!

ANYWHO, off on tangents. I love what you say here about unhinged emails when everything unfolded at Catapult and how your first instinct was to support your authors. Publicists (perhaps, no matter the type) are always in a supporting role behind the scenes pulling the little strings and making sure everything goes according to plan. You do that so well–I'm thinking now about the success of Kate Brody's debut novel, Rabbit Hole, that recently came out. I saw that book EVERYWHERE and got the luck of knowing you were behind some of its rabid (full of puns today) success. But if I didn't know you or that Kate had an outside publicist, what might that look like to a regular writer or reader watching it unfold?

Talk to me about a book campaign when you experienced launching someone's career. What did success look like for you and that author beforehand, and then on the other side of publication too?

ABG:

I mean, we all need bright colored jelly shoes. I need these, specifically. Are duckling feet on a roof the new ASMR? Do you have a disco ball? I ask as someone who just came into possession of their third (two hanging planters and one that I move around my apartment with the sun.) I'm really giving myself away here, but I cannot recommend them enough. One iteration of dream life for sure. 

Thank you for saying that about Rabbit Hole! I loved your recent newsletter about playing the long game, which so perfectly spelled out the slow burn that is publicity and the months before pub where a publicist is planting seeds but ultimately has to wait and see what happens. I live for that moment in a campaign where things start to take shape—it can happen so quickly, and it's kind of amazing how just one or two confirmed hits can really set the ball in motion. Kate's book was super fun to work on in that respect, in that I was able to build on the groundwork that had been laid by her in-house team and agent, and our respective work seemed to coalesce at once where suddenly there was all this momentum. That sense of seeing it everywhere is, in my mind, the highest compliment as it means I've covered my bases and maximized potential reach, which is really what I'm aiming for with any campaign. I don't mean that in the sense that I'm blasting off pitches to the entire world regardless of whether or not it's the right fit, but that I've done my research to find a wide scope of the right reviewers/media opportunities across a variety of outlets. With Kate's, for example—Rabbit Hole is billed as a thriller, and it is in certain respects, but she's also playing with genre and writing against it in some ways—so I could call out different elements depending on who I was pitching. 

Actually Syd Hegele, author of Bird Suit, who you were kind enough to connect me with, said the loveliest thing about a couple of the campaigns I worked on at Catapult—Melissa Febos's Body Work and Matthew Salesses's Craft in the Real World—which was that the books seemed to find them rather than the other way around. That is the ideal, isn't it? That a publicity campaign can make it seem like a book just organically finds its way to the right audience? Of course, as you say, so much work goes into making that happen, but that aura of effortlessness is always what I'm going for. *cue Mastermind by Taylor Swift.*

I felt that in a big way too with Mac Crane's debut I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, which was the last campaign I worked on in full at Catapult. The buzz started early on—Mac is a pro on social media and had their own fan base of enthusiastic readers, in addition to early blurbs and starred pre-pub reviews that helped set the tone—so I had a lot to work with, but I do feel like the bar kept getting set higher, in that we went from most-anticipated lists to monthly roundups to really in-depth profiles and interviews to a rave review in The New York Times Book Review by Lydia Kiesling, where it was also an Editors' Choice. Similar to Rabbit Hole, we had a bunch of different people talking about different aspects of the book—queer media, sci-fi/speculative fiction reviewers, along with more general literary reviewers—and I'm still meeting people who are discovering Mac's work for the first time and falling in love with it. That feels like success to me—not just that the book received a lot of press when it came out, since that doesn't always translate into readership or sales, but that we were able to set the stage for the book to have a whole other life after pub. It has over 4,000 reviews on Goodreads now, and Mac just signed a two-book deal with Dial, which is huge! And now I get to have this whole other relationship to their work as a reader and a friend.

CMM:

CELEBRATE! I want to send you a blue ribbon and a trophy and a little crown—there are so many wins here! And you know what, give yourself away because plant girlies and publicity girlies are both in it for the long haul and working on sustaining a practice of nourishing (at least in my mind). This is a reminder to me to water my office plants that are looking a little wilted.

Also, 4000 reviews on Goodreads is such a serious feat and such a commitment from readers! Go you, and Go Mac! (And shout out to Maggie Cooper too, Mac’s agent, and my favorite baker).

It feels like (to me) you have not only had some really standout debuts, but worked with beloved authors too—perhaps on books that maybe don’t quite fit what came before in their oeuvre, or books where they branched out (I’m thinking of the two craft books you mention here by Febos and Salesses)—how do you think publicity is different for an author who maybe has an audience but is introducing themselves in a new way rather than a debut-debut? Are there things that work for any book, and then things that work better for career authors or debut authors (in your opinion!)? 

ALSO, PINE STATE IS SO LUCKY YOU ARE JOINING US, YOU BRIGHTEST OF STARS!

ABG:

Love thinking about it like that—plant and publicity girlies for life! 

And I know, Goodreads is obviously a hellscape but it's cool, regardless, to see such turnout there. And, yes, Maggie Cooper is the best! 

That is such a good question. I mean, for an author who already has an audience, it's great from a publicity perspective in that I already have a whole network and fanbase of outlets and reviewers to tap into, and I'll start by reaching out to those folks and places who are already familiar with the writer's work and have covered it favorably before. For Body Work, for example, which came out on the heels of Girlhood, my initial subject header was something like, "New Melissa Febos!" because that was the news. I didn't have to rely on blurbs or comp titles in the way that I would with a debut. If I said "New Melissa Febos," people would know, roughly, what to expect and would want a copy based on her name alone. At the same time, it was a different book than her others, as you mentioned, so I had to work to set expectations and situate it in relation to her previous writing. I think that's true not just for craft books, but for memoirists-turned-novelists, or poets-turned-prose writers, where even if it's a new genre or a sharp pivot subject matter-wise, I'm still thinking about how it's in conversation with what came before and the writer's career at large. 

With debuts, you're ultimately starting from scratch, which is really exciting but challenging too. In the initial pitches, before any trade reviews or coverage has come in, I'm relying more on early praise, plot, and books I think the one I'm pitching is in conversation with, but that can be tricky because with comp titles in particular, I want my pitch to be selling but also not misleading or nondescript. Maybe you saw Arianna Rebolini's tweet about putting a pause on describing books as propulsive, but I think there's a similar trend with comp titles, in the sense that there are recurring books or authors, like Sally Rooney, that have become a kind of catch-all for positioning certain kinds of books. But like, when those names are thrown around, what does it mean exactly? 

I'm talking a lot about this, but one of my favorite parts of the job is comp title research—getting in the weeds and being able to say to a prospective reviewer, I saw you reviewed and loved x book so I think you'll like y. It works for debuts and more established authors alike, but I think it's especially useful for pitching debuts when you're trying to find the right audience, so long as you're not throwing around titles/names for the sake of being flashy. Mac's book, for example, was framed in promotional copy as Dept. of Speculation meets Black Mirror, which I love, but I was careful in my pitches to identify the specifics of that comparison, which had to do with the book's structure and emotional impact on the line level.

CMM:

Ah! I love what you're saying about comp titles here, and you're giving SUCH GOOD ADVICE that I think writers could follow for their own DIY publicity.

I have a love / hate relationship with comp titles (particularly coming from agenting), but I always find them to be really useful in talking with authors about their expectations too, and trying to determine if we see the book in a similar way? 

I’ll say, "I saw this speaking to an audience that loves blah blah blah for blah blah blah reason" and the author says, "oh no, not that at all," I know that we’re going to be finding a sort of middle ground or we don’t have the same vision for a book (and that’s totally fine!). Comps are hard too because of that question of, “is it too flashy or too obscure?” Because they are only as good as the reading audience they're serving, so the questions become: have enough folks read this? Is this a cult-following book? Does this sit in a niche sub-genre that a certain reader will really understand and others will have never heard of it at all?

And then of course, the problem with publishing is using comp titles from a very, very, very white book publishing history, and when categories become a sort of dictation on what a book should be doing that’s full of stereotypes and biases. I truly believe some books do not have a comp title, or if they do it’s much more likely a comped component (which is really what we’re talking about anyway–fragmented structure, type of tension, setting, an element of voice or a character designation). What does it mean for a book to subvert or revise or retcon or envision or even produce a sort of “after” of another book?

One of the books on our list this spring does a really good job of describing how we do this with history, science, storytelling, and more, Revising Reality (if anyone is interested in delving deeper here). 

I always recommended as an agent avoiding those huge names in a query letter or even "firsts" across categories because they get so big it becomes a cliche. Sally Rooney. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. etc etc. Particularly when it comes to voice. (For instance, it would be hard for me to see a comp of Luster by Raven Leilani at this point because the voice of that book feels unparalleled).

One title I'm really sick of seeing comped in the genre where I currently dabble (as a writer) is Bluets by Maggie Nelson. She's one of those "firsts" I'm talking about (of course she's not the first to braid an essay in fragments, but she is this sort of pedestaled version of that niche, particularly in MFA land). 

My favorite thing you mention here is the "emotional impact" part of a pitch, which is the hardest part (I think). Getting a feeling and vibe to come through in an email pitch is one of my favorite little tinkering activities. It's specific (and certainly a skill) that feels both in a relationship with writing itself, but also very different in that the angle is audience-driven first, rather than storytelling-first or voice-first. 

Here’s the first sentence of my pitch for Margo Steines’ Brutalities as an example: “As I began reading Brutalities, the spit gathered in my mouth and never left.”

I'm curious if you've learned one thing about pitching in your experience that you might like to share to close this out?

ABG:

Oh yeah, that's so true about using them to make sure you're on the same page with authors—I do that too. And I hear you about Bluets. Actually, I've been wondering since I mentioned Dept. of Speculation if maybe it has become one of those comps as well, as the epitome of a novel in vignettes. What do you think? I can almost already sense someone coming to @ me about it. But what would the alternate comp for that form be, I wonder? I think Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever was one possibility, which is a book I personally love, but one that might sit more in the cult-following spot you're talking about, where I wasn't sure how the mention of it would land. 

I spend so much time playing around with pitches and trying to get them right, but there was one time where I blasted off the kookiest email ever and I swear it got more responses than some of the ones I feel most proud of. I ended up working on four books in March 2022 because of all the supply chain issues, and the pub date for one kept changing, I don't remember how many times. Anyway, the last time I had to let media know about the new pub date I sent this wacky email that was tonally the equivalent of a giant shrug or gesturing around at a dumpster fire and even included a gif, which I am normally terrified of including, and so many people (relatively speaking) responded! I think NPR even confirmed a review on that chain. In any case, it was a good reminder that people respond well to a healthy amount of personality in emails, and also so freeing to just be a person in that moment rather than put on a performance of professionalism in what was feeling more and more like an absurd situation. Speaking of pitches, I have to tell you that when I was a baby publicist and my former boss was giving me suggestions for subject headers, she would write out her ideas in all caps like "X MEETS Y IN DEBUT _____" (I feel compelled to clarify this was not the actual pitch). I didn't realize at the time she was formatting it like that for emphasis so that it would stand out from the rest of her email and so for months my subject headers were in all caps, quite literally screaming into the void. That said, I did land an All Things Considered interview so maybe it worked. At the very least, I was getting people's attention. 

This brings me to your last question which is that ultimately I don't think anyone has cracked some code when it comes to pitching, or at least I haven't. I am always learning and needing to adapt, not just to the (increasingly bleak) media landscape, but to how my pitches may or may not be landing. If I'm not getting responses, I take it as a sign that I might need to redefine the audience or pitch or both, and while there are of course the usual suspects I am always pitching or sending copies to, the real fun is keeping an eye on who is writing what and finding new contacts for each book I work on. I'm so lucky to have people like you to bounce potential subject headers off of or talk about who to pitch what or where, as it's always changing, and while it's not always easy to work in that constant state of flux, it's also what keeps the job interesting and makes for exciting coverage. I've worked in publicity for almost ten years now and the job still feels really dynamic for this very reason. I mean, can you imagine how much less fun it would be if you were pitching the exact same people the exact same coverage all the time? I try to view what can sometimes feel like an uphill battle as an opportunity to stay curious and engaged, since it's from that place of not always knowing where creativity can really kick in.

CMM:

You're so smart. Constant Flux should be a sticker that publicists put on their water bottles. 

Also, I am now realizing (in the editing stage of this) that I didn’t respond about Dept of Speculation and for some reason, I feel like Jenny Offill is still comparable, but her foremother Sarah Manguso is untouchable? Even though, obviously, different genres. (Let me tell you sometime about how I hated Why Did I Ever? And it was definitely me and not the book). 

If Zoe can find her Kim Kardashian gif pitch, I'll slap that baby in this email. Sometimes you gotta get weird. KEEP PITCHING WEIRD (thanks city of Austin). 

I also love this little mistake of all caps that ended up working. What a reminder that quirky works! 

There’s something in here about not knowing everything (or really anything on my end) and taking a learn-as-you-go approach to a career that I do think publishing welcomes in a way that other industries do not. I love trial and error, and you're so right here when you say it keeps things creative and never dull. 

(Even though I'm sending this from underneath a hoodie after trying to make the tiniest little adjustments to a tour graphic that made my eyes bleed. Sometimes you're the marketing team and the publicity team when you work on the outside of a publishing house). 

ABG:

Omg, this Kardashian reference is AMAZING and KEEP PITCHING WEIRD is actually the sticker we all need on our water bottles. By the way, my friend and former colleague Lena, an angel, dragged up the gif I used in the email I mentioned from the depths of her inbox—note to self to use it more often. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to talk and think through all of this here—these conversations are always so validating. You're the best, and I am so lucky to be joining you at Pine State!!!! 

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.

ICYMI: Susan Ito is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Eugenia Leigh opened the season for OnBeing’s Poetry Unbound, Brian Allen Carr’s Bad Foundations was reviewed in Southwest Review and interviewed in Write or Die Mag, Margo Steines was this week’s Isolation Journals prompt essayist and wrote about “Life After Sex Work” for Airmail, Susan Ito was interviewed by Alice Stephens for CRAFT Literary, Beth Kephart was interviewed for PRINT Mag and Amanda Holmes Duffy wrote about My Life in Paper for Washington Independent Review of Books, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.