Ep. 39: Think You Need a Book Publicist? Marissa Eigenbrood of Smith Publicity and Vanessa Campos Talk Through It

Welcome to the Pub Date Podcast, the show where two book broads discuss what should happen before, during, and after your book publication date. Brought to you by Broad Book Group with your host Vanessa Campos and Jen Dorsey.

Happy Friday. So today is a very special day. We have someone who I believe Jen and I have both worked with on several projects throughout several publishers and even indie clients. We're welcoming Marissa Eichemood of Smith Publicity. Welcome, Marissa.

Thank you so much, Vanessa. I'm so excited to be here today. We're missing Jen, of course, but, uh, excited for the two of us to have an awesome conversation and, and talk all things book publicity and marketing and everything in between.

Yes, yes. So let me introduce you to the people, the people, the good people of the podcast listening audience. So Marissa is— I'm sorry, did I see that you got promoted as president?

Oh my goodness. Well, I mean, breaking news. I don't even know where it's at. I would know it's an internal message so far, but maybe it snuck its way into our newsletter or something. But yes, just as of a few days ago, I was promoted promoted to— from senior vice president to president.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And that is also coming with other very exciting transitions at Smith that have been in the works for a bit, as our current president, Sandy Smith, moves into the position of CEO. And Dan, our founder and CEO, is officially kind of retreating a little bit back to that founder status. Um, still very much involved, uh, you know, on certain things, but, um, but excited to have you know, even more of that female stronghold at the top.

Oh, heck yeah.

Move ahead.

Heck yes. You know, you gotta let women run shit.

We get it done.

Yes. Yes, we do. But Marissa has been working closely with all teams across the company at Smith Publicity throughout her career in public relations. She's worked with nonprofits, Fortune 500 corporate corporations, international brands, colleges, universities, you name it. She brings extensive knowledge of the publishing relations realm as well as an organized and dedicated focus to everything she does. And we in book publishing, and even the authors that we've, you know, worked together with, they really appreciate and they have nothing but great things to say about you guys.

Oh, thank you so much. Right, the one thing I love about working in publishing to the publicity side, the marketing side of publishing is that you just get to meet so many different people from so many different walks of life and facets of the world. And it's like we're so not just limited to those who are part of the publishing community, but all of the incredible, you know, creatives and experts and thought leaders that are out there in the world. So we constantly joke at Smith that we are all really good at like Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy because we know a little bit about a lot of different things from the many different people that we, get to, to experience and work with along the way.

And that's really what I love about working with in book publishing, specifically nonfiction, where, you know, the audience right now knows that we do nonfiction business, but everyone brings a little bit of flavor to, you know, their expertise and their knowledge. So I would like to get started in terms of like, hey, you know, you have a new client. What does that process at Smith look like? So, you know, let's say For example, I introduce you to this client that we had at Broad Book Group where he was looking to do SaaS B2B pricing strategies. And it was insane because we were looking at it and we're like, wow, that is specific. That is niche. That is specific. But even more so when he's decided to incorporate like '90s hip hop and, and music into this. And it's like, how is this all gonna tie in together? But when we started reading it, we're like, okay, this is cool. We gotta introduce him to Smith.

Right. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Shout out Marcos. But, you know, that's— we always like to say there are riches and niches. And I think that's such a special part about this project is that, you know, most people might say, oh my gosh, it's just— it's so unique. And there's— there's such unique target audiences here. And, you know, there definitely were broader strokes, though, that as we got to know, you know, Marcos, we got to know the book and read through the content. There were broader strokes to it that could apply to some more general audiences. Because it allowed us to think beyond the SaaS world. But, but also knowing that that was such a key space for him and knowing that that's where the decision makers really lied with his project, we could then say, okay, well, what are the podcasts? What are the blogs? What are those really key, you know, target audience media outlets that, that we can zero in on in our work together? And so that's, you know, kind of going to your question, the start of our work with anyone is asking— I always ask 3 key questions. I say, why this book and why now? That's kind of one question together. Like, why is this book need to come out now? As part of, um, not only just your excitement about the messaging, but the role that it's going to play in your overall expert brand platform. And then I want to know about what are your goals for this book? Are they to become a New York Times bestseller, or to sell a certain number of copies, or are they to use the book as a business card for more speaking and consulting, or new business clients, um, diving into those goals together is so helpful. And then, and then the third one is, who, who is this book for? So it's kind of the, the why, what do you hope to achieve through it, and then the who, who is it for? And I think that those are— those three key questions are something that, um, sorry, a lot of times when we kind of get the chance to jump in and have those conversations, authors haven't had to think about that kind of 30,000-foot view more recently because they've been in the depths of the content of the book and the line line research and editing and going through everything. So it's great to kind of at that time with marketing and publicity, take the step back to the beginning of, you know, of the process and really, you know, think about why am I doing this? Who is it for? What do I want to be sharing? And that should then dictate not only what we're doing on the publicity side, but all the ways you're talking about the book through your marketing channels and your networks as well.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So much to that. Yes. And I, you know, when we start working with an author who thinks they have an idea, we, we like to ask the same questions. And then it also, we encourage, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs and, and authors who are entrepreneurs are looking to write that first book, we encourage them to look at this as like, okay, this is a new product, this is your business plan, and continue to go back to your why, because that's really not just going to be like your powering move, but also the reason why you continue to do it, because it's daunting, it's a long process.

100%. Yeah, it is a marathon versus a sprint for sure.

And oh my God, yes.

And, and, you know, even I love that in working alongside you and Jen and other publishers and such too, that publication date is important. We want to celebrate that, especially from a marketing perspective in how you engage your networks and get those, you know, around you excited to support the book, drive pre-orders, all of those important aspects. But, you know, in a lot of those goals that extend beyond just book sales, it shouldn't be, you know, the publication date shouldn't be the end-all be-all. And it— that's the first day the book is available to the world. I like to think of it as like the book birthday where it just gets to grow and evolve and get bigger from there. And so I think that when you're really clear on, you know, the fact that this is going to be a process, this is going to take time, it allows you to think about, you know, not just everything up to that one date and put all this pressure on this one day, but really think about the long-term opportunities that lie ahead with the book and the content within it, right?

What I was going to ask is, you know, to your point about, you know, the pub date being such an important date for a lot of authors, you know, in working with traditional publishing and, uh, individual authors who are self-publishing, that pub date becomes a little bit of a moving target, especially in self-publishing. Um, and, you know, to date with everything that's going on with all the delays with paper and everything right now with traditional publishing, it's always a moving target. But, um, do you find that, you know, a lot more authors are looking for your help toward that pub date? And is that— do you offer services after the pub date as well? Like, is there a limit to when you can start working with an author?

You kind of answer that last question first, Vanessa. There's, there's not. And I think what's The key to it is alignment of expectations and alignment of goals together, depending upon when we're starting our work together. So, you know, there are some areas of the media and the traditional media world that are still regulated, if you will, or restricted by certain timelines and guidelines as to what they'll consider when. So what I mean by that is if you really want to give your book the chance to potentially be reviewed in the Wall Street Journal book review section, book review section, I want to emphasize there, it doesn't mean the, you know, person who covers economics, the editor or this, because there could be other opportunities with them that really book-centric coverage, then that you really have to make sure you're beginning with, you know, early review copies of the book and such available, you know, at least 4 months prior to publication date. When the target moves around a bit, then with that publication date, You know, it can cause some hiccups sometimes in the book-centric coverage that we might see land right around publication date. But usually, you know, a lot of media is flexible to that. But I also like to say that, you know, this type of coverage we're talking about is such a small pocket of media. And I think that when, again, an author can kind of go into the process not putting all this pressure on seeing this fanfare around one particular day or the week of publication and to understand that there's, great benefit to that coverage coming forth a little bit before the book comes out, after, and very much after the book comes out too, for months after the book comes out. That's ideal, you know, you're just showing the relevancy of it beyond just that one particular moment in time. And so, um, again, I like to always just make sure we're always fully transparent in that there are very select media opportunities that live within these guidelines, but most things outside of that are going to be flexible. And that's why we can work with individual individuals at all different stages of their book launch process. Um, you know, there's one project I'm talking to— their book came out just a week ago, and they've got some amazing marketing things going on right now. The goals that we've talked about are all about thought leadership and really sharing the messaging of the book. And so we're going to kick off a campaign together the second week of January in the new year, whereas, you know, someone else that I talked to just earlier today It has a book launch in mid-March of next year. So we're not necessarily in that 4-month lead time, but we have 2.5 months to still take advantage of. So we're talking about, you know, some what we call shorter lead book-centric opportunities. It might be positioning certain excerpts of the book, having it included on certain recommended reading lists, but really making sure that they know that, you know, we're not going to probably see some of those mainstream traditional reviews. And that's okay. Their goals were not all just about how well the book does on its own. And as long as we're aligned in that and those, those other initiatives of platform development for the author and expert, those things are what allows to keep going well after publication. There's many times we work with individuals for sometimes years after their book comes out.

I love to hear that. I, I love it as a, uh, as a publisher, as somebody who's worked in the traditional sense. I, I love when an author appreciates what publicity can do, not just for the book but also for themselves, the platform, because that's really a lot of what the whole purpose is for a book for a lot of the authors that we work with. But I wanted to touch on, you know, like expectations. I feel like a lot of people, especially, you know, new authors and sometimes authors who have like had 10, 20 books, sometimes I get the, okay, well, how, how will this relate back to sales? And I feel like that's something that people really need to understand and under— and really grasp that, you know, like, this is not necessarily aligned with direct sales. Do you get that a lot with, with customers that you're talking to?

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think it's really important that upfront we're clear about the fact that it's very hard to see a direct correlation between publicity and book sales. And I explain that in that it's, it's human reaction. So with publicity, with media coverage, If you do a podcast interview, if you write a byline article that's placed with Fast Company, if you, you know, there's a review of the book or excerpt that's published with a certain blog or other online publication, what someone decides to do after they've engaged with that coverage is out of our control completely. And what we want to make sure is that, hey, the book is ideally mentioned. There's, you know, if possible, if the outlets are open to linking back to Amazon or to their website, there's— we put all the other pieces in place to make sure that ideally someone can take action and get back to the book in some kind of way or the author's platform in some way. But what that listener, reader, viewer decides to do when they decide to take action further, especially with buying a book, is so much out of our hands. And I think something else that we really see more so today than, you know, I've been with Smith for over 13 years and I think this has changed drastically. From my early days at Smith is that, you know, now if you hear a podcast interview and you hear this great expert that you're interested in, it's kind of rare that you go and immediately buy the book right away. What you're gonna do instead is you're gonna go find that person, you're gonna start following them on their social media platforms, or you're going to sign up for a newsletter they might have. You want to engage with them a little further to kind of see what they're saying beyond just that podcast interview. And then after you've seen the consistency and kind of built a little bit of trust with that person, that's when you want to give them your money, you know, for the boat. Like, for lack of a better phrase, that's when you want to potentially invest in that relationship, as I do air quotes over here, further, buying their book or a course they might have, or reaching out for speaking opportunities, or whatever that next step action might be. And I think that wasn't the case years ago, where I think people might jump into buying it as much. But because of, of the importance of Building that trust and, and the person behind the book and the messaging and, and getting to know that individual. You know, it's just, it's so important that, that authors understand, you know, that the publicity piece is great and it builds awareness, but we place so much emphasis nowadays on those, those marketing channels and what you have on the other side. It's like, Julie, do you have your Sunday best on when it's time for publicity? Do you have, are you consistently sharing your thought leadership through social, through social media platforms or on your select platforms. You don't need to be on all of them. Um, do you have the right information about your book, about your offerings, and your website? A lot of times we work through some marketing consultation and discussions with authors before we begin publicity, which has been something that's really grown and evolved over, I would say, the last, you know, 5+ years here at Smith, because those pieces are so critically important to seeing people take action on the other side. And I think too, with, with regards to book sales, you know, those platform building opportunities, the speaking, the consulting, they often lead to more sales than just individual sales do because you're able to get those bulk sales coordinated a lot of the time. And so again, just further confirms the importance of that author platform and, um, and being ready to engage with those audiences. When they're brought back to you.

Yes, absolutely. And I definitely want to piggyback on that. I love, love, love the work and really the, the placements that you have gotten a lot of the authors that we've worked with. But one thing that I always want to, and I always reiterate with, with our, um, the authors and our clients is, you know, just because it's there and it's on their platforms doesn't mean that your job is done. You know, marketing is consistent. Like you had said earlier, you know, it's a marathon. It's definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The The beautiful thing about taking all of these wonderful placements and book excerpts and really building up on that thought leadership is— I think I heard this somewhere— you call it the Gary Vaynerchuk way. You take an article and you splice it and you dice it. And yes, you are sending people to the same link, but you also have to think about over the last 5 years, one PR publicity press release would have been enough. But now you have to every minute of every hour. I heard somewhere that's like, if you want to be good at Pinterest, you have to post 20 to 30 times a day.

And I'm like, oh, don't be on Pinterest.

Be where your audience is, right?

Exactly.

And, you know, some people think, you know, I don't want to keep asking, keep asking, keep asking. But the reality is, is that if you're looking at the platform is Sure, you're posting 5 times a day, but is that one person that is your potential client gonna see all 5 of those? Chances are no.

Mm-hmm. No, exactly. Yeah. And that's it with when it comes to marketing, I think, you know, really being clear on where your audience lives and spending your time there is so important. If you don't need to be everything for everyone because it's not only gonna be overwhelmed by trying to keep up with that, but yes, you are going to water down what you're saying across all those platforms and you're not gonna be as impactful. I mean, just for even me personally, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn and just sharing content there. And I usually try to stick to 3 posts a week. You know, it's not 3 posts every day. It's not a ton of commitment. It still takes time. It's, you know, it's something that I don't take lightly in that way. But it is there. That consistency still is important to whatever platform you do commit to. And I love what you said about those media placements is that it's not just the one time. You know, publicity is great in building discoverability, is great for SEO purposes so that when people, you know, happen to Google, you know, author Vanessa Campos, you know, what's coming up as the results for that. And we want to see as many of those placements as possible, of course, and diversity to those placements too. I think that that's so critical. But, you know, that publicity is just further maximized and further amplified when it's being shared through those marketing channels and when it's reused and recycled in many different instances. Like you said, the the Gary Vaynerchuk example there. And the, you know, I just talked to an author the other day where she had a plan to kind of roll out talking about her media placements that were coming in kind of hot and heavy from our work together and everything was kind of hitting. And she's like, I just don't want it to all be media placements. And so I said, it doesn't have to be. You don't have to just share it in the moment that it happens. But, you know, save that. And there could be breaking news, you know, in some kind of way about a company next week or a month from now. Where that one point you made in that one podcast interview really kind of applies to that situation, that's a great opportunity to reshare that podcast interview, repurpose it. And so you're not having to always get new all the time either, but you keep, keep reusing those links and the content within those links for other purposes. Right.

I always like to remind people that sometimes it's not the latest and greatest, it's something that's maybe resonated with the audience time and time again that really keeps you at the forefront. I know that, you know, we— I think we first met when I was working at Entrepreneur, and I was always flabbergasted at the fact that the number one article for the entire media site was actually a list of 55 different businesses that you could start because they had their Start Your Own series, and it was the number one thing. And it was just like, well, let's splice it and dice it, and we did that, and it just continued to be number one. In terms of that. So I mean, it really isn't like, to your point, it's like something, something hit, something's relevant, something that is relevant to your book and what have you. So I love this conversation because I, I love bouncing ideas off of people like you. And this is wonderful for me.

That number article you said there too with Entrepreneur, we've seen that with a particular article from our blog on the Smith website. Um, we actually turned it into like a separate website page because of what it did for SEO and everything. Um, but it— I think it started off as like the 99 book marketing tips. And I mean, there's like really basic stuff in there that, again, a lot of times we're pulling out and turning into other pieces. Um, and each year we've changed it to like 101, 102, just add another one to it, and it refreshes. And it does all this amazing stuff for, for SEO and just kind of rankings and things, but it also just continues to give us more and content to tap back into over, over time. And again, it just further proves that it's not for entrepreneur, it's not like the article by, I don't know, Marshall Goldsmith, if he wrote one. Like, let's say, love Marshall Goldsmith, but like, it's not like because Marshall Goldsmith's name is on it, it was just this like content, like highly packed content piece that, that did the trick.

Absolutely. So I do want to ask you, so earlier we had talked about, you know, how somebody starts working with you guys and how you have these 3 questions that you always ask, you know, it's the why you're writing this, why now, and who's your audience. Is there anything that, in terms of a response, that kind of throws red flags that people can really take from this conversation and think like, okay, maybe I, I was thinking that, but maybe I need to reconsider my mindset around book publishing and publicity?

Yeah, I will say that the lovely bestseller term— yes, I'm not referring to Amazon, um, but when we hear those words come up and we whether Wall Street Journal, New York Times, those goals, you know, come into play when we talk about, about the goals for the project. Um, it does send up some of those orange flags, I'll give it a little bit, um, in that, you know, we really need to understand why they have those goals in mind. And a lot of times I find that it's because that's what they think their goal should be versus what might actually be impactful for them. Um, that's because their friends told them that that should be their goals versus being ones that are actually going to, you know, impact the why behind, you know, behind the project to begin with. And so I always appreciate the opportunity to ask those, those questions to— if I get that response to, to educate and to help people understand kind of what it might take to get to that goal. And it is not a goal that everyone can reach. And there are a lot of strategies and such that come into play when trying to reach goals like that. And especially if it's a first-time author or a newer author, um, you know, to the landscape, it's gonna be a much steeper uphill battle than it is for Brené Brown and Dan Pink to get on that list. Um, they've just got a lot of those necessary foundational elements. Um, and, you know, more than the foundation, they've got the first and second floor built too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're, they're already at the penthouse. They're like 25 stories up already in that. But yeah, they're, they're probably gonna get because they just have all of these built-in pieces that are so important. You know, your, your network and how your network will respond and how you can engage them in pre-ordering the book is the end-all be-all to bestseller lists like that. And so, sure, are there those out there that you can bring in to, to pay for certain degrees of support to get to a goal like that? Absolutely. And we don't frown upon that if that's really important to you. But we'll talk about that as an option if you haven't considered it before. If it's that important to them to potentially reach a bestseller list like that. So I would say that's, you know, piece number one that sometimes can give us a bit of pause. The other thing that comes up sometimes is how much of a partner the author wants to be in the process of all of this. And, you know, we hear things like, well, I wrote the book, I don't really want to write a lot more after that, or, uh, yeah, hiring you to do this for me. That's not how publicity works. That's not how marketing works anymore, especially. And I like to say that your writing is certainly not done with the last page of the book. And there has to be a lot of collaboration and engagement with our authors that we work with. And, you know, whether that's going to be in the form of content they're creating for our efforts with byline articles or op-eds or personal essays depends on what space they come from. If it's around You know, the, hey, there's breaking news, or some, or a media contact is wanting to get expert commentary for a piece, um, you know, how quickly can they give us a quick soundbite of their thoughts? All of those things are really important to seeing, um, a campaign be as successful as possible. So we really have to make sure there's alignment on their willingness to be a partner with us through that process as well, and brainstorm and things like that too. You know, we're we're not the experts here, they are. We're experts in publicity. We need to constantly dig those nuggets out of their brain beyond what's in the pages of the book.

Oh yeah. No, it's always amazing when you, when you start talking to an author and they just say like, oh, haphazardly I did this thing. It's like, that's amazing. Can we really like grill down on that? And, and they're like, really? That's a good idea. I'm like, yeah, that's like the basis. So it's always really interesting. Yeah, no, you never think about it until somebody comes in. And that's really what I love about working with Smith. It's that it's really a community effort and it takes a village. And you heard it here, guys, the work is never done. No, the writing is never finished. You know, and I definitely, I've, you know, as you heard here, Marissa is constantly writing and sharing content on her LinkedIn page. And if you don't follow her, please do. She's got a lot of really great things. And I did see that you guys are having panel about, you know, a review of 2022. Where can people go ahead and sign up for that?

Sure. So we're doing, we had a webinar series that we launched around our 25th anniversary for 2022, and we're going to keep that going in 2023 on a quarterly basis. So our first one is January 11th. If you go to my LinkedIn, you'll find the event posted in there. And so you can sign up and we'll have the Zoom information sent out to everybody, you know, right before. But that's going to include our 3 publicity managers talking about trends and what we expect to see moving ahead into 2023. So really excited. We love to just share knowledge and education wherever possible at Smiths. So whether it's through my LinkedIn or webinars or newsletter or blog, we have a podcast too. Yes, yes, all those great things. We just, we love to share our knowledge and the knowledge of others around us as much as we can. So there's a lot of great resources for that.

Yeah, and that's really the key in finding your, your true partner in publicity in your book publishing, people who are willing to share the resources and not geek keep.

Oh yeah. Listen, it's, as you said, it takes a village and it takes a village to, to release a book and work toward the goals that we're talking about. And, you know, if you ever find a one-stop shop in the world of publishing, buyer beware is all I have to say.

Yes.

Building out your team, that's, you want everybody who focuses on certain areas versus trying to find someone who can do it all. 'Cause it's probably gonna be better off the other way.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Marisa, for joining us today. We are definitely missing Jen today. But we will have you back on in the new year and Jen will be with us. And, you know, just thank you again. I, I really love our conversations. It's just like bouncing ideas back and forth and this could really be like a few-hour situation, but we are limited on time.

Well, thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure to be here. And, uh, and again, always love chatting with you, Vanessa. It's, it comes so, so easily every time and, and happy to come back whenever the time's right.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much to our producer Paul Roberts. Of OC Talk Radio, and our executive producer Emily Carpenter-Polskamp of Little Red Communications. Until next time, we hope that you gained some valuable insights into the world of book publishing.

Head over to broadbookgroup.com to learn more about us and all our services, and be sure to check out all our social media @BroadBookGroup. Until then, Keep publishing!