In this episode, Emily chats with book marketing coach and newly installed publisher at Ooligan Press, Robyn Crummer-Olson, who works with both self-published and traditionally published authors on project management and book marketing and publicity. We talk about why it’s important for marketers to be honest with authors about just how hard it is to launch a book (very, very, very hard), why your purpose as an author has to be about more than making money, and what authors can do to make marketers’ jobs easier. (Hint: Don’t insist that your book is for everyone. No book is for everyone. Well, maybe To Kill a Mockingbird.) We also talk about how important it is for authors to let their publishers know exactly what they’re doing to promote their book, and why it’s such a joy to work with authors who are curious and open to trying all kinds of promotional strategies to get the job done.

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You welcome to the hybrid club Scout podcast with me. Emily

einerlander, we're mapping the frontier between traditional and

indie publishing. Today's guest is Robin Kremer Olsen. Robin

Kremer Olsen has more than 12 years of experience in book

publishing, working with best selling, self published authors

and in well established publishing houses. Before

working in book publishing, she was a marketing and advertising

copywriter and content strategist. She currently

teaches book marketing and publishing for writers classes

at Portland State University, and she coaches authors on

manuscript development, book project management and book

marketing and publicity. She has a bachelor's degree in

communication and Women's Studies from Southwestern

University, Georgetown, Texas, and a master's degree in writing

with a specialization in book publishing from Portland State

University. And she also has some pretty big news, Robin,

what's your big news? Yeah, well, thank you so much for

having me. This is so exciting, and I feel like such a grown up

being on a podcast. This is my first podcast,

but, yeah, this this week of we announced some big news. I'm

going to be taking over as publisher for the hooligan press

student run publishing house inside of Portland State

University. Abby gotterood is going to be moving on after 12

years as publisher. She's going to be going to Chemeketa

Community College to spearhead their textbook publishing

program. So I'll be stepping in and taking over kind of this

summer and into the fall. That's really exciting.

Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, that that was the that was

the place where I went to grad school as well, and many of our

guests, actually. I mean, who would have thunk that's how we

make connections with one another, right? I know well,

it's worth two years of work experience, so you leave with a

whole group of people that you've been in the trenches with

so for two years, and then sometimes you figure out ways to

keep in touch with them, and it's awesome, yeah, exactly. And

sometimes they invite you to be on their podcast. All right, so

let's get into questions about your book marketing and

publicity experience, because we will be focusing on that today,

not so much the educational side of things, right? And I'll be

speaking as my marketing coach, not in my hooligan capacity. So,

all right, the many faces of Robin.

Okay, so let's, let's do the the

marketing 101, question, what's the difference between a book

marketer and a publicist? Okay, so I consider myself a book

marketer, and I work with publicists, and I would say the

primary difference is my job as a marketer is to make sure that

readers, or potential readers, know that the author exists,

that the book exists, and that we're communicating about that

in sort of the best way possible, from the copywriting,

the cover, where it's appearing, and some of that will be paid

for and some of that might be not paid for, and then pub the

publicity side of things. Or a publicist, to me is someone who

works primarily on that author, reader connection, and that

might be through live events, that might be through

interviews. It has. They do a lot with word of mouth and with

media, and so they tend to have sort of a curated list of

contacts. I don't keep a list of contacts. I kind of rely on a

publicist to sort of bring that to the table. And what I do is

sort of make the the overarching plan, and it will include

publicity. Okay, so a bit of a project manager role in some

ways. Yeah, and I tend to break things down into, like, what I

call owned, earned and paid. And so owned media is like anything

where you control the message, you control the timing. So an

author's website, newsletter, I kind of put social media in

there too. Yeah.

Earned is that publicity. That's where, you know, awards,

reviews, word of mouth. It's like earned attention that you

don't pay for, and then paid, kind of what it sounds like

display advertising, paid social, that kind of thing.

Okay, so it almost, it also kind of sounds like the book marketer

is a little bit more like business to business, whereas

the publicity is like business to reader or consumer. I think,

I think that's a useful line, knowing that there's probably,

like a Venn diagram, or like, you know, I'm all about the gray

area, so sometimes we have to do a little bit of both. I might be

coming at this a little bit from like, the copywriter content

strategy thing, which I think we also kind of overlap on a little

bit, definitely. Yeah.

How does your content strategy kind of inform this? Yeah, well,

I mean content strategy is about the right message to the right

people at the right time. And so in this case, we've decided it's

a book and so, and that isn't necessarily always print, you

know, it can be audio, it can be ebook,

and then it's like, Where, where are we going to talk about this?

Where's the best place for an author to be? I worked with an

author who was really great at doing these short videos. He's

like an ultra endurance athlete who would do, like the Iditarod

1000 or like the world's longest kayak race, and he would send

these little dispatches from the trail, and we were putting them

up on YouTube because they were hilarious. I mean, he was

suffering deeply, like in agony, but he would, he would like send

these little sort of koans from the trail. And it just worked

perfectly, right? But that was the strategy, was he shut he

shined the best. He shown, shined in that, in that way. So

we kept there.

Right? Shin did.

So he was, he was doing content sprints, but long endurance

athleticism, exactly like in the dead of night in a snowstorm in

Alaska,

you know, pushing his bike for 17 miles. Oh, my God, for a

second, like you said, Alaska and my brain went straight to

dog racing. Well, it's the Iditarod trade, but you do 1000

miles of it on a fat bike. Oh, wow, yeah. And so he would pull

out his phone, no service, but he take these little videos of

just like, the headlamp on the snow and just talking. So did he

about his pee on M M's and, like, putting money in the

suffer bank, and he was just, he's, yeah, it's incredible. So

how was he able to get it to you during the process, or was it

all afterward? Checkpoints? Okay, he just put, he just

upload them, and then keep going.

So let's come back to sort of like the author standpoint in

all of this marketing and publicity. So what are you as a

book marketer supposed to do for your for your author that you're

working with? That's a great question, I think, in metaphors.

And so the metaphor that I offer for this is I'm more of a

personal trainer, so

the author is expected to put in all the hard work and do the

reps. And what I do is make the plan, and I identify what the

goals are for the work and get the shortest distance between

where they are now and where they're trying to be. So like,

I'm a lazy person at heart. I don't like to do things wrong or

over because it cuts into my sitting around time. And so I

create a plan where

the effort that is exerted gets the most result.

And I think that that's really valuable for authors, since they

don't have endless supplies of money or time. And so if you're

going to exert a certain amount of effort or a limited amount of

resources, you want to know that they're going the best possible

way they can.

Yeah, but that's why I adopted the term coach. Because

consultant sort of sounded like I was going to come in and like,

do stuff for someone, or I was going to kind of like, make it

happen. And the person that people want to connect to is not

me, it's the author, right? And so I want to put their best self

forward. I want to make it as clean and clear and correct as

possible so people know who they're talking to. They know

who they're relating to when they pick up a book and or the

series. Or, you know, want to find out more about this author.

So how do you find.

Like since you have worked both with publishing houses as and

independently,

what do you think the difference is between working with these

authors and working with the publishing company?

And do you ever see their their desires at odds with one

another? No, I think everybody wants the same thing, right?

Everybody wants the book to find the right readers,

and that's where sometimes I struggle with the sort of author

saying, like my publisher didn't do anything to market my book.

I sort of take umbrage with that because it doesn't really make

any sense from a business standpoint, like a publisher has

made, taken financial risk to invest in this piece of work,

and it's in their best interest to see it succeed.

So I don't ever think things are at odds. I think both parties

want the exact same thing. What I will say, and what I've found

myself doing, more often than not, is being sort of a

translator between publisher and author, where the publisher is

like the duck, you know, on the top of the water, and underneath

it's like paddling like crazy, but on top, it looks totally

still. And I think from an author's perspective, they're

like, what's the publisher done for me lately, and the the

publisher has been working on the marketing copy. They've been

doing those pre sales and sales calls with distributors. They've

been doing the tip sheets and the sales kits and the right but

all of that's very invisible to an author, and they don't see

that. It's more of that B to B marketing, or even backward from

there. It's internal marketing, like getting people inside the

publisher on board with the project. Oh, that's a ton of

work, right, but it's pretty invisible to the author. On the

other hand, I'm always telling my authors, go to your own horn,

like send an email to your publisher about what you've

done. Like, tell them what you're up to, tell them what you

tried, tell them what worked, what failed, because it's going

to go down on your permanent record. Like, they're going to

remember that you were hustling, and that might sway them. Like,

when you come to them with your next project, they're going to

be like, well, this person was hustling. Like, yeah, you know,

we're a team here, but authors can forget that, like they're

working so hard, isn't it obvious? Like, doesn't my

publisher appreciate what I'm doing? And I'm like, No, you

gotta, like, toot your own horn and tell them. I remember being

really excited when I worked in a publishing house, when someone

was actually going out there and being proactive, especially for

pre sales, yeah, yeah. And, and, like, it matters, like, the

publishers notice it. And that might even, I can't promise, but

it might mean if they do have, like, a little smidge of an

extra budget, like, they might toss something your way, they

might do a little extra ad. They might, like, throw you in the

newsletter another time. I mean, there's, it's, it's a very like,

as long as you can keep the cycle as giving in both

directions, I think it's bound to succeed. What happens is

when, like, both sides sort of think the other one isn't doing

enough. I think there's probably a marriage metaphor in here too,

somewhere. But there's gotta be. There's gotta be. I mean, I've

heard it used over and over again, but not necessarily in

the marketing capacity, usually in the acquisition side, yeah,

things, but, I mean, but like, that's more the wedding versus

the marriage, I guess. But as a marketer, inside of a publisher,

you know, seeing an author, like, we had a conference one

time where we had the booth and all the books, and we had sold

all the books for the whole conference. Was an IT

conference, but I still had that, like, extra box of books

that I didn't know. I didn't really want to ship it back, but

Right, what am I going to do with it? And one of our authors

came by, and he was like, What are you doing with those books?

And I said, Well, I haven't really figured it out. He's

like, I'm going to try to sell the rest of those books, his own

books. So he like, took the box, and he was like, going around

the expo hall floor, and he brings somebody over, and he'd

be like, This guy will buy as many as will fit in his carry

on. And then he'd walk away. And he was just like, hustling to

push these books. What a hero. I know he's, yeah, Gary's always

been my hero like that. He's just like, dauntless, so he

writes it books, and he's like, I just want people to have the

book like, and I yeah, I also feel like, if a person, and

that's also kind of to me, there's, you know, you can

elaborate on this or argue with us if you want, but I feel like

sales and marketing kind of have diverging paths, because I have

seen authors who have been great about, you know, repeating on

their you know, maybe they have a podcast, maybe they have a

newsletter and saying, Here's my book. Buy my book. And, you

know, they're great at.

Saying that it's there, but they're not good at closing. So

I feel like that's kind of a major difference, and it also

like affects greatly whether you get a second or third book out

there from your publisher. And that's a distinction that I end

up having to address when I get the inevitable question of, how

do I sell more books or but if I do this thing you're telling me

to do, will it sell books? And I have to talk about that there is

some difference between a sales activity and a marketing

activity, and that you can't always tie an ROI to this. If I

do X, I'm going to sell y. And if that's your sort of intrinsic

motivation, you're gonna get really sad and tired really

fast. Because if you think that there's like a linear

correlation between you working harder and the actual results

being good, or it being monetary only, because that's only one

metric, right? There's a lot of metrics in marketing, and one of

them might be like, I went to this conference, and I made a

lot of really great connections, and people are now talking about

me, talking about my right, right? So that's, yeah, that's a

good start beginning, but not necessarily like turning around

the

numbers, right? Because we all know what it feels like to be

sold to versus someone trying to connect with us, right? So, very

different experience. Oh, can you talk a little bit more about

internal marketing within a publishing house, and how you

know that can go well, and how that can go not Well, yeah,

yeah, it kind of depends on the complexity of the organization,

but the way that I've seen it happen is there's the

acquisitions process, which has a lot to do with marketing,

because you're only going to acquire something that you think

has a reasonable to sure chance of selling,

But then you have to sort of pitch it to the publisher. You

have to pitch it to the editorial staff, and kind of get

their buy in on it, and really sort of demonstrate why this

book, why this author, and why now, and why this treatment of

the topic, whether it's nonfiction or fiction.

And then if there is, like a customer service or sales area,

like when I worked at pomegranate, you know, we had to

make sure that they understood what was going on with the

product. And it sort of manifests in those early sales

materials, like the tip sheet, the copywriting that you put on

the cover. And so, yes, eventually it makes it to

readers, but it has to start inside. And you know, you have

to convey the value and the urgency of the book to the

designer so that they can transmit that in the form of a

cover or in the other sales materials that they make. I've

heard from distributors, you know that they they really need

you to sell it to them. They need to understand, don't just

tell them it's a book, a gift book, if it's not the right gift

book, dimensions, like, know what is really valuable about

this particular book or this particular author at this

particular time? Yeah, because if you don't, if you don't give

them the tools to be able to sell the book, they're just

probably not going to go the extra mile to do it, because

they have a lot of other books to sell, or if they're doing

like, confused headcock, like, they're not going to be able to,

like, talk about it in the way that you want. So that

enthusiasm, right? You have to have that enthusiasm the author

isn't able to have those conversations, so the advocates

inside the press have to have those conversations on their

behalf. So when you when you work with a self published

author, do you find that you do more like business to reader?

And is that more challenging in some ways, or is it just a shift

in mindset? It kind of depends on where the author is in their

process. So of first time, author, debut author, all the

effort is in that, getting that flywheel moving and just that

incremental momentum. It has a huge energy suck on everyone. So

it's, I have to kind of limit the number of first time or

debut authors that I work with, because it's just it takes so

much focus and time and energy for to get things built for

them, whereas an author that comes to me that maybe has a

platform already going but they're like, I think there's

some things I could be doing better, or I've been doing this

stuff, but I'm not really sure how it's working. That's a whole

different thing, right? That's like running some experiments,

or doing a little like housekeeping. Making sure

they're what they're doing is the best way that they could be

doing it, to use an.

Editing metaphor. It's more like revising a manuscript than

writing one from scratch, exactly, or like developmental

edit, you know, if, like, they're kind of shifting genres

or something, you know, and like retooling what they already

have. But it's also kind of like small business coaching too,

because when you decide to publish a book, you're kind of

starting a business, it's your next job, yeah, especially if

you're doing it all by yourself. Yep, and you really do have to

have, like, a business entity and everything, yeah, taxes on

that, you know. All right, so how do you develop that trust

between the author and the book, marketer and you know, the

department,

first of all, I am very honest about what they're facing,

because it's really hard work to

launch and market a book, or books

like, there's sort of this relief and sense of

accomplishment in finishing the manuscript or completing the

book production, but then you have to, like, start all over

again with that same amount of effort to then market it. Yeah,

and I think the best thing that I can do is just be really

upfront about what that's gonna look and sound like, as far as

hours and, you know, small wins and big wins and small

disappointments and big disappointments.

I always encourage authors to have, like to really look at why

they're doing what they're doing. And, like I said earlier,

like, it can't just be money. There's got to be other things

that sustain them. And then we keep coming back to that. So

like, when, when feeling discouraged, or like, why am I

doing all this blog post, doing all this writing about the

writing? Like, let's go back to why you were doing it.

I think that helps build trust. And then, like I said, as a

coach, I'm kind of the cheerleader and, you know, dust

them off and, like, send them back out,

and sort of feeling like there's someone there with you. Because

I think it can be a very like solitary feeling too. And, you

know, I do what I say I'm going to do. So like, I expect authors

to do the same.

And you know, I've had

all kinds of authors and like, the ones that have sort of a

mindset of, like, curiosity and like, well, let's see what

happens when I do this, I find that they sort of are more

resilient, and they kind of weather the like disappointments

and or even the like silence. I think it's not even so much

negativity. It's just like trying to break through the

silence is very can be draining, yep. And so I think the ones

that are just sort of like, I'm gonna, you know, if there's 10

people at the cocktail party and seven people don't care who you

are, and two people hate you and one person loves you, they're

gonna, like, talk to that one person, yeah, and you'll have a

fun conversation, right? And the ones that are like, kind of

plucky and like dauntless, they just kind of, they tend to

weather the

ups and downs better, like water off a duck's back, right? More

duck metaphors, I can't get enough love a good duck.

So do you ever kind of give that? I imagine that you front

load some of this, this risk to people. Do you ever have people

just go, never mind and run away? Yeah, I have a lot of one

time calls,

which is okay, because it might, we might not be the right fit,

you know. And that's okay. There's a lot of people out

there that, you know, want to help authors and have different

ways and means. Some people would do better with a course,

you know, or a resource. That's a great way to go about it. I'm

personally more of like a one to one. I'm little. There's a

little more hand holding in my particular approach, but it's

not for everybody. So what can an author do to help make the

job of a marketer easier?

Show up

when you're supposed to show up

to events, or yes or media, you know, interviews.

I've had some authors who we set some things up, and they just

couldn't make it.

And that's really challenging. I.

I think that attitude that I talked about earlier, like just

having a good can do, like dauntless, excited, curious

attitude, is super duper helpful. Be open to new

experiences in, like a roller coaster kind of way. Like, I'm

gonna go on this roller coaster. I'm really scared and like, the

butterflies, but I know eventually it's going to end and

I'm going to be like, Oh my gosh. Wasn't that amazing? I

talked about the curiosity mindset, communicate and brag,

you know, about your accomplishments. Like,

it's not just like, buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. There's

like, look at what I did. You Guys Like, Share in the triumphs

of publishing something. I

think that's a beautiful thing. Like the first time an author,

like, holds their book and, like, sniffs it. It's such a

beautiful moment. Like, share that stuff. You know, that makes

marketers very, very happy.

I would say, have some non negotiables. Like, I like things

you won't do, but more than that, be flexible. So if you

think Twitter, Twitter's a cesspool, like, I'm not going to

make you be on Twitter, but like, don't be like that about

everything. Like, be open to trying some new things, because

you might be surprised that you're actually like, really

good at something that you didn't think you would be. What

if somebody is really introverted? How do you

encourage them to sort of take more of a of a roller coaster

goer approach? Well, it kind of, it kind of depends on their like

constitution. So like, are they the kind of person that could

be, like, nudged towards something, or are they just,

like, I don't want to do any public speaking.

That would change what we might do. It might be like, more

contributed pieces, or like, Q and A's, or things where they

can like, I mean, we can't all be Elena Ferrante, right, like,

right, or JD Salinger, right? I mean, it works, but it's not

like a, not like a repeatable strategy.

There's no pathway for it, right? It's like the Enigma is

the thing. But we can't all be enigmas. There's, there's no

that's not in our guide, in our picking your publishing path

guide, right? Bronte, right. But, like, I worked with this

historical fiction author who was very shy,

and I just tried to get at, like, who were her people? Like,

who were her,

her crew, her clan, like, the kind. And she loved like,

historical societies. So I was like, Well, why don't we put you

into historical societies? Like, why don't we try to, like, find

the Let, let you be in public among your kind? Well, there's

got to be a lot of readers who aren't online. Yeah,

right. But like, instead of drawing like, a hard line of

like, I won't do public appearances, I was like, but

surely there's people that you kind of can, like, tip a glass

of wine with. Like, who would they be?

So that's been kind of useful, is to like, empathize, tons of

empathy, but also like, but is there a way that this could look

different, because sometimes they just don't know, yeah, like

all kinds of things we can do. Who literally would you talk to,

just on a day to day basis? Yeah, exactly.

So what do you what kind of Publisher do you find to be a

joy to work with as a marketer, or at least, or at least

manageable to work with. I really need, like, clear

communication, clear point of contact,

clear like, expectations and guidelines and again, like being

transparent about what you do for the authors is really useful

for a long time. Chronicle Books had this really great web page

up that was like all of

the things that they as the publisher had been doing and

would be doing, and then a long list of all these different kind

of activities that the author could be doing while the book

was in production, just on their website. Yeah, it was this, like

hidden kind of page. If you Googled a certain set of

phrases, it would

show up. Hold on one second. Is that a cat?

So sorry. Okay, I was like, hey, family, I'm gonna be on a

podcast. Could you keep the cat from screaming?

My my dog keeps coming to the door and crying, but if I try to

keep him in the room while I'm on a call, he'll go to the door

and cry to be let out.

Out. And I'm like, that's what my cats do. It's a cat thing,

because I grew up with cats and I have this dog, and I'm like, I

thought you guys weren't supposed to do this.

Yeah, if you're in, you want out. If you're out, you want in.

The REM Tum Tugger,

my cat, one of His Names is Buster for Jones, so,

yeah, with his Spats, he's a little tuxedo cat, adorable.

Yeah, yeah. I just want to say that I liked it when I was a

child and I read the TS Eliot book with my mom, yeah,

illustrated by Edward Gorey, yes, yes. I feel like this movie

has just kind of, you know, turned people off to the idea of

old possums Practical Cats. And that's a shame, because it's a

adorable poem book with adorable illustrations, yeah, yeah. And

plus, like, how many good poems Can you share, like, good

classic poems can you share with a child without having to have,

like, big talks about the universe and the nature of like,

death and life.

Flower fairies were really big in our family poetry. I don't

know if you were into the flower fairy books, but no, I just in

my head, like thought, oh, I recognize that. But then I

realized it was like the flat fairy book, if you ever saw

that, it was like, now, is that like, Flat Stanley? No, it was,

this is so terrible. And my mom would like, yell at me if she

caught me reading it. But it was like,

the concept was like these, this girl walking around her garden

where there were fairies and, like, going with her book and

smashing them in her book and flattening them so it's all

these illustrations of fairies. Like,

my mom's like, no, no, no, no, no, don't look at that. I'm

like, like, bug on a windshield. Fairies, yes, yes. I wonder what

happened. I wonder if she still has that. I'll have to she'll

tell me, okay, well, coming back from cat screaming interlude,

you had asked me, What

can publishers do? Yeah, to be easy to work with. And one thing

that I wanted to say was the when at IT revolution where I

worked, it was an IT publisher. We had, like a really clear

handoff between editorial and marketing. There was a there was

a moment in time where we all got on a call, the editor, the

author and I, and there was, like this clear editorial was

saying, Don't email me anymore. Now email her and, like, handed

it off, and then I had a series of, like, homework assignments

and and sort of projects for them to work on, because once

the books in production, it can go kind of radio silent for an

author, they're like, I have all this nervous energy and what's

going on. And so coming in as a marketer and being like, look,

you've got blog posts right, and an author questionnaire to fill

out. And, like, I have all these things for you to do, it's

really a nice transition. And so if there's ever a way to do that

with publishers, I always suggest that is

as productions rolling along. There again, the duck feet are

going like crazy, but the author only sees this, like, still

thing on the top, something to do, yeah, and so I have, like, a

whole checklist of things. And like, assignments, homework,

assignments, check we had regular check ins, and, like,

they felt more momentum. And I just think that's such a useful

thing to offer as a publisher, yeah, and then you're not

scrambling when the pub date comes along, yeah, which you

wouldn't want to be anyway. And when I was at pub West, there

was a publisher there who was saying

she has, like a an author, sort of liaison that like her main

job. She's a freelancer, but her main job is to kind of step in

and assist the authors in accomplishing what they're

contractually obligated to do for that publisher. Like they

build it in the contract that the author needs to do one item

from these three lists. Wow, and it's manageable, but, like, they

need to make sure that it's getting done. So this kind of

author liaison just comes into, like, it's like a closer, like

she just kind of closes those tasks. And I think that's also

something that's really valuable too, for everybody to take the

pressure off. It almost sounds like a form of an agent, but

like, not in the beginnings phase, not in the courtship and

wedding phase, but in the marriage phase, right? And just

making sure, like, it all gets done, because the main anxiety

point that I encounter is, like, the comes in at timing, when to

do things in what order. And, you know, I know I'm supposed to

be doing all this stuff, but, like.

When is it supposed to be happening? And that's when those

kind of extra support things can be really helpful, yeah? And,

and that's why transparency is so valuable. And sounds like a

two way street, two way street, yeah, sure. So we've kind of

touched on this, but I, you know, I love being contrary. So

like, let's

what makes it difficult for a marketing person to do their job

when people think their book is for everyone, oh, yeah, no,

niche, yeah. And you have to, like,

explain that if it's for everyone, it's for no one, and

that, like pissing some people off is maybe actually okay and

desirable sometimes,

but ideally, you know,

like that 10 people at the cocktail party thing, like,

don't waste your time

on the two people who don't like you. Focus on the one person who

does, and maybe try to, like, Woo some of those people who

don't care into caring. Like, maybe they just don't know. Not

following my advice

makes it really hard,

you know, to, like, hire an expert to do something and then,

kind of not, not do the work, and then expect the results at

the end, going back to that personal trainer metaphor, like,

you can't hire someone to get you from like couch potato to

beach BOD by like,

avoiding the gym. And then, like, summer swimsuit season

hits, and you're like, why don't I look awesome? And it's like,

well, because you're, you weren't doing the reps, you

know, and then, yeah, the the showing up, or, you know,

failing to show up is probably one of the worst things that's

happened to me as a marketer, is like, or working, you know, with

publicity, is going to a lot of time and trouble and expense to,

like, set up interviews or set up appearances, and then kind of

have the person, like constantly rescheduling or like not being

available at the it publisher I worked at, you know, we had an

author. We had two authors in one season, and I found out from

our publicity team that he wasn't like replying to emails

about inquiries, you know, media inquiries and and I had to have

a talk with him, like, I had to call him and be like, Look, this

is going to go down in your permanent record. Like, I'm

putting, you know, $5,000 toward each of these books for

publicity. Like, if you're not going to show up and do these

things, I'm going to take that money. I'm going to go put it

over. Put it over here with the other author, yeah, and like,

because she's showing up and she's doing this stuff, and

like, you know, I'm just probably going to remember this

next time you write a book. And he said, Well, I'm in Singapore,

and it's just, I don't want to wake up, you know, to do these

interviews. And I was like, Okay, good to know. But I'm

there's going to be consequences for this. And he decide. I was

like, take some time. Think about it, let me know. He

started replying to the emails. He started waking up at 2am to

do the interviews because he chose to go to Singapore during

launch. Oh my god. I always told our authors, like, don't go

anywhere for, like, the three weeks at least on either side of

launch, because we need you to be really responsive. And he

just kind of didn't heed that, and went to Singapore, and then

it wasn't convenient for him to, like, be on these interviews for

eastern time or Pacific time. So yeah, I mean, and it happens. I

mean, stuff like that happens. And sometimes it's

unforeseeable, like, we've, you know, I've seen authors get

sick, you know, like, but you don't know until after they show

back up, you know, it's, it's like, Oh, I'm sorry. I had,

like, a terrible accident, or, like, I had this, like, very

dangerous illness, and you're like, I was so mad at you, and

now I feel terrible. Like going to Portland Book Festival and

seeing like, one empty chair on the panel because somebody was

sick, and you're like, they had to be really sick to not take

this opportunity. Like, then I just feel like lots of Get well

soon, empathy, yeah, that's, those are, like, totally

different Well, yeah, but also it's, it's also sort of a

communication thing too. And it's not saying that these

people, like, oh, they should have told people, but it kind of

goes back to your discussion about, like, being open your

authors, about vulnerability. Like, you can tell your

publisher, and you can tell your marketing team, like, tell them

you're sick. Don't be embarrassed. Yeah, I know we're

all Yeah, we're all on the same like you said, we're all on the

same team. Yeah, I just got to crash a somebody's book club

earlier this week, and Kristen Arnett, the author of mostly

dead things, was going to be on it. So I was like.

Like, I'm totally gonna crash this. And she talked about how

amazing it was for her to work with tin house, and that she

felt like everybody at tin house was like her friend and her

colleague, and they were a team. And she talked just about at

every step of the process working with them, what a

pleasure it was

that was really nice to hear, yeah, we care about you, yeah.

And then she's like, I can just, like, call someone and, like,

talk to them. Do you ever feel like you kind of get that, you

know, you know, when you were like a kid and you really liked

someone who, some adult who had authority over you, like, for

me, it was my karate teacher. Yeah, I was terrified of him.

But, like, I really, really liked him. Like, there's a

picture of me where, you know, he came up and he, like, put his

arm around me to take a picture, and I am standing there with my

shoulders all up by my ears. Like, ah, yeah. Yeah. Like, you

really want to, like, make better happy, yeah. Like, do you

find, do you find, like, authors reacting to their publishing

people like that sometimes, I hope so. That's great, right? I

hope they're both feeling that way. Like, I hope that the

relationships inspiring both sides to try to, like, make this

thing the best it can possibly be like that would just be the

ultimate

best day scenario, as long as but I also kind of feel like

that, that sort of, like fear needs to be broken down.

It's like you got to get that, like shoulders tied up by your

ears period, to like the, you know, we want the same things,

we have the same goals, sort of, we're we're partners in this

project. Yes, we're all heading in the same direction, shoulder

to shoulder, and I hopefully we're going about it in

compatible ways. And I mean, sometimes, like I imagine that,

you know, you have some people that you don't necessarily want

to work with, but like other people, do, you know, it's like

not the same for everyone? Do you have like referrals that you

give to people for like projects that maybe aren't for you? Yeah,

definitely. And when you're in a publishing company, you don't

necessarily get to work on things that you would choose to

work on. You know, you just kind of take what's assigned to you.

I deal with that a lot with my book marketing class. I I use

books from independent publishers that are forthcoming,

and I assign them to the marketing class to work on. And

sometimes they're like, I don't like this book. And I'm like,

Well, you're the marketer, and your job is to not like it. It's

to find the people who will

and then when you're an independent person like me, I

can be a little more selective, because, and it isn't like I

don't like their book or I don't want to be involved. It's like

I'm maybe not the right fit.

Whether it's I don't I don't really do poetry, I don't really

do, like ya or middle grade, you know, there's just things that I

just don't do. Well, I've kind of found a niche. And more like

this is sort of weird, but like it and management and business

books and then, like, mind, body, spirit, there's nothing

wrong with that I have put there. Like, I joke that I'm

fluent in, like, engineer and Shaman. Like, there's these two

kind of different worlds, but I'm able to work inside those.

And there's some projects that come along that just aren't, I

don't think that I'm going to be able to do best by them. And so

I'll refer to somebody who specializes in that kind of

thing more,

man. I mean, you just love niche

Well,

talk to like 30 people that are rapidly listening than 300 who

are like scrolling on their phones. You know,

same.

All right, so what do you what are you reading right now? I

know I didn't

well. I just finished listening to the silent patient audio book

and Parable of the Sower, which were amazing audiobooks. So

parable of the sowers, like sci fi, kind of apocalyptic, but it

was published like in the 90s.

But amazing is that the one where there's literally, like

the line from the person who's president, where he's like, come

with me, and we'll make America great again.

And there was a some authors, some academics, that started a,

like, a virtual or online series that was like Octavia

warned us, or like hashtag Octavia tried to warn us, or

something. I don't remember what it is, but you know, because it

was very Yeah, I got Yeah. I read it in 2017

I on, like I would remember reading that page on max, and

just like getting goosebumps and kind of looking around, like to

tell somebody

I know, you guys. And then I listened to the silent patient,

because I love, like thriller. I like spooky plot, twisty kind of

stuff like that. And boy, oh boy, was that and then I'm

reading in my mass market paperback

night stand, reading is Daphne du Maria. Don't look now, I've

only seen the movie, yeah, so I've never seen the movie, but

like,

there's this online bookseller that I follow on Instagram, and

she sometimes puts these Avon

Daphne du Maria and, like, Agatha Christie books up and I'm

like, just, I'm just, like, a sucker for the stinky, like

1970s mass market paperback funk. So, like, the the used

bookstore with all of them, like, packed horizontally into a

shelf. Yeah, I don't know. There's something that feels a

little extra smutty about this format. I just like it. So, I

mean, if you, if you do end up seeing the movie, I hope you

really like Donald

Sutherland's butt. Oh, my God, there's like a 15 minute sex

scene in it. It's ridiculous.

Wow, because that's not what I'm getting from this book at all. I

don't know, man, I haven't done a lot of research into the

differences, but I didn't, you know, like, embarrassing

admission. I didn't know it was Daphne de Maria. Okay, well, I

will get back to you with, I guess, a deep textual analysis

of the I mean, it seemed extremely random.

I love it. And in the marketing copy for this podcast, you can

be like marketing and daughter Donald Sutherland's butt

about a teaser of Donald Sutherland spots.

I read some like tweet that was basically like, this is every

podcasters summary. And just like a bunch of random, like we

talk about dog tails and frames with looking at things in the

room, and, like, I work with dollar bills, OMG, yeah, we're

so quirky. Yeah, totally.

Do you have any

places online where people can find you? Uh, my website is just

my name, and then my handle on Instagram is Ruby underscore

armor, all right. And you can find us on Facebook, at hybrid

pub Scout, on Twitter at hybrid pub Scout, and Instagram, hybrid

pub Scout pod. Please visit our website, hybridpubscout.com and

while you're there, click join our troop and get our new guide,

the HPS guide to picking your publishing path and BLM and

leave us a five star review and rate us on your favorite podcast

platform. Thank you, Robin, yeah, thank you. And thanks for

giving a rip about books. You.