Emily and Corinne interview publishing consultant and book publicist Mary Bisbee-Beek about her eclectic career working in the Bay Area and beyond. She tells us about the trifecta that makes for the perfect publicity campaign and some of her most cherished projects. Emily and Corinne also discuss a recent Buzzfeed piece about the self-help bestseller "Girl, Wash Your Face."

All opinions are our own and do not reflect those of our employers.

Teaching you my lessons of sitting there for hours and

hours yelling yeah at myself, well, they're finally good for

something you

I've

been waiting to be worth something, and Now it's finally

happening.

Welcome to the hybrid pub Scout podcast with me, Emily

Einolander and me. Karin kolasky,

Hello,

we are mapping the frontier between traditional and indie

publishing. Yes, we are. Yeah, and today, we have a great

interview with a wonderful publicist and consultant, Mary

Bisbee beak, and that'll come later in the episode. And she's

great. She's a She's the real deal. She's been doing this for

a long time. She has been she's a good friend of Corinne. She

is. She does not suffer fools gladly. She does not, which is

something I very much admire in people, which is the kind of

person I want to meet, yes, even if it's just on the internet,

yeah, or over Skype, sure, as per today, yes, we made that

dream come

true. That's the great thing about modern technology. So many

dreams can come true. Yeah.

Anyway, so we're gonna share. We just have one article to talk

about today. Why don't you go into it a little bit? All right,

it is called Girl, wash your face, and it has been on the New

York Times list under the like, self help miscellaneous section

for I honestly, since like, April or something. It's been

months, yes, number one or number two. And I don't know

anyone who's read it. I don't know anyone either. I hear a lot

of people who are into it, are into what are those multi level

marketing schemes that like, that's her biggest fan base, I

guess. Have you listened to the dream yet? No, okay, we'll talk

about that. Okay, okay, okay. I think if I knew more people

involved in those, well, first of all, I would probably hate

myself. Well, you definitely unfollow them on Facebook. Oh

yeah, that. Well, of course, that makes Yeah. So it's written

by this woman named Rachel Hollis, who is, I would say,

best described as like an influencer of some kind, which

is, you know, I just have to say that that is a word that I will

be really, really fucking happy when it disappears from, like,

the cultural lexicon, because I am so fucking tired of hearing

about influencers. Corinne yells at cloud, it's true, though,

like, influencer marketing, blah, blah, I don't like well,

and it must be more annoying for you, because it's, like, big

part of your job. Yeah, it is totally, yeah, yeah. It's just,

I don't know. I just think it's all bullshit anyway. And I guess

Rachel's background is that she grew up in this really small

town in California, and she grew up super poor also, so she's

kind of a self made woman, I would say, in some respects.

So she ended up moving to Los Angeles right after high school,

and she got a job with Miramax because she was obsessed with

Matt Damon, which I think is a weird reason to try to get a

job. Well, you heard about how Mindy Kaling made her big break,

right? No, oh, she and her friend did a two woman play

where they wrote this entire, like, fantastical situation of

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck being best friend roommates. And it

was just like this comedy that they wrote, and they played Ben

Affleck, and that's like one of the first things she did that

got noticed. Oh, it was like an Off, off Broadway show, yeah.

So, I mean, Matt Damon has made a lot of careers. I guess maybe

I should, tangentially, yeah, but I feel like Mindy Kaling, at

least it was like this creative endeavor. It wasn't just like,

Matt Damon, I think you're so hot I'm gonna move to LA and

like, I don't know you've already inspired her, maybe. Why

are you sticking up for Matt Damon? Well, I'm I'm not

sticking up for Matt Damon. Well, I mean, of the two of

them, I am sticking up, yeah, very much agree. I'm just

sticking up for weird inspiration, weird inspirations.

Okay, I can respect that. Anyway, all right, so maybe it's

not as weird as I thought. So anyway, so that job at Miramax

led to Rachel meeting her husband and starting a very

successful event planning company called chic events,

which morphed into a lifestyle blog called the chic site, which

has turned into a nebulous, evolving business empire called

chic media. Now it's called the Hollis company anyway, so she

and her husband Dave, oversee her motivational speech.

Working circuit and podcast as well as her conferences, which

are called rise for women and couples. So that was sort of her

background before she wrote this but, well, she actually had

written a couple other books before this one, but obviously

this was her blockbuster one. She's written three novels, two

cookbooks before this one came out there earlier this year,

were her novels, like Puritan romances, you know the bonnet

romances. I don't know. I have a feeling you didn't do your

research. Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm so good at research too. Wait,

let me google it. Yeah, please do Rachel Hollis, Rachel Hollis,

do you want me to keep going? Yeah, okay. It was published by

Thomas Nelson, which is basically Harper Collins

Christian division.

So, and it's kind of like the book is basically a collection

of stories and like tough love, advice from a woman who's been

there, and vaguely biblical encouragement, which I would say

is a masterful way, vaguely biblical encouragement. It's

very, very vague. So anyway, and the book is okay, so there's

three there. These are the these are the novels. Gotcha. This is

party girl, sweet girl and smart girl. Each of them are a picture

of a pair of shoes with props in the background on the white

what? What does this look like? This looks like a, what was that

lady garbage? Well, the sorry, what

else?

Don't be sexist.

Sorry,

throw that, that women's studies book across.

It was, um, there was, like, in the mid to early 2000s there was

a period of time where chicklet had white backgrounds, yeah,

with some kind of woman's disembodied, disembodied limb,

yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like, the opposite of

thrillers, because, through thrillers have women's

disembodied limbs, but they're like, dying in water, sure, but

the chiclet has, you know, oh, look, I'm running out on the

town. Look at me hailing a taxi with my shoes. Yeah?

I like how the sweet girl one, though, has like, these kind of

dominatrix boots. Yeah? They totally are. So this new book is

sort of arranged chapter by chapter. Here are some, well,

here are some of the chapter names. Just to give you an idea

of what the book is like. One is called, I am bad at sex. One is

called, I should be further along by now. One is called, I

am defined by my weight and so on. Recognizing the lies we've

come to accept about ourselves is the key to growing into a

better version of ourselves. Hollis writes,

so the interesting thing to me about this is that the So Thomas

Nelson, I feel like, has very much promoted this as a

Christian book. And, I mean, if you go on Amazon, and even if

you sort of read a little bit, even in this article, you'll see

later on, there's a lot of criticism from Christian

bloggers and just Christian readers in general, they're mad,

yeah, that there's nothing in here that is actually like,

Christian, you know, right? It's just like, like this woman the

Laura Turner. Her name is the woman who wrote the article said

it's vaguely biblical, and that's pretty much what has

Laura Turner a Christian? I don't know. She didn't say, oh,

okay, I got confused, because I was like, is she writing from

like, the perspective and of a dissatisfied Christian consumer?

Oh, I don't think. I don't think I didn't get the sense that she

was a Christian. We happen to peruse the Amazon reviews book

for a very long time, and it actually kind of made me respect

Christian readers more because they were because they were

like, This is so materialistic, right, right? And has nothing

about God, yeah, yeah, nothing about Jesus. Very privileged,

yeah. I was like, I agree with that totally well. And I think,

like, they're calling bullshit on the fact that, like, the

company is marketing this content to them, that it doesn't

actually speak to them at all, or speak to any other beliefs

well. And there's a line in here, like you sent me the

article, and I found this line that I love so much. It's, I'm

gonna read the whole paragraph. There is more than a hint of

hashtag, girl, boss, corporate feminism at work here, as Hollis

equates having, quote, unquote, made it with being able to drop

a lot of cash on a status symbol bag, a Louis Vuitton bag. She

talks about using purchasing power as a path to self

realization, and she takes that brand of feminism a step further

by marrying it with Christianity in what is essentially a

Pinterest worthy version of the prosperity gospel.

Amen. Yeah, that was a perfect paragraph. Yeah. Truly, whoever

you are, whoever you I'll give you a book deal with my

publishing company that's clearly better and more

influential than BuzzFeed.

Let's see. So Oh girl, wash your face. As we said, it's been on

the New York Times list since it came out in February. It has

almost 7000 Amazon reviews, the vast majority.

Of them, which are five star reviews, but the most helpful

ones are the one star reviews. I mean, they're rated as the most

helpful on Amazon.

So it's also really interesting, I think, in this article too,

the author sort of calls out this phenomenon on, I guess, in

the internet, but especially on Instagram that's sort of cropped

up in the past couple years, called curated imperfection,

which I think is a very big thing. Yeah, and I don't know if

I've, have you seen that termed in that way? But no, I haven't,

but I think it's perfect. Just a little more background on what's

on Hollis Instagram account. She does a lot of inspirational

quotes from her own writing that, of course, she's gonna put

up her own stuff, yeah, her rise conferences and her rise

Exactly. She also has a podcast, of course, which is not nearly

as good as listen to our podcast. Yeah, fuck this lady.

Also, they have marriage conferences, which she calls a

quote, getaway weekend, and costs $1,800 per couple for two

days, hotel not included, and no refunds. So, you know, yeah, I

don't know what though 1800 is like, just low enough, you

think. So you probably researched that price point,

yeah, yeah, that's a good price point, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's

see what else. Here's some random stuff that she posts on

her YouTube channel, she does Okay. Chatty, family life

updates. There's a video called Say hello to Dave's new Bronco,

which I assume is about a car and not like a horse. Well,

because can you really own a bronco? Aren't they supposed to

be wild and wild? I feel like she would find a way. Well, then

maybe not good for her, yeah?

Imagining like a fourth grade book that I would really love.

Yeah, Dave's new Bronco and how I broke it.

That sounds like a Chuck Tingle thing.

Let's

see the homepage of the chic site. As of mid October,

featured a recipe for slow cooker pumpkin spice latte, the

most basic of all drinks. I would be afraid that chicken

would get into little bits of chicken that were in my slow

cooker. I would say that's a valid fear. A post about how to

incorporate Spanx leggings into your fall look, and a video on

how to host a Girls Night In sponsored by rubber bands. I

don't need to be told how to have a Girls Night In.

Very much Me neither. So let's see. Her core philosophy is

basically this, are people who have problems responsible for

fixing them themselves, or is there some collective

responsibility that we are shirking? Does the society owe

something to all of its members?

So in her book, she's pretty much saying, Yes, we are

responsible for fixing ourselves, and society owes us

nothing to help us with the fixing.

I don't know. I mean, to some degree is true. I mean, it's

like, you know, you can choose to look at your life like, sort

of, glass half empty or glass half full. But there are also

things like, you know, systemic racism and access to health

care, and things that are a little outside of Rachel's

purview. I think that she doesn't think about that not

everyone, sort of, I don't know, not everyone falls under into

the same like category that she does. I mean income bracket,

obviously, but in lots of other I mean the race bracket, or

class bracket, or any of those things that she does. So

obviously it's a little harder to kind of reach for the stars

when you're in the toilet. So that's a, that's a Corinne

kolasky, quote, um,

let's see. So in a recent Instagram post, she thanked her

followers for helping her sell over 1 million total copies of

girl. Wash your face. And it's interesting that the biggest

demographic that seems to sell the book are people and MLM

teams. So I don't know anybody involved in one of those. I

don't really know what goes into it. You should listen to a

podcast called The Dream. Okay, it is. Everyone should listen to

this. The studies they've done have shown that

99.9%

of people lose money. Oh, wow, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you don't

make money doing it, right? But there's a lot of hope sold.

There's a lot of excitement and hype around it there, you know.

And there's that one sliver of people that everyone looks at

and says, Well, that could be me, right? Be Me, yeah? And it's

specifically targeting women who, you know, especially stay

at home moms, sure, yeah, who want to make a little extra

money on the side or and still have to, like, have the

flexibility in their time. And I know that Rachel Hollis is like,

Yeah, mom and yes, so I can see why she would be in the position

to, like, inspire these people. And it's kind of the same thing

where it.

Like, you can have the Louis Vuitton bag and you can have the

vacations in the vacation house, yeah? Just, you know, if you

keep working really, really hard, and it's like, don't take

the saturated market into account. Don't take, like, these

other things that kind of are prohibitive right into account.

I'm just gonna keep you're just not working hard enough, yeah,

but I can see how someone who kind of has that curated

imperfection, where it's like, look, I have these problems, but

I still made it right, right, can't you?

So it's very like aspirational, exactly aspirational, and not

necessarily as attainable for everyone.

But isn't that, like the nature of self help? Yes, it is. Yeah,

I would say so. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in this article

about how, you know, Hollis basically ignores her privilege.

And I mean, as a white woman, as a wealthy white woman,

I don't even know how other how, in what other ways is she

privileged? As a blonde, I have no idea, but I don't know if

it's real or not. As a mom, exactly so. But she also is

someone who is a mother, but it's interesting that I guess

she doesn't mention childcare in the book at all until the

acknowledgements, where she thanks her nanny. So, you know,

I mean, that's something else that is obviously not something

that you know a lot of people are can afford the luxury of

having a nanny. I would just something that she kind of just

takes as given, I think, at this point, and allows her to live

the life that she does. Well, there's also an interesting

point that

Laura, Laura, Laura makes later in the article about

how how Rachel is in foster the foster to adopt situation, and

she kind of goes on these rants about how the addicts never show

up to see their children when they're supposed to have, like,

supervised visits. Yeah. And then, you know, how do you keep

taking babies to see parents who aren't parenting. How do you

give up half a Saturday to wait in a McDonald's Playland for

addicts who may or may not show up then hand over an innocent

baby and watch them erase whatever progress you've made

with their daughter? How do you do all of this, knowing that

they'll be reunited at the end of it all, and there's nothing

you can do about it. And this is where it gets ironic, if you're

like me, you find a way. But at night, when no one is looking,

you drink. And when it gets really bad, you take a x

interesting.

What?

How can you handle all these addicts by drinking a lot? Yes,

I think that's kind of, I think that kind of is what Laura is

trying to say, yeah. Is exemplary of the hypocrisy

involved. Because it's like she is at a certain level where if

she does make those choices to drink and take a Xanax, you

know, sure, yeah, that is relatable. That's super

relatable. But at the same time, like, if you weren't in the

situation you're in, if you didn't have the security and

comfort that you had, yeah,

if you didn't have a certain genetic predisposition, this is

a controversial opinion, apparently,

then maybe your choice to drink and have a Xanax at the end of

The night would hurt your children, right? Right? Totally,

yeah, yeah, I don't know. Or maybe if you did have all those

comforts, it's still hurting your children, and you just

don't think it is because you're special, yeah, right, but a very

distinctly American idea, and I think this has led to the

billionaire worshiping culture is like wealth is morality,

yeah? And if you have money, it's because God has blessed you

with money and because you did something, right? Sure. So do

you think Jeff Bezos thinks that about himself?

I bet he does. Well, yeah, I don't know if he thinks about

God, yeah. Well, yeah,

yeah. So I don't know where I got off on this. Oh, but what I

was gonna say is the rise of self help, yeah, has been very

like money based, yeah. And so if you're telling people to get

better about something, and a lot of this article is

complaining about how, you know, she's got these seminars that

cost a lot of money, and most of it is focused on. You can have

this vacation house in Hawaii, yeah, you can have this Louis

Vuitton bag that you want, right? And that obviously

enhances your life, yeah, right. But also, like she's equating it

with being a good person, yeah, right, yeah. And, and if it's

from Thomas Nelson, yeah, and it's supposed to be Christians,

right? Then that's prosperity gospel, yeah, yeah. That's

exactly what that is. And all self help books, even if they

aren't prosperity gospel, even if they are new age, yeah, like

there is a, there is a thread of prosperity gospel, and all of

New Age self help, yeah?

Yeah, yeah. If it's about you making more money and it's about

spirituality or abundance, exactly, yeah, then, then that's

what it is, yeah, yeah. And I think that all the complaints

that Laura's making here are things that can be applied to

most self help books. Yeah, I would agree with that. And, and

she has her own personal, like, distinct issues, but a lot of

the stuff that is being discussed here is not unique,

yeah, that's true. It's just characteristic of the genre,

yeah, in general, yeah. And I, and I like not to be too, like,

devil's advocate about it, but I think that she's only really

digging into this person in particular because she's been on

the best seller rights for so long. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for

coming to my TED talk.

I know I would agree with all of that as someone who is, I mean,

I feel like I've read a good deal of self help.

I do too, but they're like, they're like candy, yeah, that's

no, I think they're that way for me to there's like, a nice thing

to chew on, basically. Okay, so Laffy Taffy, yeah, for your

soul, I think you should put that on Instagram. Yeah.

So I'm sure we could come up with a poem to go with Laffy

Taffy sponsor us.

Let's see. I was gonna read some of these crappy Amazon reviews.

Yes. So as we said, there are many, many one star reviews for

this book. One of them goes Rachel Hollis. His life

experience is so near perfect and so far removed from that of

the average woman that there is almost nothing in this book that

is actually relatable. So that's pretty damning, I would say.

And then one of the Christian bloggers also left another one

star Amazon review that says, reading girl, wash your face.

Exhausted me.

Make no mistake, sisters, this book is all about you. Jesus

offers us true joy and peace, but only after we realize that

we are not the center of our own lives and we are no longer in

charge so and there's, you know, I mean, other stuff in here, in

this article too, about how she kind of uses scripture to kind

of justify her, I don't know her, like, contentions,

basically, and her lifestyle, and all the points she brings

up, um, so, which, again, like, vaguely biblical I would say, I

mean, and Yeah, everybody's been doing that for, yeah, That's

true, but that's also very prosperity. Yeah, right,

exactly. So it all fits into this thing. I found this Bible

verse that told me that I should be rich. Oh, I think, yeah. I

mean, this is kind of like one of her, like, wrap up

paragraphs, I think her just the sentence, Hollis. Audience of

mostly white, middle class women will probably be glad to have

someone to tell them what to do how to follow their dreams and

to give them permission never to break a promise to themselves.

But in what many people would consider to be a moment of full

blown cultural crisis in the United States, are white, middle

class women, the people who most need a champion telling them to

prioritize themselves above all others. Which is, you know, a

good question, I would say, probably not. Which, you know,

that's not a bad message. Oh yeah, it's a good one. Everybody

should, you know, love themselves, especially people

can afford to buy the book, that's right, and it's and

afford her seminars, and, you know, all the other stuff. She's

and the hotel and the hotel, no refunds, no refunds. No refunds.

Nope, all right. Well, I guess now we should, we should

probably stop talking about this, and let's we'll get into

our interview with Mary. That's right. So today we're talking to

Mary Bisbee beak, who is a publicist extraordinaire, in

addition to many other hats that she wears. And I met Mary, was

that two years ago, three years ago, I think it was three that

sounds right. When I worked for counterpoint on their marketing

department, so Mary worked on I several of our books, I think,

and she was amazing, and I loved her immediately. So anyway,

yeah, so and kind of cut from the same cloth, yeah, I think so

too. I totally think so too. I feel like we're kind of drawn to

the same sort of genre and the same kind of book, so and, and

neither of us suffer fools gladly. Yeah, that too.

So we had a little shorthand going, yeah,

yeah.

So I guess we can just cut right to the chase here and ask, how

did you decide that you wanted to pursue a career in

publishing? I have to say it was a complete weird thing.

I was in I was in school, and I was out of school, and I wasn't

quite sure what I wanted to do, and the all the way through

school, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. I actually

thought I wanted to be a curator, and I had pictured

myself living in Paris and working at the louver except

there was that one small detail where I'm not particularly good

at foreign languages. That is a small detail. Very small detail.

Anyway, I was working in.

Restaurant, and I was and I kid you not, I was making fruit

salad in a garbage can.

It was clean, but that's where we stored the fruit salad. Okay,

wow, because every, every dish had a little side of fruit

salad, and I remember coring apples and throwing them into

this plastic garbage can, thinking it's got to be better

than this. And then I started fantasizing about like where,

where I might find like minded people. And there was one part

of me that was thinking libraries. But then I kept

thinking about the

that I had grown up with, and I didn't realize that things had

evolved. So I was really seriously drawn to the idea of

publishing, but it took me a little while to get there, okay,

but that was the seed. I think that was the seed that started

things. Okay? Fruit salad, right? Fruit Salad. Seeds inside

the fruit through your publishing career. So do you

want to talk a little bit about how you got from the seed to the

actual career? Yeah, sure. So a lot of crappy jobs between the

fruit salad and the first job in publishing, which was purely by

accident,

back in the 70s, there were Women's Resource Centers, and

there was one really good one in San Francisco, and they were

famous for their job boards. And someone told me about it, and I

went and I looked, and there was this job at wh Freeman, which

was a scientific publishing company. It still exists, and it

existed for 1000 years prior,

and it was owned by Scientific American magazine, and they were

looking for someone to handle desk copies. And I had

absolutely no what. I no idea what desk copies meant, but it

was basically professors would call and they'd need a review

copy of the book to see if they wanted to adopt it for their

classes. So it was marketing department and and this really

wonderful woman

named Barbara Spicer interviewed me, and she said, Well, we'll

let you know. And I said, okay, and I walked home, and by the

time I got home, there was, this was even Yeah, this was pre

voicemail messages. This was pre answering phone. Whoa. So when I

got home, she called and said, Would you like to start on

Monday? And I think it was Thursday. And I said, I could

start tomorrow,

but I didn't want to appear too eager.

Oh, so you didn't actually say it. It was just like flowing

through you. It just popped right out.

And

then we, we really, we really hit it off. There was a very, it

was a very tight little group. And just to give you, it's hard

because you can't see me, Emily, but I'm not what we might call

tall.

Well, I'm five two, at least. The last time I checked,

I was the tallest person in the department, wow. And, and we

were known as the tough patinies. I respect short women

so much my rosemary is is five three, yep. And I know not to

mess with short women, because they they could beat me up.

That's right, that's right, that's right. Actually, there's

an author that I'm working with right now who is probably maybe

five feet or five one in her prime. She's 88 Oh, wow. And I,

I went to her launch back in the spring, and I hugged her

goodbye, and I could tell in the three years that I had last seen

her, that she'd lost a little height. And I said, Oh, Irene,

this doesn't bode well. And she said, Oh, you get used to it.

She's not super sensitive. Then

I used to complain about people who, as they were getting older,

they complain about things, and I kind of get it now,

you know, things do change. Yeah. So anyway, I stayed at

Freeman for quite a while, several years, and then they

moved their company from San Francisco to New York, and they

kind of invited me to think about coming, but I think they

were pretty clear that I wasn't, because I was very deeply

involved with another human at the time, and it would have been

too hard to uproot both of us, sure. So from there, I went to

working doing marketing for an architectural firm, and I had a

really good friend who was a publicist for Chronicle Books,

okay? And about once a month, she and I would have lunch, and

I'd say, So, what do you do? And and she'd say, Oh, well, you

know, I'm on the phone a lot, and I talked to the media. And.

And I go to New York twice a year for media trips. And I

thought I could do that. That's how I could get back into books.

And so then I kind of set my sights on publicity. Sounded

like the right thing. It was also very much like what I was

doing for these architects. Okay, where I was there a

building would be finished, and I would go,

well, one of the things that I do, a building would be

finished, and I would go to the site with an architectural

photographer, and I would kind of art direct or orchestrate the

kinds of photographs that we needed. At least I thought I was

doing that architectural photographers knew exactly what

I needed. And they would say, yeah, yeah, Mary, okay,

through the building and and it was, again, really sweet,

wonderful people. You know, I'm very drawn to the people, but in

the whole time I was in that job, I kept thinking, This is

great. I love this office and I love these people, but I want

books. Books are my world, but I still was drawn. I kept being

pulled back into the art world.

I majored in art history, so go back to the curator piece. So I

kept thinking, oh, a museum, a museum, and my resume actually

looks very hopscotchy.

About every 18 months I was off and running to a new

possibility, and I have a great looking resume, but I didn't

really actually focus until about 1992

when my husband said, you know, this is stupid. You need to

decide.

But like, you wouldn't want the art world, or you want

publishing. What do you want to do? Right? And he was in

publishing, so I thought, Okay, I'll be publishing. So there was

a bit of an implication there. I was, like, no, not so much. I

mean, he was open, but he wanted me to be happy, but he could

also tell that I wasn't happy, sure, and I was like, searching,

searching, searching, constantly.

So that's when I really made the very clear decision, I was going

to stick with book publishing. Okay, and I have not looked

back. Yeah, great. Yeah, that's awesome. That's such a long time

too, that you've been doing this for Well, I'm old.

You're not that old. Nothing wrong with being No, there's not

yet. That's true too. So were you? So where were you when you

made that decision? Were you still in San Francisco? We were

still in San Francisco, right? So then I got hired for this

great job as publicist. I was the head publicist. I was the

only publicist,

smallish company that published art books. So how perfect could

that be? Was I? I had both. And then there was this, as I say.

It was a small company, really tight staff. There were like

eight of us, I think, and on the third of July, we were all

looking forward to having the fourth off, and we decided we

would all go to lunch together. And this was pretty rare. So we

off, we go, and we come back and we're locked out. Oh, no. Oh,

the owner of the company was closing and he changed the lock.

Oh, I thought it was an accident. I was like, Oh, that's

funny. You locked yourself.

It was unbelievable. Wow, just unbelievable. So,

wow. So I remember I had two ideas. There was a publisher's

tea, you know, one of these

groups where you could, you know, just talk shop and, you

know, find out what other people are doing in their jobs. And

they held it in a very fancy hotel in San Francisco. And so

you had to fill out a name badge. So instead of putting my

name on it, I said looking for work for you smart,

which was a riff off of a friend years ago who worked in the

clothing industry, and she had her resume printed on cloth, and

she made a dress out of it. Oh, wow. So she went to

something similar within that industry, with her resume on her

dress, that's brilliant. That is very cool, yeah, but I don't

sew, so

the Avery label that's pretty niche, that is, yeah. So it

sounds like I don't know you as well as Corinne does, but it

sounds like you've had to be a little bit scrappy on the it's

not like you were in New York with the big publishing

companies, where you could just go from house to house, like a

lot of people claim to do. So you were, yes, San Francisco

had, it had a vibrant publishing scene, but it was something that

you almost had to look.

Four, and I know that cancels out what I just said when it's

vibrant. Well, once you find it, yeah, that's the key. You had to

find it. You had to find it. But it was amazing. Amazing things

were happening out there, like

they were publishing things like the whole earth catalog, you

know? So they were futzing around with format. It was like,

really big book, paperback, you know, it's where, well, the

predecessor of counterpoint North Point press. They were one

of the first presses to publish first run paperbacks. Oh, I

didn't know that absolutely and and they got away with it by

having flaps. Oh, sneaky. I'm a fool for flaps. Yeah, who is it

exactly? Really expensive now? Yeah, now everybody, well,

everybody that can afford it, does it? I mean, now everybody's

doing digital printing, so you can't I'm actually working with

a small group right now who publishes one book a year, which

is a poetry anthology, and I help them find a new designer.

And she and I were talking the other day, she's getting bids

for printing, and I said, How about flaps? Can we do flaps?

Can we afford flaps? And she said, Well, if we do offset, we

can, but she said, if we go digital, if we lose, if we lose

time in the scheduling, the production schedule, in getting

enough of the material, the poems in, she said, if that runs

late, then we're going to have to go digital, and now we can't

do flaps. Oh, so it's just risky to do. It's risky, yeah, on so

many levels, but be. But just to go back for a minute before

North Point was doing this, it was, it was pretty much gospel

that if you wanted a review in any size review mechanism,

magazine, newspaper, you had to have a hardcover book.

So you were in San Francisco for how long? Well, I got to San

Francisco just before I started high school. Oh, wow. Okay, so,

so I actually lived there for 22 years, okay? And then you went,

did you go to New York after that? Or was it? No, I was born

in New York. Oh, that's right. Okay, yeah. So I did New York in

reverse of everybody else.

I got it out of my system. And

actually, you know, I never there would be moments when I

think, oh, we should live here.

But you know, after, you know, if you go on a long media trip,

or, like, sales conference and then a media trip, you're there

about 10 days. And by 10 days, I was really ready to, yeah, come

home.

It's a really great place to spend time, but it's hard, you

know? And I was staying with a friend once, and she said to me,

oh, everything here is a challenge, getting your

groceries, picking up your dry cleaning, getting to work on

time. She said, It's all a challenge. Yes, yeah. And you

know that I do, I do. Yeah, three years was enough for me.

So yeah, that's true. And I can't, I can't fathom the

expense of New York. Oh yeah, that's just off the charts. All

right, so I Well, my next question is, out of all the

positions that you've held in your career, what's been your

favorite one, and why what I'm doing right now? I mean, yeah,

I'm actually quite sanguine these days with my lot in life,

I like, I like the flow. I like,

you know, I like not having to get dressed up. I like not

commuting. I

I like the fact that I've been doing it long enough

that there's continuity.

And

I work, you know, I work globally.

I've been, I've spent a lot of time really putting myself out

there, meeting people. And

people are kind, people are generous, and they, you know,

they give you a chance.

So I've had some great jobs, but I have to say, I'm really

pleased that I opened my own office and then I closed it

after 11 years and went to work for the University of Michigan

Press, which at the at that moment was exactly what I needed

to do, and it was perfect, and I had great colleagues there,

fabulous authors,

but I'm not sorry that I left and reopened my office. Sure.

Mary, could you elaborate a little more on what it is you do

at your office, just for yeah sure, showing me who don't know.

So I I am primarily, I wear three and a half hats.

I'm primarily a publicist. So

authors and also publishers hire me to about anywhere between

four to six months.

Is in a perfect world, four or six months before a book is

going to be published, and I start working the media, and I

start weighing in on things like websites and helping people

figure out if they have the right kind of book for a tour to

do readings. Used to be that everybody did did a little tour,

but it's not. It's not so sexy anymore. People don't show up.

So then you have to think about, well, what's going to take its

place? And that's, you know, that's where the creativity

comes out, when you're actually doing a little bit of problem

solving.

And then I generally work up up to pub date. And about a month

after,

in a perfect world, things are moving along so rapidly and so

continuously that you're getting the attention that you actually

have to stay on longer. Yeah, you know, I have had those kinds

of books, but then you have to really know when to pull out or

when to pull away. When is enough enough, or when does a

project need a new voice? And that's a little hard to

relinquish, but hopefully by then you're just so exhausted by

the whole thing that

you cannot even fathom one more time having to give the same

spiel to someone Sure, right? Yeah, so then you're happy to

let it go, right? And is that usually a choice that you make,

or is it a collective choice, or it's usually something that I

would suggest, or the author or the publisher runs out of money,

yeah, you know, and, and they say, Okay, enough is enough. But

that's pretty rare. You know, authors generally always feel

like, Oh, you were okay. But you know, what else can you do?

Right? Right? Or they they cannot believe that no one

wanted to review their book, even if you've done your due

diligence and you've sent the book out and you've done your

follow up, you know, I think the latest, maybe it's not even the

latest, but the last statistic I have is that there are 250,000

books published in the US every year. I didn't know that. That's

an enormous amount of competition. And that's not just

traditional publishing, that's hybrid publishing, that's self

publishing, that's immense. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know,

it's the do you cut the tree down so it falls in the forest,

and who's going to hear it? Or, or, you know, are you standing

under the tree when it's falling?

You know, you can really play with that saying a little bit,

yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's a good segue into the question

about, what do you think authors need to understand about

publicity that they often don't. Um, I think the biggest thing

that I run into is that authors, a lot of authors, who are self

published, don't,

you know, they'll call me and they say, Oh, my book just came

out. Oh, and I'll say, Oh, that's very nice.

Congratulations.

Good luck with that.

But you know what I what I say is, you know, if you had called

me six months ago, four months ago, and then they want to, you

know, they, they want to argue with you, sure, and in a nice

way, but you know, they, they just don't understand. And you

have to explain that

it's not magic, and it's hard enough when there is magic to

pull rabbits out of a hat, but if you don't have the background

and and they think, okay, we're going to do it ourselves, you

know, um, so there are a lot of people now who will self publish

a book and then try to pitch it to traditional publishing houses

where they probably have, like, a mediocre, like mediocre

numbers, or there's no way to research how many they've sold,

and traditional publishing houses have to take their word

for it. So have you ever had success with someone who has

already self published and then tries to go with a publishing

house? Or I Okay, there's two answers to that.

One is,

a lot of authors say, you know, when I say, why are you self

publishing? This is a really good book. You really should put

in the time to try and find an agent or a traditional publisher

that you don't need a gatekeeper, and maybe you can

just do it yourself.

Which those exist,

and they'll say, Oh, well, no, you know what I want to do is do

this myself, and then I'll get so much notice and also sell so

many books that. And then you have to explain to them that

then it's not at all of interest, or it's frequently 99

Point 9% not of interest to a publisher, because if they've

sold that many books, then where's your audience, right?

You already sold all of it to your audience. Yeah, right,

exactly, exactly. And they don't, they don't believe that,

or they don't want to hear that. And that's, you know, I used to

argue more than I do now. I know Corinne, that's hard for you to

imagine,

but

I know now when to kind of cut my losses and just be nice and

get off

some people that are just stubborn and they think they're

going to reinvent the wheel, but I will say I do. There is a

there is a woman, she lives out on the coast and but she was in

Portland at the time, and she published her first book on her

own. And I don't remember why, but

it was what wildly successful. It went crazy on Amazon, so

crazy so that she actually now publishes with Amazon because

they have many imprints and and she has worked her way up the

ladder of Amazon imprints, and she's very happy,

and she thinks that, you know, she feels she found a really

great home, And they they they do good things by her, I can see

that. And she's a good writer that always helps it. Yeah, it

definitely helps. And she actually, she after the first

book or the second book, I can't remember, she went out and got

an MFA. So she also, she teaches in the summer at this very

special program overseas. And she's good, she's really good,

and she's smart, but it doesn't work for everybody, no, right?

So, I guess another question is, I mean, considering all the jobs

that you've had, if you had to do it all over again, would you

still choose publicity? Yeah, I think I really would. You would

Okay, um, okay, because it, it fits my demeanor. Uh huh. You

know, I'm pretty I'm pretty outgoing. I like I love going on

media calls, uh huh, you know, I love sitting down with a

reviewer

that said, when I was in my mid 30s and early 40s, I didn't

think I would be doing it this long. I actually thought I would

be an agent, okay, interest, and I've tried a little bit of

agenting, and I just find it repugnant, really, it's so

there's, there's a lot of,

there's a lot of

let down with publicity, and there's even more, you know,

when you when you've got someone's baby in your hands,

it's just, it's just 10 times harder, emotionally draining

every single day. It really it really is. Yeah, it really is.

And what I did find out is, I know a lot of marketing people

in publishing, but I don't know that many editors, and I really

do think that, yes, it's a wide world out there, but

you're seen as New York. Those are always your that's your

first line of defense. And so that's really where you need to

be, and you need to have put in that time to meet those people,

right? And I can't, you know, I can't. I can go to New York for

a week and have every meal every day with a different person. But

yeah, I'm also, I think booksellers are on the side of

angels mostly. I mean, some of them are really crabby, but I

stick up for them. And you know, I have to consider who my people

are.

So can I just go back? Because I did say that I wear like three

and a half. Yes, right? Yeah, right. Okay. So we started with

the we started with the publicity, and then the half is

a marketing consultant, because a lot of times when you take on

a publicity project, you find yourself weighing in on

marketing, because it's a very thin line. An author once asked

me, What's the difference between publicity and marketing?

And I said, publicity is free, in that what you get is free

advertising, and marketing is advertising that you pay for and

sales. So I weigh in on it, but I don't. Actually, no one ever

says, you know, would you come in and consult with us on on the

marketing of this book? They want me to do the publicity,

and then I actually sell foreign rights. So that's my little kiss

towards being an agent.

When an author, or sometimes a publisher, will ask me if I have

those connections, if I can do that. And I have to say, one of

the most fun things in the world is the Frankfurt Book Fair. Yay.

And a couple of times in the last couple of years, I've been

at the Frankfurt Book Fair, but from Portland, where, okay,

there's an a couple of agents who will bring me to the table

via Skype. Oh.

Like this, and I, and I can talk to them and present books to

them via Skype,

and then one of them always cheekily says, Oh, are you

joining us for drinks

tonight?

So I imagine it's probably a less emotional experience to

sell foreign rights, because it's, it's a book that's already

been published, right? Well, it's that, you know, I always

say that foreign rights is, it's a it contributes to the bottom

line, yeah, yes, yes.

But, you know, it's pretty weird, because it's basically

contractual. It's that first conversation or eat. Now, I do a

lot of it by email, and you, you talk about the contract, and

then they put together a draft, and then you Dicker over, what's

in the draft, and then, and then you agree, and then I take it to

the publisher, and I say, you know, this is where I, you know,

fought for you. And these are the terms, and I would, I would

heartily recommend that you take these terms, and most, most

publishers will, or authors will listen and say, okay, yeah, but

that's even slowed down too, and that it has slowed down, and I

was told very succinctly that by a German editor

that the reason I needed to be six months earlier with my

messaging to him was because of Amazon. And he said, we have so

many English readers in Germany that they will wait for the

German translation, because they can read it in English and they

buy it on Amazon, right, right. Right?

So the sales are smaller and they have to be faster. And

because I work on these six month ranges, because I'm not

staffed somewhere, I don't have the I don't get something that

fast or that early. And actually, most US publishers

aren't already that early for foreign rights, right? An agent

might be, you know, where that where they've kept the rights.

And they might be, they might maybe have sold it into an

American publisher, but then they immediately go to market to

try and sell it overseas. But those are the like six figure

books. I see those big books, right? Yeah, running with the

back big dogs.

And then, and then the last piece is, I have, I've started

this new entity of my company called the publishing Sherpa.

And the Sherpa is a guide.

So if you have a manuscript, an author can, they can talk to me

for the first half hour is free, and then I read their

manuscript, and I have a small fee for that, and then I make

recommendations, like, let me help you find an agent. Or, this

really needs some more editing, or,

or, you know, this could be published traditionally, but

it's going to be a slightly smaller publisher. I'd be happy

to help you. So that's really just gotten off the ground. And

actually it started because someone said to me that I had so

much background that I should actually be paid for it. Yeah.

And so I started thinking about that, and I agreed. You know,

it's it's true. Now it's just a question of, How much is this

worth, right? And especially if you're going to recommend that

someone hire an editor that makes it expensive, yeah, yeah,

yeah, right, yeah. And so you have to think about, where's the

humanity here? You know, it's not always about money well, and

then you have to be very objective to say something

whether or not someone should do something like that, because

it's easy for someone who doesn't have a stake to just be

like, oh, I'll just hire an editor, and then it'll be so

much better, but you are actually taking into account how

much that's going to affect them. Have you ever had to just

tell someone that they're not a good writer? Or I would never

put it that way, right? I actually recently, I talked to

someone who had written a memoir that she actually spoke more in

a more excited way than she wrote it, and and I said she and

I had our conversation, and I gave her my recommendation, and

then, and then I called her back, like 15 minutes later, and

I said, you know, I said I was hesitant to tell you this, but I

said, I'm just going to put it on the table. When I was reading

your manuscript, I felt like, well, gee, she's done some great

research. Now she needs to write the novel. And what about

turning her, her met, her family story

into just a really good story, right? And I think it would

actually be easier for her, but I don't know she's she's

grappling with all of we talked about, we talked about, so I'm

curious. I hope she comes back to me. I'm because I'm curious

where things go next. Yeah, and how do you find most of your

clients? Are they referrals, or actually.

Word of mouth, I've put it out to a couple of people, and

there's a wonderful man in California who used to own a

bookstore, and he sends me a lot of people, and sometimes he'll

say, you know, I'm buying two hours of your time for, you

know, X, Y or Z, which is just really generous and wonderful,

absolutely. And he's turned me on to some really great

projects. And frequently they're not even yet manuscripts. Oh,

wow, they might be concepts, sure. And are these, and I'll

say, you know, maybe, maybe this isn't a book, maybe this is an

article, you know, maybe we need to think about an outline for an

editor at a magazine, right? Do you mostly deal with fiction or

nonfiction or everything? So I'm an equal opportunity consumer.

One of the questions that Corinne posed was, what's my

favorite genre? And I would have to say what I gravitate to when

I'm in a bookstore, is fiction,

but there's a lot of great memoir out there, yeah? So I I

work on fiction, creative nonfiction.

I love the challenge of cerebral yet readable, like really think

ebooks, yeah, and poetry,

so basically no science fiction, no

cookbooks, and no kids books. So more, and I have really tried

with kids books, but it's a disconnect. It's a different

world. Yeah, it's a different lexicon, and it's a different

scheduling, right? It's just harder, right? It's just harder,

yeah, so what? Well, maybe what was the most fun campaign that

you've worked on over the years?

Or a handful of fun campaigns is fine too. Just narrow it down to

one, yeah. You know, I was thinking about this after we

talked earlier. Fun is hard.

There was a book by a cartoonist, oh, cool. It was

kind of an omnibus of her, of her collection over 40 years.

Her the cartoonist. Name is MK Brown, and she is, she's on your

knees, funny, yeah, and her cartoons are the quality of the

New Yorker,

but she's also, for years, she was the cartoonist for the

National Lampoon, and

that's crazy and, and she's she, she's just got a really pithy,

wonderful way about her, like she once did this,

I think she was commissioned by the American Dental Association

to do a poster for one of their conferences. And it was a

picture of, it was a drawing of some vegetables, and the message

on it was, and they had faces, you know, they were characters,

and the message on it was, chew your food. No one else will.

I can't get that out of my head. I won't be able to look like

gawky. You know, there's, there was this great one of a couple

sitting in a in a coffee shop and and the man is dressed in

like lycra, like cycling clothes, and the woman is just,

you know, got jeans and a T shirt on or something. And she

said, Stanley, you know, you really should get a bike.

This great commentary on things that we may think, you know, I

think I'm candid, but boy, she really puts it out.

So that was a very, that was a very, very fun book to work on,

yeah? And she's, she's an incredibly fun person, yeah? So

it was, I think a lot of what's fun or what's successful is what

I call the trifecta, amiable, smart publisher, sure, open

minded,

open to creativity, open to

someone else's ideas. Doesn't have to have a huge purse

strings, but it doesn't. Doesn't hurt

similar author who's written an incredibly good book, right? If

you those are the three magic ingredients for a good campaign,

a fun campaign, a heartfelt campaign, appointed campaign,

all of all, all of those things, and a successful campaign, all

of those things. So I think that's how I would answer that

question. Okay, okay, that's how I'm going to answer that

question,

I guess, and that way nobody will feel bad, like, Oh, my

campaign was,

everyone gets a trophy. Wow, wow. You put nine months into

this pregnancy, and boy, is that an ugly kid. Nobody ever

like everything inside.

Side of you is bad. Why did you show us?

You might say to an adult who's very attractive, wow, you look

great. You were such an ugly kid, you know, but

it's something that you know, a friend of mine's grandmother

would have said, right, right, right, yeah. Oh, okay. Let's

also talk about what some of your favorite books are. Hooray.

Okay, all right, so I have a list.

I thought, well, I didn't say three favorite books. Yeah,

there

are no rules here. Okay, no rules. Yeah, bloomin onions. And

this is a completely personal list. This is not necessarily

books that have been horrendously successful, but

just books that have touched me.

A stone boat by Andrew Solomon, okay, so

Well, when, when we were first starting to work together, and

some of these are books I've worked on some of them are not

Andrew

and I were starting to work together, and it was his second

book, but his first novel. And we were sitting down to a very

lovely meal, and I said, as the waiter left at the menus with

us, I said, So tell me. I said, is this? How autobiographical is

this? And he got very proud of me. He said about 97%

it's good that he was proud. And I often thought, you know, I

wish, in retrospect, I wish that had been a memoir. But everybody

that knew him knew that it was basically okay. He's gone on to

do fabulous things with his book on depression, and National Book

Award winner and things like that, right? And I always get to

say I knew him when

another book that I worked on, which was, it was one of those

Trifecta moments, is called a century of November, and it's,

it's a very wonderful book on World War One, the end of World

War One, and it's got one of the best first lines in it that I've

ever read or heard. And the editor, this was a University of

Michigan Press book, so I was on staff, and the editor came down

to my office one day, and he said, Boy, I've got a great

novel for you. It's got a great first line. And I said, Oh,

yeah, yeah, everybody says that, but it was a great first line,

which was

he grew apples and he judged men. And it was a it was a

tumultuous season for both. Wow, that is great. I was afraid you

weren't going to tell us for a

minute. I think I may have screwed it up a little. I don't

think it was an absolute quote, but another book that I worked

on, it was called Monique and the mango rains, which is a

Peace Corps memoir. And it was just, it was again, it was one

of those trifectas.

It's it's a really good story, and it's definitely well told,

and it's about this young woman's American woman's

relationship with the person that she was working with in

this small village in Mali in West Africa,

where they had they were the same age,

and they both spoke French as a Second Language, and Monique had

a sixth grade education and held the entire health care of the

village in her hands. Chris Holloway, who's the author,

had just graduated from college when she joined the Peace Corps.

So,

you know, she very different, very different, but so, so

wonderful. I mean, and their relationship was wonderful, and

she tells the relationship of it, and there's some really sad

moments in it,

but it was, it was really, truly, one of the best books I

ever worked on. And it was a complete, you know, kind of one

off where I met this author at a barbecue. Oh, wow, yeah. And she

described her book, and I said, I want to read it. And then when

I read it, I said, I've got to work on this. Yeah, great. Then

all the news I need by a woman named Joan Frank, very small

press book. I think it was the University of Massachusetts in

Amherst that published it. But it's just, it's quiet, but yet

it takes your breath away.

Just very special did not work on it.

The Garden of small things by a woman named Abby Waxman is,

I think, one of the most charming books I've read in a

very, very long time. And it's got these two kids in it that

have the best dialog. I mean, I don't know if this woman's this

author's.

Kids, if she I think she has kids, and I don't know if her

kids feed her the dialog or if she makes it up, but either way,

she should get, she should get an award just for the kid

dialog. I mean, it's fabulous. I was so sad when this book ended.

But it's not. It's not, you know, it's not, it's quiet book

in in the sense that it was published by a big publisher,

but it's definitely mid list, okay, right? You know, I don't

think they ever like burst it out in a big way. I found it in

the library. Oh, okay, yeah. I love when that happens. Yeah.

I love libraries, yes. Oh, so do we? Yeah, very much. Librarians

are angels. They are. They don't rush you anymore. Yeah, they

don't.

They're so non judgmental, Yes, that too.

Yeah, they never, like, turn up their nose, yeah, right, yeah,

right. They're there for the they're there to take care of

all of us. That's right, that's right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And

then I'm a fool, absolute fool, for anything that was written by

Laurie COLWIN, okay.

She died,

very tragically, early. I think she was in her late 30s when she

died, she had a heart attack. Oh,

but she had been very prolific, and she'd had a diff there was

something, something happened in her writing career where she was

kind of blackballed for a while. I don't know the back story,

and she the only places she could get published were in

Gourmet magazine,

and that's where I first found her. And the way she wrote about

food was just really wonderful. And then I started, I found her

short stories, and then I found some fiction, and then I was

just like, bereft, like, oh my god, you know, somebody's got to

find some manuscript that she that she had hidden in a drawer

somewhere, because this can't be it. But no one there. I can't

think of anyone who writes portrays the Upper East Side New

York matron better than Laurie. Called one, okay. In fact, I

have, I have this really young woman that a publisher that I do

some work with in Chicago, she had met this young woman, and

she said she's still in college, and she she's absolutely clear

she wants a career in publishing. And so my kind of

our mutual contact in Chicago said, oh, you know, you should

talk to Mary, because she can maybe help you find internships

or whatever. And so we've been corresponding. And she was

leaving Chicago to go to Columbia in New York, and but

she started as a junior. She was transferring, and so I've not we

It started out as weekly, but now that she's into the

semester, it's a little longer i give I've been giving her

assignments. Oh, go check out this bookstore and go see this

person. And here's an introduction to this person, and

make an appointment. And it's going really nicely.

And so she said, You know, I've never been in New York before.

Can you recommend any books?

Yeah,

get Laurie.

And she said, Oh, I love this person. This is great. And I

thought, okay,

and, gosh, you know, she's gonna go far. She's like, she's really

smart, she's really hungry, she's got the energy, and she's

got the special independent study. Yeah, that's true, yeah,

yeah. And I like, you know, I like people who are serious

about it. I'm really happy and willing to spend time with them.

Once a month, I skype with an undergraduate publishing program

in Baltimore at Loyola University, uh huh. And they

have, they have a press. It's called apprentice house. And I

had no idea.

Sorry, I'd never heard of them before that. Yeah, I know not

too many people, yeah.

So I'm helping them try to figure out, like,

as students. It's hard because, you know, they have vacations

and and they're still undergrads, so there's a,

there's a little bit of a disconnect in their involvement

or seriousness about it, yes, and they don't have distribution

be do they have Ingram, but it's not, they don't have exclusive

distribution, right? So, so that's a little harder, too,

but I'm trying to get them to think about looking at the big

picture when they acquire a book, like, how is this going to

get out into the world, and giving the author help?

And I've worked, I found them because an author who I knew.

Hired me to help her, and I was curious. I really liked the

publisher, and they did, made it, made a beautiful book. They

produced a beautiful book. And so it was kind of quizzical. And

he said, You know, I said, Could I talk to the class? And so we

started that way. The problem is, they're on the East Coast,

and they meet from eight to nine, so I have to get up at

five to do but it's only once a month. Once a month. You said,

Right, okay, it's not terrible, but, yeah, not great.

I think it's terrible,

but worth it, apparently. So I, you know, I really enjoyed

people who are interested in kind of helping them launch a

little bit, or giving a background, yeah, making

introductions, I think being a mentor is really sweet, yeah,

yeah, absolutely, well, and I know, I mean, personally,

speaking, you've been incredibly helpful to me a few times, you

know, when I've come to you for advice about lots of different

things. So thank you for that. But, yeah, you're also very

you're incredibly helpful as a mentor. You know, thank you.

Yeah, thank you for mentoring. Corinne, yes, thank you very

much.

I think that's the end of our question. Oh, you asked me what

I was reading. Oh, I asked you that together. Oh, there's mark

for reminding me There's Mark. Yeah, right. Okay, so this book

is coming out in March, okay?

And it's, it's stories by a woman who lives in Ann Arbor

named Polly rosenwake. Okay,

and double days publishing, and it's called, look, look how

happy I'm making. Look how happy I'm making you. And it's

stories. It's a great title, yeah. And it's, it's about the

realities of the baby years, even though I'm way out of the

baby years and never had a baby, yeah, but I'm always curious

about how people like juggle it, sure. And

so, you know, full disclosure, Polly is a friend, and she sent

me galley and said, you know so many years coming. And just

thought you might like to see this. And I've read her reviews,

I've read her criticisms of books, and definitely, you know,

knew she was a good writer, and I just kind of thumbed through

it and just started reading, and just kept reading and kept

reading and kept reading. And she's really good, and she's

funny, and she's sweet, and she just has great dialog in it,

yeah? And, you know, it's definitely a book to watch out

for, okay, okay, yeah, I love that title, yeah. They made me

feel things, yeah. I also think it would be great for like

grandparents and be great for baby shower gifts,

yeah, yeah. And then I just finished reading the library by

Susan Orlean. Oh, how is that? It's It's good. It's really

good. And I actually remembered the fire.

Yeah, it was 1985 or 1986 Okay, and I remember reading about it,

and just hard to imagine what it would be like to lose all of

that, sure, all books.

And she was in the library for something else, and someone was

giving her a tour of the La Public Library. And he took a

book off the shelf, and he smelled it, and he said, Oh, you

can still smell the fire. And she said, Oh, can people smoke

in the library.

Know about it, and she started researching it. She thought

there's a book here. Here's my next book. She's done a really

good job. That's good to hear. I was curious about that. Yeah,

yeah. So that's all I got. Okay, great, yeah. All right. Well, I

yeah, I think that's the end of my question. Okay, Mary, thank

you so thanks for inviting me. Yeah, thanks for making the

time. Well, thank you for coming on the podcast. It was a

privilege to be able to hear. So I feel like, I feel like I

learned a lot someone just starting out. So, okay, yeah.

Thank you so much. You guys. Have a good weekend. All right,

you too. Bye. Do

you have anything else to say about our interview?

I don't think that. I do. I just think, I don't know. I just

think Mary is a really interesting person because she's

worn so many different hats, yeah, and she's not been afraid

to, sort of like, jump from one. Like, I mean, it's all been

mostly publicity, but, I mean, like, she does foreign rights,

and she kind of like, you know, sort of like, dips her toes into

the agenting waters a little bit. Yeah, she was saying that

she didn't do that, and then she kind of made that comment about

her consultations. And I was like, You're a kind of agent

that is, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just, yeah. I mean, I just think

she's had a really interesting career, and it's been in a lot

of different play. Like, she started in San Francisco, and

then she was in Michigan for a while. Was in Michigan for a

while, and it was all not New York. No, it was all, and that's

another thing that's a big plus, I think, for people who think,

as I did, quite honestly when I was 24 or whatever, that you

have to move to New York to get into publishing, and you don't,

you don't. I mean, now we know two people.

People who have gone to Michigan that's right to be in

publishing, publishing so it happens. It can happen anywhere,

especially with, you know, Skype. That's right.

All right. Well, thank you for listening. We

what do we have? We have the hybrid pub scout.com.

Come and see that Twitter at hybrid pub Scout, we have book

Facebook, and then you can email me at emily@hybridpubscout.com

please sign up for our newsletter because, because it's

so much fun, it is fun, and we only email you like every two

weeks. Yeah, that's not that big of a deal. It's nothing. Yeah,

it's, yeah, big deal. It's a small price to pay for, like,

how many laughs you get? I think, I don't even think that

it's a price. No, it's absolutely

free. There's all this free content, right? This is free.

You should be happy about it, yeah, price. Thank us.

All right. Well, this is a great interview. Thanks for listening,

and thanks for giving a shit about books. You

EIN.