Empowering Authors: Insights from Book Publishing and Marketing Expert Kathleen Schmidt

Season 3  launches with Kathleen Schmidt, an accomplished vet in the book publishing world. This episode, rich with insights from Kathleen's extensive background as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, and ghostwriter, is a must-listen for authors navigating the complexities of publishing. Our discussion, full of practical advice and industry secrets, is perfect for those searching for content on authorship, publishing success, and marketing strategies.

Key Discussions:

1. Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations: Kathleen explains her firm's specialized services, focusing on customized PR campaigns, branding, marketing, and consultancy tailored to authors and publishing entities.
2. Insider View of Book Publishing: Schmidt provides an honest look at the publishing industry, addressing the challenges authors face in traditional publishing and the dynamic shifts happening self-publishing. This is a 'lift the curtain' and demystify episode!
3. Effective Social Media Strategies: Offering expert advice on social media usage for book promotion, Kathleen emphasizes the importance of engagement and audience targeting. Understand the importance of identifying what your audience is doing when they're not reading books. Also, things that are not worth your time or effort.
4. The Impact of Substack: The episode discusses Kathleen's successful venture, "Publishing Confidential," highlighting its role in offering fresh, industry-specific perspectives. Substack is taking over various industries and is worth checking out.
5. Forecasting Publishing Trends: Schmidt shares her insights on future trends, including the potential shift away from the dominance of the big five publishers and the rise of self-publishing.

About Kathleen Schmidt

Kathleen is a well-respected voice in book publishing with in-depth experience in all aspects of the industry, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, and ghostwriter. Her career encompasses 30 years of creating and directing strategic global media, marketing, and branding campaigns for politicians, A-List celebrities, athletes, and high-profile personalities. 

 She has worked on 50 New York Times bestsellers, and her clients have appeared in top-tier national print, broadcast, and radio outlets such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Vogue, Elle, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Sirius XM. Kathleen founded Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations and the Substack Publishing Confidential. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, two teenagers, and two Boston Terriers. 

Social Links and Website

Instagram
Publishing Confidential
TikTok
LinkedIn
KMS Public Relations

Transcript

Beth McMullen: 0:31

Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schman. We're the co-hosts of Riders with Wrinkles. Today we are thrilled to welcome Kathleen Schmidt here to the show to kick off our third season of the podcast. Very exciting.

Beth McMullen: 0:44

Kathleen is a well-respected voice in book publishing with in-depth experience in all aspects of the industry, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor and ghostwriter. Her career encompasses 30 years of creating and directing strategic global media, marketing and branding campaigns for politicians, a-list celebrities, athletes and high-profile personalities. She has worked on 50 New York Times bestsellers and her clients have appeared in top-tier national print, broadcast and radio outlets such as the Today Show, good Morning America, vogue, elle, financial Times, vanity Fair, gq and SiriusXM. Kathleen founded Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations and the Substack Publishing Confidential. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, two teenagers and two Boston Terriers. So welcome, kathleen. We are so happy to have you here today. Thank you, I appreciate it. So, before we jump into questions, I just want you to talk a little bit about Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, because I think it is a firm that our listeners would find really interesting. So if you can just give us an overview of what sort of services you provide, Sure, I named it a public relations firm, but it's really encompassing way more than that.

Kathleen Schmidt: 2:03

I work on PR campaigns for authors who hire me, some publishers hire me, nonprofits that are book publishing, adjacent conferences, you know awards, literary awards, things like that. And you know, with the PR aspect of it, when I work with individual authors, you know I talk to them about what parts of the campaign they feel they need. You know, in terms of what the publisher isn't covering for them. And we talk about branding and we talk about marketing. So that's one element of it. Another element of it is you know, I have a consultancy where, for instance, yesterday I had a consultation with someone who had me read their book proposal in their query letter and we went through it together on Zoom and I told her you know what things to change, what to keep, what could improve it, what to expect, so that sort of thing. And then you know I do a lot of consulting about branding and social media, really all aspects of it.

Kathleen Schmidt: 3:13

You know, the only thing I really don't do anymore is you know I'm not an editing service. I'm not someone to come to you when you want to self-publish your book and you don't have anything set up. I can point you in the right direction for all that, but those are things that I'm just not set up to do right now. Maybe someday, but not right now. The thing I pride myself on is that I do make it really affordable for people, and the first conversation with me is always free.

Beth McMullen: 3:41

That sounds like the perfect suite of offerings for people who find themselves in that position of maybe I landed a book deal, but I'm right now realizing that the publisher doesn't throw a lot of weight or energy or dollars behind. You know your usual kind of belist author and so you need that extra help, even just getting clarity on what is out there in terms of marketing and PR and whatnot. We talk about that a lot here that it's just such a confusing landscape. It sounds like you're offering that sort of service that might just guide somebody through that chaotic feeling.

Kathleen Schmidt: 4:24

Yeah, the other thing I do in, you know, consultations is I do a sub stack consultation. So if someone already has a sub stack set up and they want to talk about how they can grow it you know, I've kind of figured that out for myself, so if I could help other people do it, I Okay, I'll be calling you right after this is over.

Beth McMullen: 4:45

So I discovered okay, this is the perfect segue. I discovered publishing confidential, which is your sub stack, and I am a complete Uber fan for a couple of reasons. First, I'm obsessed with sub stack generally because it's replaced the doom scrolling that I used to do on social media. So I go in. There's all these cool things, there's so much quality there. You can find something about anything, and it's longer form reading, so you don't feel like your brain is melting away with 240 characters, just different voices. And one of the things that I love so much about your sub stack in addition to the information always being super timely, the stuff that I'm thinking about in the moment and a nice clear perspective on the noise that's, you know, generating in my head from reading these headlines like, oh, the whole thing is falling apart. I know it's not Come down, take a breath, this is what's happening, but I love your voice because you are funny and you're matter of fact and you're no BS and you're like, hey friends, this is the way it is, and so I'm like smiling and laughing to myself as I'm reading it. So the experience of reading it is pleasurable and the result is that I'm smarter. At the end, my gosh, thank you.

Beth McMullen: 6:06

And I discovered you. I think you were a link on Dan Blank. You know Dan Blank right From we Grow Media and I had worked with him with my first kids book years ago. So I followed his stuff and I saw your link and he was saying something about the kind of stuff that you were putting up there and I was like, oh, I need this. And then it's just been. I'm like you know, I was waiting the other day for your Simon and Schuster one. I was like when is it going to come? The sub stack about the new board at Simon and Schuster after their takeover by private equity? I was like my head's exploding. I need to understand this.

Beth McMullen: 6:40

So, I was very happy when I saw it pop up and I was like, yay, so I'm a huge fan, I'm a huge fan, thank you. How long have you been doing sub stack, did you? I'm just you know. I know we're getting a little waylaid from the questions, but I'm curious about how you found your way into that, because I know I'm hearing about it so much now sub stack.

Kathleen Schmidt: 7:00

I started my sub stack in March of this year. I had published in confidential back in 2000, I want to say 2016, 2017 from mail and I did it in MailChimp and I had. You know, it was nothing like what it is now. I don't even remember what I wrote about and I think that only sent out like three of them. So I had like 150 email addresses that I imported in and I had like no, I looked at them and I was like, okay, I have a lot of friends on here, so they're not going to yell at me, let's start this.

Kathleen Schmidt: 7:34

And I just thought to myself I'm gonna see what happens. You know, this is the first time that I'm not Heathered to any publishing company and I can Talk any way I want pretty much. But the one thing I did have to reconcile with is the fact that if I was going to be as honest as I am, that the big five probably weren't going to hire me to do work for them. And I'm okay with that. And as long as you know, I was like, as long as I'm okay with that, then I can have the freedom. And that was really important to me because, I'm being blunt, the voice that you read in Publishing confidential is the same voice that has gotten me in trouble a lot of times when I was working in house. There's no one that's more surprised that this is working out for me than my husband.

Lisa Schmid: 8:25

So I have a quick question did they? Did it turn out to be true that the big five, you've never worked with them?

Kathleen Schmidt: 8:32

No, when I was figuring out whether or not to start, you know, my PR firm, you know I left my last job, which was publicity director at Skyhorse, and I took a couple of months to decompress, send my son off to college, get my daughter started in high school, and, and I was applying to all these jobs. You know I was applying to Higher-level executive jobs at the big five. Not a single person interviewed me and that was disheartening for me because I Would see those positions start going to people 15 years younger than me. And I kind of got to the place where I was like I'm not putting myself through this anymore. I've been doing this too long. And you know, there there was, you know there was one, one job that I thought I was pretty close to getting and I didn't get it, and that was. You know, that was like a blow to my, my little fragile ego.

Kathleen Schmidt: 9:30

And then I, you know I was in the running for another job and they asked me to put together a complete marketing deck for a series of books as Part of you know, oh, it's down to you and somebody else. I'm not 25 years old like I've been in this industry long enough. I'm not doing. You know, I'm not doing that stuff for free and I'm hearing that that's happening more and more, so really, the decision to move myself away from all that, I think, was probably the best one I've made in my career, because I have so much freedom now and it allows me to be very author-centric your voice is so necessary for people who are In the middle of their career, at the beginning, even those of us who have been around for a long time it, I think you've definitely hit on something that was necessary.

Beth McMullen: 10:19

And Because of the reasons that you're saying that there's not a lot of truth coming out of the big five, a lot of it is, is cloaked, and you know, I've I've I've published Eight books with Simon and Schuster, a handful with Hyperion. So, like I know the, I know them and I know when they're saying something to me. That doesn't mean what the words are, you know. So you figure that stuff out and exactly to be able to have somebody say this is, this is what you're hearing, this is what it means and this is what it means for you as the author toiling away and your, you know Obscurity kind of thing. So I mean I'm sure you get a lot of positive feedback, but I'm definitely grateful that you're out there doing that for you.

Kathleen Schmidt: 11:00

The thing that I guess I underestimated was the fact that so many people were hungry for someone from my industry to lift the curtain up and demystify it for them, and I'm happy to do that. You know and you know I. It's funny because I see everybody who subscribes, I see every email that comes in and there are publishers who subscribe to it. It makes me laugh because in my head I'm like well, you wouldn't listen to me if I were in an office with you in a conference room, in a meeting. But you're going to read what I'm writing here because you know I'm right.

Lisa Schmid: 11:40

I feel like there's such a need or a desire these days for everyone to understand what's going on in the publishing industry, because it is all very like cloak and dagger and mysterious and you never know what's going on. You hear one thing, maybe from your publisher, and you are sitting there going. I know they're not being completely honest with me. I often hear that people are having to decipher what's real and what's not. I think everyone always believes that the big five is like the end game, and I just don't think that's true anymore.

Kathleen Schmidt: 12:15

Yeah, and probably the week between Christmas and New Year's. I'm starting to compile my list of predictions for the industry in 2024. I'll send them out, probably sometime right after Christmas, before January 1st. One of the things that I'm going to write about is that the big five is not the end all. They're not the end all.

Kathleen Schmidt: 12:41

I have said this before and I think self-publishing is really going to become normalized within the next five years, and I hope it does because I have that's the other part of what I like about what I'm doing being in business for myself. I'm able to take on certain clients that are self-publishing. If you have the funds to assemble a team, you can pretty much start your own publishing company for yourself, just publishing on Amazon or publishing through IngramSpark or something like that. I think that that's going to become more prominent over the next five years, sort of in the same way that and I was thinking about this this morning any media that's reliant on advertising. They're in big trouble because the ad business is not rebounding the way that they had predicted.

Kathleen Schmidt: 13:40

If you look at it like that and you think about Substack, what's taking place of some of the media outlets is Substack because journalists are leaving and they're going to Substack and they're writing. That's what's happened, I think, largely to women's magazines. You have editors from those magazines who have moved over to Substack and I subscribe to all of them. They write these fantastic columns about fashion, beauty, whatever you can find it on there. I think in that scene, vain self-publishing is going to rise up.

Beth McMullen: 14:15

That is so interesting to think about. Honestly. It makes so much sense, logical sense, if you look at how popular Substack is getting and that freedom it gives you to be unfiltered, to have the voice that people do want to hear, without the corporate overlord telling you oh no, you can't do that. I can't wait to see the list Now. I have something to look forward to between Christmas and New Year. All right, Lisa, do you want to jump into our questions? So we don't keep Kathleen here for the entire day.

Lisa Schmid: 14:42

Yes, and this is a good one, because it's what I want to know. Okay, for authors on a tight budget what are some cost-effective marketing and publicity tactics that you've seen work in the real world? What is one thing that authors do that they shouldn't bother with? And I know you're going to list everything I do, so go.

Kathleen Schmidt: 15:05

Authors are not going to like my answer to this. The one thing they shouldn't waste time on is Goodreads. I have strong feelings about that. That platform is a hot mess, and I've written this before. I have never been in a meeting when somebody from SAIL says, wow, thank goodness we did promotion and marketing with Goodreads, because that really sold a lot of copies of this book. I feel like it's become very toxic on there between people who leave reviews and authors competing with each other. It's like this person's doing this and then what just happened with that debut author leaving one star reviews for a bunch of titles? It's just like to what end? I wouldn't obsess about it at all. That is one platform where, if you're not on it, it doesn't matter. So that's one thing, and then lower cost things that authors can do themselves.

Kathleen Schmidt: 16:07

The main thing for any author is to identify your audience and find out where they are when they're not reading books. If spending time on Instagram, for instance, or TikTok, looking at what's trending in those places and then putting the dots together to see what, what your audience really refined how you think about your audience and make a list for yourself of what you're, what you think your audience would be listening to? What podcasts, what music? Where would they be shopping? What brands would they like? Are they a target person? Are they Walmart person? Are they a saxpeth Avenue person? All those things matter, and also what they're watching on Netflix. Netflix is now for the first time, released a report of all of their Viewing stats and it turns out two of the most stream shows were suits and breaking bad. People weren't familiar. So if you look at those, you know those three things and the stats behind them. Then you figure out well, maybe I'll test some ads on Facebook, you know, maybe I'll spend $50 and I'll target fans of these shows, this music. Just see how it goes.

Kathleen Schmidt: 17:22

And in marketing, you know, we, we do what's called an AB test. So if headline a isn't getting you the results you want, you go to be and you could test those two things at once On Facebook for not a lot of months. It's a low, low stakes. There's also promotion on Neck alley that you know authors can do. They have certain packages on there where you know you could be part of the email they send out or nothing is like crazy expensive. It's a few hundred dollars Just to see what happens. You know if you're part of that. So there's stuff like that.

Kathleen Schmidt: 17:59

I think the bare minimum you know is really identifying your audience and Not thinking that they're just gonna find you on social media or that they're just gonna come visit your website and stuff like that. You really have to think about when you're finding your audience and how you will get them to come to your island, you know, and what they will do once they're there, to kind of think of yourself as a vacation resort, what, what are the people, what are readers going to get when they visit you? And how are you going to make it known About you know, what you, what you're offering to them?

Beth McMullen: 18:36

So that's, that's a very first exercise I think every author should do that is really interesting, because I think most authors don't think about what their audience is doing when they're not reading their book. I really like the way you put that, because you do have to think about it, because we are entertainment, essentially, and you know what are the things that they're out there doing that you can latch on to or glom on to, so you can get in front of them.

Kathleen Schmidt: 19:02

Smart, smart to think about you have to assume that 90% of the people you know you're trying to target spend 80% of their time on their phone. You know 50 to 80% of their time on their phone. So how you gonna get them away from that and into your book, that's, that's the, that's a magic question.

Beth McMullen: 19:23

It's a huge challenge to nowadays. Yeah because you have the same amount of time as we ever had, but so much of it is sucked up by your screen, your tiny little screen that runs your life, yep.

Kathleen Schmidt: 19:37

I know.

Beth McMullen: 19:38

It's a little scary. So, in your experience, talking about social media here and phones, how critical is an author's presence on social media for the success of their book?

Kathleen Schmidt: 19:51

I, you know, I was talking to somebody yesterday and they're not really active on social media and they were like you know, if I work with you, are you going to make me join? I was like, no, I'm not gonna make you join. In my mind, social media is not critical to an author's success, not them having accounts themselves. That's not something I would make somebody do if they didn't already have it set up, because it's incredibly laborious and you know you have to have the time to Invest and not a lot of people want to spend that time. I feel like, from my perch, pr wise, no, it's not, you know, critical. However, for publishers, for agents, for editors and I really hope this changes they are still so focused on Platform numbers. You know how many followers do you have and where where are they? We could do that live call. Social media really doesn't like. For the most part, it doesn't sell a ton of books. There's not a huge return on the investment you put into social media, the time investment I mean. Again, I'll take it. I'll put it back to my sub stack. 90% of my traffic, my traffic and my subscriptions come from within sub stack. So that means if I'm posting my link on Twitter. On Instagram, twitter, I have close to 15,000 followers. On Instagram I have 33,000 followers. I don't get any traffic. Maybe I'll get some from LinkedIn but it tells me something and what it tells me is that social media ain't it for book sales. The exception is TikTok.

Kathleen Schmidt: 21:39

But again, when I talk to authors about the process, I say you have to think about, like, if we're talking about blurbs, think about it in two columns. One column is the blurbs you need, because the publisher wants you to get blurbs and it helps them with selling the book to booksellers. Blah, blah, blah. The consumer doesn't really notice them. The average consumer does not notice blurbs. Then in the other column, you have to think about people who you thought maybe you'd ask for a blurb. But you know what. You looked at their social media following and they have enormous numbers on a particular platform. How about not asking that person for a blurb? And how about asking them to post something about the book with a bylink to it or something? So it then becomes less about your social media numbers and the numbers of people you can count on to be your unofficial promo team.

Kathleen Schmidt: 22:31

And I also think, because social media is so fractured right now, you're not going to get the same audience penetration. It's impossible now because the algorithms for Twitter are completely off the rails and it favors anybody who pays for the subscription on there. It's not a great place to be. As for the other platforms, it really depends. Again, if an author is like you know what, I'm not comfortable doing it, I'm not going to make them do it because that comes through. You have to be authentic, but you also have to at least seem like you like it For a publicist to say it's not critical. I think that's important because it puts authors at ease right away that I'm not going to be like you must post this many times a day, and I'm not saying again. I'm not saying you know that they shouldn't have anything on there, but if you're not comfortable with it now I wouldn't stress over that too much.

Beth McMullen: 23:30

I like the idea of thinking about it almost from that opposite point of view as in the example you gave with the book blurb, versus asking somebody with a lot of presence to post about your book as kind of another way of using social media without it being entirely driven by you and your content and your numbers and that sort of thing. I think that's a really interesting way to think about the whole social media universe as a tool, rather than someplace where you have to go and bury your soul in a way that makes you uncomfortable.

Kathleen Schmidt: 24:04

Yeah, I mean I. You know I have a lot of friends who are writers and they're, you know, they publish. You know I have a friend who has a book coming out in May and you know I have another friend who has a new book coming out, I think, in the spring too, and I will always share their stuff. They don't ask me, I just do it because I'm there to support them. So it's some of that too and it's also I have now my sub-stack.

Kathleen Schmidt: 24:28

So I did put my one friend's book called the Memo by Rachel Doads and she has it by her and another former journalist. It's fiction and I put it in one of my newsletters because we were talking and I was like you know, she was wondering if anybody would do a cover reveal for them and I was like you know it's hard to get that, but if you give me the link and everything, I'll put it in my sub-stack. So it's nice to be able to network like that and do things for people and again, you know a lot of us are really generous like that. So I wouldn't, if I were an author, I wouldn't hold back from making the ask because you'd be surprised how many people say yes, that's something to keep in mind for everybody out there.

Beth McMullen: 25:12

All they can do is say no, right, but they're not going to say yes unless you ask the question.

Lisa Schmid: 25:17

Well, it's funny because this is something that's just recently kind of been spinning and I was just been like do I say something? Do I not say something? But I feel like being transparent. I have always been a huge advocate for middle grade on my social media accounts and I'm always promoting everyone's books, and you know not, because I feel like I'm going to get something in return, because I truly love middle grade books. I'm still that person that when I meet another author, I'm inside going, oh my God, I'm meeting an author.

Lisa Schmid: 25:49

You know I'm still a fan girl and can't believe like I'm part of this and I still kind of don't feel part of it. But I have a new book coming out and when I started throwing it out there it was Crookettes and I was just like I can't believe people. You know, after all these years of you know me always like promoting people, like now it's, it's my turn, I'm out here and, unlike all my platforms, it was just literally like nothing and I was not. I was sad, but then best like you've got to ask people, just to ask them. But it's so hard because I did it for two people. I'm like, okay, can you, you know, can you do this? And I'm like this doesn't feel good, like I don't feel good asking them to do it for me, and so I just was like, okay, I'm done.

Kathleen Schmidt: 26:36

I understand why you feel that way, because it's sort of like you're saying well, I can't do this myself, I do it, no one's paying attention to it, but if you do it, you know some way you might pay attention. But nobody's thinking that way. You know, nobody that you ask is thinking that way. We're all in the same boat. Every, every single author has had to start somewhere and you have to remember that. And unless they're like a complete jerk, you know that most are just like just incredibly generous and nice about, but you have to make the ask. I do it for people because that's how my brain works and I'm like oh, you know, someone posted this on Instagram, I'll share it and I'll tag them or whatever. But not everybody thinks like that, so you have to put it in their brain. You have to like. You know, you have to just make the ask and you shouldn't feel bad about it.

Lisa Schmid: 27:23

That's a good, but this is like a therapy session for me and I think it totally is. Both people that I asked automatically were like yeah, of course I'll do it and so, but then I just you know, it's one of those things that's like oh you know, I would rather somebody put it directly in front of me and then I respond to it.

Beth McMullen: 27:42

Yeah, because if I, if you're counting on me just happen to be scrolling when you're when your message about your new project goes by, right, the odds are pretty low that I'm going to see it. And if you say to me, hey, I posted this thing or I'm doing this thing, Can you help me get the word out? Absolutely, and I've done the work for me, which I like, because then I'm just like click, click, click done.

Lisa Schmid: 28:05

You know what, and that's good advice, because now that we're like talking about this, I had somebody an author who's a very well-known author, that has you know, sells tons and tons of books. She DM me can you please send this out for me? And I was like, oh my God, she's asking me, and so of course, I immediately turned around, sent it out. So thank you for talking through my problems today, but see, she even needed help, like that's the thing.

Kathleen Schmidt: 28:30

Everybody needs a little bit of a lifeboat. There's nobody who doesn't, because, you know, even the authors that sell tons of books, they have to keep up a certain level of selling books or the publisher will start being pulling back on marketing money and touring money and you know thinking like well, you know, we made this big investment and we're not getting a lot back on it, so we're going to pull back on our budget and no, you know, they don't want that to happen. So it doesn't surprise me that someone like that asked because they still need people. They still need people to get the word out about their books, and just remember that.

Lisa Schmid: 29:10

Well, that's a good place to jump into our next question. Okay, so how do you define author platform these days? Because, as you know, it's we're all over the place, and what does that entail in publishing as far as author?

Kathleen Schmidt: 29:23

platform is concerned, the street definition you know, coming from book publishing. They're just looking at your social media numbers, what you know, what platforms run, what kind of engagement you get, what kind of content you're putting out, and it's very black and white to them. An extension of that could be that you do a lot of speaking engagements where books can be sold. Another extension could be that you know you have a byline somewhere, or several places that you can leverage for them to cover your book. So it encompasses a few things. I'm not married to any one of those things. When I talk to potential clients, I always say what is your platform like? I don't just leave it at that. I say when I say that, I mean what's your digital presence? Like you know, are you on certain platforms, on social media, and not on others? What's your filing like? How comfortable are you, you know, on there? How often do you post? I just want to get a full picture of how this person is going to connect with their audience. That's my interest. What is the name recognition? How would people recognize your name, Especially if you're a debut author? You have an uphill battle, you know, if you're coming to the table and you wrote this fantastic book that some publisher paid a lot of money for and you have no social media presence. What'll happen is the publisher will use their social media presence to promote you and the book because they spent so much money on it. But if it's something where you don't really have a social media presence they bought your book for a little bit of money. You're not going to get that much promotion If you're a debut author or you're on your second or third book with a publisher and your contract is up, but they have the first option to look at the next project after that.

Kathleen Schmidt: 31:17

When anybody is going to look at is what your sales track record is. So you have to be able to make those conversions. I talk to people about that a lot. Yes, there's a place for book reviews and online presence platform things like that. That is more about name recognition than anything else, because one review in the New York Times doesn't sell a lot of books. A post on social media just tossing it out there does not sell a lot of books.

Kathleen Schmidt: 31:48

So you have to figure out how to engage your audience so that they click, buy and if you're on your second book, going into your third book and you've gotten some reviews, but not a lot. There's minor name recognition. Then for the next book you really have to work that much harder to get your name out there, because what you want is people to anticipate your book, because then they'll pre-order it. So those are the things that I think about a lot, because publishers put the onus on authors for pre-order campaigns and that's just not happening, because a consumer really doesn't want to order something that far in advance.

Kathleen Schmidt: 32:30

We're now trained to get what we want when we want it with a click. We don't have to get off our couch to order dinner. There's seamless shopping experiences on Facebook, on TikTok, on Instagram. So if someone is publishing a book and it's coming out in six months and they just throw up a pre-order link and they're not like a hotly anticipated celebrity memoir, they're not going to get a lot of pre-orders. It shouldn't be like we're going to decide what marketing money we're going to spend on your book by looking at what pre-orders you get, because they're not indicative of a book's total success.

Lisa Schmid: 33:09

I see a lot of authors do pre-order campaigns where they're giving stuff away and I just in my mind I'm thinking I wonder if that even works. I mean, they're investing into that and is that something that actually works?

Kathleen Schmidt: 33:21

Sometimes it depends on what they're giving away. I've worked on self-help books where the person rating it offers a 30-minute life coaching session. Again, you still have to know your audience, because your audience are the people who want a life coach, so you can't just throw it out there and expect people to be like, okay, I want a life coach, I'm going to sign up for that and buy the book and email my receipt so I can get 30 minutes. Not everybody wants that. It really depends on what that person is offering and if you're the audience for what they're offering.

Kathleen Schmidt: 33:57

I think about fashion brands and doing collaborations with. New York. Magazine has the strategist and it's like a shopping newsletter. They did this really good promotion with this clothing brand called Universal Standard, where you got a pair of jeans for free. Who doesn't want that? I did that, I did too. I clicked right on that, and so that tells you something. You have to have the thing that people want. People are presented with way too many choices today.

Kathleen Schmidt: 34:28

The great advantage that TikTok has over any other kind of social media, even over something like Netflix, is that they're giving you what you want without you having to search for it. They have such a good AI driven algorithm that I never search for anything on there. I could just be talking about something and I go on TikTok and it's there, or I watch the full video of something and sadly, at night when my brain is fried, I don't want to think about it. So when I'm scrolling through TikTok and all of the Sex and the City clips come up, I will go right into that person's account and I'll spend two hours watching clips from Sex and the City or the Sopranos or the Godfather or whatever, but I never search for them. It's right in front of me. So traditional book publishers should be very worried if TikTok is actually building out a publishing arm, because they have information that nobody else does. They have the ability to do something no publisher has the ability to do, which is put something in front of you without you having to search for it.

Beth McMullen: 35:38

It'll be really interesting to watch how it unfolds over the next few years. So that is a great place to wrap up. We have kept you for a very long time, but thank you so much for being here and for sharing all of your experience and wisdom with us and our listeners. We are very grateful, so thank you.

Kathleen Schmidt: 35:55

Thank you.

Beth McMullen: 35:56

It was great meeting you both and listeners, remember you can find out more about Kathleen in our podcast notes and I'll drop links to all her socials and website there too, so you can easily get in touch. And, as I've already said a million times, I cannot recommend her Substack Publishing Confidential enough. So go and subscribe to that. It will give you clarity in your life and that's what we're all looking for. And, as always, thank you for tuning in. Please visit our Writers with Wrinkles link tree or the podcast notes and find out how to support the show by subscribing, following and recommending. And while we are recording this, when it's still 2023, our next episode that drops will be January 15th and we will have an update on our big picture project for you that you won't want to miss. So things are happening. I'll say that much. So until then, happy reading, writing and listening.