Transcript of Episode 42: Jenn Hanson-dePaula, Book Marketing Consultant

00:01.42 Mary (goodstory)

Hello and welcome to the Good Story Podcast. My name is Mary Kole and with me, I have Jenn Hanson-dePaula, who is here to talk about book marketing. Dun, dun, dun!

00:15.12 Jenn

Yes, everybody’s favorite subject.

00:18.32 goodstory

Jenn, why don’t you take it away? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

00:21.74 Jenn

Yeah, I have been in marketing for over 24 years, which kind of boggles my mind. I kind of have to stop and catch my breath on that one. But I’ve been— I got my start in the music industry. I call myself a recovering publicist. I got people, you know, like coverage on TV and radio and all that. And as grandma as this sounds, this was before social media, like when I really got started.

But then I started my own company in about 2005. And that’s really when social media was starting to take place and things were starting to move more digital. And so I saw this really great opportunity. And at the time for musicians, to tap into that and started, you know, like doing more blogs and online content and really started to tap into social media. And as things really started to take off for them– we lived in Nashville, Tennessee at the time—and so we had a lot of musician friends.

01:24.58 goodstory

Oh, nice.

01:26.16 Jenn

And I also met a lot of authors that lived down there and they were like, Hey, can you do what you’re doing for musicians for books? And not knowing if I could, I was like, sure, why not?

01:40.40 goodstory

That’s right. Fake it till you make it.

01:42.16 Jenn

Exactly. And so it was, I’ve always been a huge reader. Like I love books and it was just always a dream to work with authors. And I had, it’s interesting there were like, when I worked at the, one of the record labels that I worked at, we did some book projects where there was like a book that accompanied like, a special project or like a Christmas project or something like that. So it was, I started to see, you know, like, okay, it is rather similar.

So as I started working more and more with authors, I saw like what, if but like the approach was the same, like similar, but with the musicians that I was working with, they just kind of innately know, okay, I have to go out and perform. I have to go out and put this into the world.

And as I was working with more and more authors, they were just they were so hesitant. And it’s just like this, OK, I don’t want to put myself out there. I want to be at my desk not dealing with people. And I don’t want to do this. And so I just saw such an opportunity to help authors to really empower them with like what marketing actually is and what it isn’t and how they can have that ownership and they can feel confident in presenting their books and getting it out there into the world. And so in, I guess it was 2019 or somewhere around in there, I completely changed the focus of the company to go all in on authors. And so I’ve been doing it, I know I’ve been doing it for 15 years, so whatever 15 years is from today.

03:25.22 goodstory

Oh, wow. Okay. 2009.

03:33.35 Jenn

2009, yes, okay, yes. It was when my son was born, that’s what it was. And so yeah, we just turned the focus and I’ve been absolutely loving it ever since. I am just one of those geeky people that loves marketing and I thrive more on the business side of things with that. And I love helping authors really own their marketing, their connections and feeling confident in doing that.

04:02.56 goodstory

Well, that’s fabulous because as you mentioned, not a lot of authors feel confident owning their marketing.

04:07.31 Jenn

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

04:09.04 goodstory

And I really want to talk about what marketing is and isn’t. I think that is fascinating. But I was just reading Book Wars. It was about the digital revolution in publishing. And one of the natural comparison points was actually to the music industry and how digitization ruined the music industry, basically.

04:28.81 Jenn

Yes.

04:33.01 goodstory

That’s kind of the top line takeaway, especially when it comes to services like Spotify that, you know, pay via a royalty pool by a number of streams, and so books are distinct from that in that they haven’t really followed that model outside of you know, Kindle Unlimited would be an analog to it. And also just the downward price pressure of buying a song from iTunes for 99 cents and kind of the value of music and discoverability in music, which is sort of lorded over by these big record companies who are analogous to publishers.

So you were you had a front row seat for kind of all of this.

05:15.76 Jenn

Oh, I was there. Yeah. And that was the crazy thing, like I got my start in 2000. I worked at the first like, record label.

05:24.07 goodstory

Okay.

05:25.74 Jenn

And before that, there were sites like Napster and you know like all these free…

05:33.77 goodstory

So peer to peer sharing and piracy.

05:36.43 Jenn

Exactly. And something—so when, you know, like the iPod came out in what, 2001 or 2002, that was such a pivotal time. And it was something that I think, you know, like everyone was just kind of gobsmacked with like, what do we, you know, it happened so quickly. And I specifically remember, and this has kind of been something that I’ve really hung my hat on for my entire career. I had a conversation with one of the presidents of the label that I was working at, and we were talking about all of this and all this change, and he said, we should (we, meaning the music industry) should have been the ones to think of Napster. We should have been thinking ahead. We should have been more forward-thinking and not being so comfortable to think that everything was just gonna stay the same. And so that is something that I specifically remember. I know where we were in the building that day because I remember the air was kind of sucked out of my lungs. I was like, this is a profound moment. I specifically remember that. And I’m always trying to think ahead. What is it that is going to help us to not be constantly chasing the next thing?

Rather than let’s try to be ahead of it or you know like even in line with it so it isn’t such a massive smack across the face when it happens. And I actually, when I moved over from when I left the record label, I had written a blog post about lessons that the publishing industry should learn from musicians and you know like through this whole thing because you can see okay this isn’t just limited to music, this is going to be TV, this is going to be film, this is going to be books all of that and so there was so much that I think the publishing industry could have learned in response and you know just even now I think that there’s so much that you know like that publishers or you know, even authors should be aware of and be forward-thinking of and not be in fear but thinking okay, this change is going to happen. How can I go with it or how can I make some changes so I’m not desperately trying to scramble?

08:06.53 goodstory

Yeah, absolutely. So Book Wars, and we’ll get onto book publishing in a second, but I literally just finished this like two days ago, so my head is full of it, where it seems that publishers and the music industry diverge, though, is in format. Because once digitization came for music, that’s it. Like you said, the iPod came out, people could carry 10,000 albums in their pockets, whatever the number was, right? And you can see these graphs of, like, cassette tapes. CDs came and went. As soon as it went digital, it went digital. And when eBooks similarly were introduced, there was a lot of doom and gloom in the publishing industry about, wow, this is going to kill print, da, da, da. The Kindle came out. There was this big splash. But eBook sales have their place and are more typical in certain formats, certain category genres, and have leveled off.

So that kind of flashpoint had a lot of people scared. But now we’ve seen that you know just like you, you’re displaying these beautiful physical objects, you know, they’re larger units of experience than, say, a song from an album that somebody might want when they don’t want, you know, the whole package kind of arbitrary selection of songs. And so there is a little bit of sort of divergence in terms of, you know, how publishing has reacted. That’s not to say publishing has been perfect. That’s not to say there isn’t, you know, the business model of publishing, as anybody in publishing will tell you, is broken in so many lovely ways. But, so I’m interested in sort of how you’ve seen this effect. Creatives, first musicians, first authors, this idea of we are at a tipping point, we are at this stage where things are changing maybe more rapidly than they ever have. What is the kind of creator that is best positioned to take advantage of what this situation offers?

10:17.56 Jenn

Yeah, it’s interesting because like I specifically remember having some conversations with some of the artists that I worked with right when you know, like CDs were going away and you know everything was going digital. With musicians, for example, I had a conversation with a band and they were like, well, we never made the bulk of our money from CD sales. We made it from selling stickers at shows. We made it by playing live.

10:46.87 goodstory

Merch and touring, yeah.

10:48.27 Jenn

Yes. And so that, and that it was interesting because like once the CD side of things started going away, I start you started to see more labels, record labels, trying to acquire management, like to be under the umbrella of the public of the label, having like different merch companies and stuff like that. So you know it’s interesting to see how that impacted the musicians. But then when you look at authors and you think about, okay, for fiction, is it something where you’re kind of limited in terms of like you have this book and you can pump out a series of books to try to get your catalog robust or you can ghost write or you can do other creative writing endeavors and stuff like that to kind of make up for what you might not make solely on your books alone.

And for nonfiction, many times, the authors that I work with, the book is kind of like an ancillary product of what the services that they provide. And so it’s different for every creative. It’s something where you know like I’ve seen you like some photographers in that realm, you know like now they’re doing courses on how you know teaching people how to best use their iPhone to take beautiful pictures, how to print, develop and all of that stuff.

And so there are ways outside of the actual creative act of writing the book, but you do have to kind of look outside of those parameters because it’s definitely not what it was even 20 years ago. But there are some very unique opportunities that continue to pop up. And it’s kind of like you don’t want to go into it with just saying, I’m only going to do this, like I’m only going to write my books. And it’s like, OK, then you like are you going to have an outside job? Or are you going to be you know contributing to someone else’s. … are you teaching? It’s thinking of different things outside of that box that can really help you not only broaden your reach, but to you know bring in more income and you know just be a little bit more open to different opportunities that might come your way.

13:28.76 goodstory

So we’ve kind of gone right for the more advanced had consideration of you know it is not very viable, unfortunately, in today’s publishing marketplace to only have you know be standing on this monopod of my book and everything I do is in service of my book. What I hear you saying is that the writers that tend to be more successful, including financially, although there are no guarantees, they look for opportunities for more stability for that monopod. They want to turn themselves into a tripod. Maybe once they get enough clout, they can earn from their speaking engagements, signed with a speakers bureau, ah because your musician clients, they tour, right? If they wanted to, they could be on the road 200 days a year, whatever, depending on how little life and health they want to have. But that kind of opportunity doesn’t really exist for an author who is very much like, buy my novel. I made some stuff up and I hope you like it. you know And merch, similarly, you know, there are rabid fandoms in in publishing and with book series, but you don’t really, you know, you don’t see people rocking the ACOTAR shirt as much, you know.

14:46.18 Jenn

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it’s something, it’s different when you are just starting out, like when you are releasing your first book versus when you have 20 books under your belt. you know Because books, especially with fiction, it is a marathon. It isn’t a sprint. And when I talk with authors who don’t sell millions of copies of their first book. They think that they’re a failure. It’s like, no, you’re not. You know, that first book is such a learning experience and you are—it’s like watching a toddler walk for, try to walk for the first time, you know, it’s just kind of, they stand up and they’re confident and they, you know, they know that they need to project forward, but it’s figuring out, you know, the legs and you fall and you get up and you just kind of move your way around. And it’s really like that with that first book. You’re trying to figure out what is my voice? What is my, how do I want to connect with people? What is my book about? Because that is a whole other skill set that you have to learn is how to present to your book in a very short timeframe in regards to attention span.

And so that is something where when I always tell authors, if you feel like you cannot imagine your life without writing, if you can’t imagine doing anything else, you do it. But you also have, you know, like at the beginning, it might mean you still have to work your day job or you might have to, you know, take on some writing projects, but that does not mean that it’s forever. It’s really this learning time of really starting to figure out your voice and how you want to present and connect with your readers.

16:38.77 goodstory

Which is hugely demoralizing for people who think that all of their problems are going to get solved as soon as they get that publishing deal, you know, and it’s like, and you’re like, no, no, no, that’s the beginning, not the end. It might be the end of one journey where you are sort of buffered from these external forces of the marketplace and readership and reviews and having to market it and blah, blah, blah, you know, but it is the beginning of a much longer journey, especially for those people who intend to be in the game for the long-term.

So let’s return to what is marketing and what is not marketing. What is marketing not? Because I love that curiosity hook that you gave us.

17:18.69 Jenn

Oh, yes. So marketing, and this is something that has evolved over the years because with social media, with everything that we have online, it has really changed a lot, even just within 20 years, you know, it’s a different mindset and different approach because you you have to think about where do people discover, discuss and purchase books and so that has changed even 20 years ago. So what marketing is … is really connecting with the people that you feel that want to hear or read your stories. I call this your ideal reader. And this is someone that you can speak to within your marketing where you’re not talking to everyone. There’s this saying, if you try to talk to everyone, you’re talking to no one. And so when you have this ideal reader, it helps you to become very crystal clear in what your book is about. When you’re focused on just talking to one person rather than 10,000, it makes it much easier. It’s less overwhelming. It’s less daunting. And you don’t have stage fright talking to just one person. But marketing is really about relationships. It’s about connection. And it’s about telling people why your book is the book that they’ve been looking for their entire life. And it’s not about pushing a sale. Sales come later. Marketing is about connection and awareness. And the mistake that many people think is that marketing and sales go hand in hand, and they do work together. But people have to know who you are before they can buy.

Or before they want to buy, I should say. So when we kind of separate the two to say, okay yes they are connected and they work together, but they’re two different acts. That is something that kind of when I tell authors that, and we’re like having a one on one, you can physically see. Oh, their shoulders kind of relax and like, okay, I can do that. And when you’re focusing on making connection and building awareness for your book, that makes selling so much easier because when people are already aware of your book and when they are aware of you and everything that you have to offer, that makes it so much easier to actually sell. And so it’s something where you know like realizing that just because you might be ready to sell your book doesn’t mean that everyone’s always ready to buy. And that doesn’t mean that you’ve lost the sale. It just means that they need to get to know you a little bit more and to spend that time with you.

And so that, and that’s what I love about social media is that you can nurture these connections and you can build that awareness for free on a social media outlet. And you can be consistently showing up sharing that message, which is going to warm up the audience more quickly than it would like if you just had one feature in a magazine or just one appearance on a TV show or something like that, where you know like you can really nurture these connections. So what marketing is, it’s just building relationships and making that awareness and connection. It is not constantly trying to push and promote and sell your book. Yes, it is kind of weaved into that, but that’s not the main focus. The sales come later. It’s more about the connection.

21:13.40 goodstory

So I have about 10 million directions to go from here. To me, it sounds like you are—so our listeners may not all be familiar with this kind of cold, warm, hot audience or the marketing funnel, whatever you want to call it. But basically what you’re saying is you can’t just show up before anybody knows who you are. They don’t like, know, like, or trust you. That’s kind of a big marketing buzzword and just say, my book is great, trust me, trust me, buy it, give me $20 or you know give the retailer $20 and give me $1 in six months, maybe, unless there are returns.

21:43.96 Jenn

Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Exactly. Yes.

21:54.70 goodstory

So that’s kind of the funnel way of looking at marketing. You’re really trying to generate that trust, that warm goodwill in your audience. Speak quickly, if you can, to the death of you know print media, reviews and all of this. So you’re saying, you know don’t count on one article in a magazine, one TV a period appearance. Even though those are great feathers in your hat and they lend credibility, it doesn’t seem like those, because they do target such a wide audience, meaningfully translate into sales, which might surprise some people.

22:36.96 Jenn

Yeah. It’s something that social media turned on its head, you know, 15, 20 years ago. When I was working in, when I was a publicist and we didn’t have social media, that really was, you know, 25 years ago, that was the only option that we had to get people visibility. And so now when we can connect with readers way before the book even releases, we aren’t caged into just these three to four months before the book release to promote it. Back 20 years ago, we only had a finite amount of time to promote a book, an album, whatever it was that we’re trying to do. And now, we have infinite space, an infinite amount of time that we can talk about a book. And so when we talk about back then only having a magazine, or TV appearances or having a radio interview where someone only listened to it once, we didn’t have this automatic replay … but having it go digital, we had to rely on that. And this again goes back to another story of like at the record label, I specifically remember sitting in a a meeting where the director of marketing was like, I wish we could just go right to the fans. Why do we have to go through this editor or why do we have to try to convince all these gatekeepers to cover our artist because they’re amazing. And now we have that. And it’s something where because we are so overwhelmed, it is a very noisy online space, we have to show up continuously. And that’s why one review in just a print magazine isn’t going to make as much of an impact as showing up daily on social media, doing a post and staying visible to your readers.

24:53.02 goodstory

So this gets at the heart of what I hear very commonly. I’m sure you hear it too, which is you say there’s infinite time to promote a book. You have to show up consistently and talk about it. Okay. Practically speaking though, and and some writers they’re like, I don’t want to be on video. To me, if I was a debut writer hearing that advice, I would be like, well, how many different ways can I talk about my book, around my book, about myself, about my writing process, show my writing desk? Those are kind of the top of the line ideas. But you have if consistency is key, which I absolutely agree that it is, how do you keep coming up with new ideas for content that don’t retread the same five points?

25:50.62 Jenn

Okay, so the key to marketing is repetition. And that is something where I always tell authors there are three types of posts that you should cycle through week after week. The first type of post is a connection post. This is a post where you are connecting with readers as like a fellow reader or as a just a fellow human being where you are making that connection. These can be posts on like what you’re reading or your collection of books. If you write nonfiction, it could be connecting with them on a certain problem that you solve or a certain question that you answer. And so it’s more about connecting with your readers as a fellow human being.

The second type of post is promotional. Now, when I say promotional, it doesn’t mean by my book, you know, like holding it up there, it is really leaning into—especially for fiction authors—the feelings and emotions that they are looking for within the book. 95% of our buying power is within emotions. We lean into that. We really need to show readers why our book is worth their time because laying down 15 bucks for a book, you know, people will do that, but it’ll just live on their shelf forever. But knowing, okay, why is this book worth my time? Why do I want to drop the one I’m reading and instantly pick up your book? So the promotional aspect of it is really giving it that hook. What is it that is going to resonate with your ideal readers? What emotions are they looking for? What problems are they looking to have solved? And if you have this hook, and it’s just really a few words where it leans into the emotions or those keywords that people are looking for, and even giving some sort of touchstone. So a touchstone is really thinking about what are some movies or TV shows or other books or current events that my book leans on? So my book is a whimsical and romantic comedy, Friends meets You’ve Got Mail set in 1987 New York City. When you have just those few phrases, those few keywords, it’s like someone will look at them and go, that is for me. Because they know I love Friends, I love You’ve Got Mail, and I want a romantic comedy. Done. So it doesn’t need to be this deep dive into all the nuances of your book.

28:33.58 goodstory

Your themes, your themes!

28:35.16 Jenn

Yes, yes. It’s really leaning into that. And you can use that many different ways. You can say, if you love fun, whimsical, Friends meets You’ve Got Mail, romantic comedies, you’ll love my book XYZ with the title. You can reconfigure those words over and over again, but that repetition is what is going to really get into their brains and sink in. So that is like a promotion and also promotional— I’m big on newsletters. So you can like promote your free incentive. That’s promotional. That’s getting them on your list. So that’s another type of promotional post.

Then the third is a nurturing post that is really building community. And that is, you know, l like to use Instagram stories for those nurturing, behind the scenes. I share pictures of my dog or you know if I share a picture of my son, that’s where I share it. That kind of thing where you kind of you can show behind the scenes or you know kind of nurture that there. But those three different types of posts, they give you the parameters that you need to kind of keep it tucked in a little bit, but it gives you also that repetition that’s so important.