Episode 42: Marika Flatt on Book Publicity

Marika Flatt is the owner and founder of PR by the Book, an Austin, Texas-based publicity firm. She is a regular speaker in the book industry regarding marketing and publicity and joins us on the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss book publicity tips for both publishers and self-published authors, as well as how publicity should be conducted throughout the entire publishing process.

Her publicity firm, PR by the Book, helps authors elevate their relevancy and create buss for their titles by helping authors turn into influencers. With over 900 book titles and over 20 years of experience, their success and specialty spans over many different genres, including travel, lifestyle, outdoors, self-help, parenting, and Christian titles.

To learn more, visit PRbythebook.com. You can also request to join their private “Author to Influencer Accelerator” group on Facebook to learn how authors can take advantage of DIY publicity opportunities.

Transcript

Joshua Tallent
This week on the BookSmarts Podcast, I’m talking with Marika Flatt, who is the founder of PR by the Book, an Austin, Texas based publicity firm. Marika, thanks for joining me.

Marika Flatt
So happy to be here. Thanks for asking.

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, it’s great to have you on. So we’ve known each other for a long time back in my days in Austin, which was more than a decade ago that I used to live in Austin. And you’ve been really active in publishing for a long time doing PR, and have a lot of experience in that so I’m really excited to chat with you today, I kind of want to take this conversation a couple of different ways and I want to give our listeners an opportunity to kind of hear your perspective on how publicity really can be helpful and kind of whether they’re working for large publishers, midsize publisher, small publisher, their independent author, whatever they’re doing, to get a feel for how publicity works in publishing. So let’s start off talking first about the timing. When you’re thinking about doing publicity for a book, what do you think about timing? How early do you need to be thinking about publicity? How early do you start pushing your clients to start thinking about it? And even how late. How far down the line to they need to be thinking about it as well?

Marika Flatt
Well, I love this topic. And it’s, it’s slightly different for publishers and authors. When I’m talking to authors, I tell them to start thinking about it, basically, when they’re writing the book, because sometimes I’m talking to people who are going to Self Publish. But when I talk to publishers, first and foremost, I want them to know that PR by the Book and other publicity services out there can basically complement their own efforts of whatever they’re going to do in house. Some people might say, well, we have our own publicity department. So you know, what does this interest us? Well, it very much does, because a publicity department only has a certain bandwidth to handle a certain amount for their list that’s coming out. So sometimes a publisher, they just need outside help, outside hand to complement what they’re going to be doing in house.

So for instance, and I should say, I’ve been doing this for almost 27 years, and PR by the Book is a little over 21 years old. So I’ve seen this change a lot over the years. I was about to give an example of what we use to be contacted by publishing houses for, things like blog tours, which are now called virtual book tours, or physical tours, when publishing houses wanted to send an author on a physical tour. We would help them and we wouldn’t do the event planning of scheduling with the bookstore. But we would track their tour. And internally, we call those tour cities or tour markets. And so we would basically start pitching two or three months prior to an author getting to a market, and we would just track the tour. And we would aim to get, let’s just say three media hits in a tour city. So those were, in the early days, how publishers would hire us. And now, it varies. Sometimes we have a publisher that would hire us to just basically handle an entire book, because they’ve got a big book coming out and they just don’t want to be caught empty handed with no publicity. And so they would say, okay, PR by the Book, we’re going to give you this book. Go run with it. We know that you know what to do. We’re going to cheer you on on the way. We’re going to send out requested review copies when you’ve got media that needs review copy and we’re going to be here in the loop with you and the author. So that’s sometimes how a publisher needs to utilize an outside publicist. Other times it could be things like ala carte. So going back to the virtual book tour, that’s something that works really well for certain genres, including fiction, children’s books, sometimes self improvement books really hit the nail on the head with those. And so what that is, is that’s run by our digital team. So we have an entire digital department at PR by the Book that runs alongside, it’s like two train tracks. I like to envision that as an analogy, where we have our digital department running alongside our PR department. So a publicist is pitching what’s left of print and radio and television and podcasts, persons local and regional media, those types of things. And the digital team tracking alongside that is putting together not only handling somebody’s social media content development, scheduling and all that, but also creating a virtual book tour, which in this day and age consists of a lot of bookstagramers on Instagram.

It’s about getting in front of their audience. These people have built up a huge audience and we do not work with the ones who are charging. So we work with the ones classified as earned media and these are people who are not charging to make the post so it’s more authentic. All they’re asking for is book. They just want to book and you want to send them a book, because a lot of these are, you know, they’re creating a beautiful photo to post on their Instagram. So it’s still earn media and these people are, their mission is just to be talking about great books. Yeah. And so that’s a virtual book tour. And also in our digital department, falls under our digital department, is our NetGalley account. So we were the very first PR firm to sign on to NetGalley a million years ago and we still work with NetGalley and as you and I talked about, Joshua, when we last spoke, one of the benefits that we bring to the table with our NetGalley is that we have the longevity. We’ve been on it for so long. The reviewers on NetGalley, they know who we are. We know how to vet and who’s a good fit for what. We also know how to follow up with these people to try to get those links to show, you know, that our authors can use on their own social media. So those are the three arenas that fall under our digital. And so a publisher, I could go down a million different lanes here, I’ll try to keep myself focused. So a publisher can supplement what they’re going to do in house. What I tell others all the time is that the first and foremost thing that a publishing house typically does really well in terms of publicity, is that they’re great about getting those ARC’s printed, the advanced review copies, also called galleys, get those printed and submit those electronically and physically, early on, long lead, you know, four and a half to six months prior to pub date. And so that is kind of their bread and butter.

Typically, when you when you talk about a publishing house. That’s where they start typically with publicity. It’s where we all start. I mean, when we work on a project, that’s where we’re starting too if we have the advantage of long lead, and then you move into, from long leads. So that’s like book trade publications, which I want to explain, because I’d be speaking to the choir here. If I was talking to just a bunch of intro writers, I would explain what that was. But we all know, book Industry Trade publications, long lead publications, like what’s left of print. They’re still monthly magazines. We see him when we go to the grocery store. We see him in the checkout. Some of us still have subscriptions. I know I have one that I’m holding on to. And so those people, they need a really long lead time to review a book. And so that’s in the early stages, that’s long lead timeframe.

Joshua Tallent
So what happens that’s a long lead, right? You’re six months out. You’re four months out maybe even. What happens when you get a little closer? You’re two or three months out, whether you’re a publisher or an author, what kind of publicity are you thinking about in that timeframe?

Marika Flatt
Yes, so shortly, publicity consists of things like their local and regional media, podcast, TV. Now, the caveat on that is that we have national TV, which we booked an author on Good Morning, America last fall. Which by the way, took three months to land. Three months of work. We booked them early November for a segment that’s going to happen in March. So sometimes they’re planning far ahead. Sometimes it’s a quicker turnaround. As you get into short lead media, it’s things like what’s left of daily newspapers, online magazines, I already said podcasts, bookstagrammars, other micro influencers on like, TikTok, YouTube, those are shorter lead. There’s still a little bit of talk radio around too.

Joshua Tallent
So if you’re thinking about that, then, on the short lead side, are you also thinking about the kinds of topics or the approach that you’re taking? Is it Different in that short period of time? Obviously, the book at this point is going to be hopefully available for pre order. So that’s going to change maybe a little bit of the language that you use around the book than something that’s meant way earlier, but is there anything else that you’re thinking of kind of on a content basis or an approach basis?

Marika Flatt
Absolutely. We love what we call timely tie ins. They are a silver bullet for us here at PR by the Book. It’s the call to action that a media outlet needs. And so an example of a timely tie in would be, let’s just say one of my favorites is May as Mental Health Awareness Month, for instance. So we will start pitching that shortly. So let’s say early March, to media outlets. We work with a lot of memoirs. W work a lot of self improvement books. So that’s a great timely tie in. We’ll even do a bulk pitch, where we create an entire almost like a roundup article for media outlets. And we say we need to be talking about mental health awareness. This is something that you want to be letting your readers know about. Here’s, basically, here’s your work done for you. Basically, you can just copy and paste this as an article. And we get a lot of traction with that. So that would be an example.

Timely tie ins are just golden. I mean, they really move the needle, because let’s say I’m the publicist. And you’re the, let’s just say, a radio producer and I send you a pitch and you read it, you’re like, this is really interesting. I like this. Sounds like a book I want to read. If there’s no timely tie in, it’s very easy for you to file it away. You have a folder of like, I’m interested in this, but I’m not gonna do anything with it right now. So you just slip it into that folder, out of sight, out of mind. If I say to you, this is a great book for paperback book day, which is the end of July, and you like to read novels, and maybe it’s a thriller that’s just about to come out. And so you’re like, ooh, so Chad Boudreaux is one of our authors. He has a thriller coming out in August. Paperback Book Day lands right before that. We’re going to be utilizing that and pitching that starting probably in May. So that’s on people’s radar screens. So you as a producer, you’re looking at that and you’re thinking, okay, yeah, I’m pretty busy. I’m pretty booked up. But I’ve got a space right here, July 20. Is he available July 20th? So those timely tions can make or break a publicity campaign because without it, it’s just too easy to get overlooked.

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, so what okay, so let’s say we’re going closer to pub date, or we’re a month away, or we’re within that month, even before and after pub date? How does your publicity start to change when you’re that close to the launch of the book. We’re going to assume everything’s going well on the publisher side, and they’re going to get it out on time. It’s going to be on shelves. How do you approach it differently as you’re getting to that point?

Marika Flatt
So there’s a crescendo of excitement, you know, and in media, hear about it from us that we’re getting excited, we’re almost there, get a last minute spot on the virtual bookstore, it’s happening in two weeks, get that spot, and we’ll get you all have the assets that you need in order to be able to participate in the book tour. So things like that, really just kind of giving them a little bit more urgency, and letting them know that it’s coming. And so for us, when we create a strategy, we map it all out at the beginning, we know you know who we need to contact, we’re spreading it out, if we’ve got, let’s say, a six month campaign for a book, we know who needs to be contacted, and each given month, you can’t contact everybody in a month. There’s too much. So we go into it with a strategy and so we know, okay, in this particular month, we’re going to be pitching their local and regional media, for instance. And so just depending on where that falls in the timeline depends on what timeliness we’re using for that.

Joshua Tallent
That makes sense. And then you get to the point where the books have been published, and publicity doesn’t stop after that, right? There’s still work to be done and maybe we should even go into that conversation that, you know, kind of make the differentiation here between publicity and marketing. Because there is a difference between the two. But let’s let’s talk about that, and I want to come back again to the timeline again, and think about looking at the future as a publisher or an author, you know, let’s come back to that in a second. But let’s talk first about what is the difference in your mind? Between publicity and marketing and how that interacts with the work that you’re doing.

Marika Flatt
Yeah, and they work together. So for instance, we just did a session for one of our author groups on running a price steal, a price drop, as a marketing tool. That’s a marketing tool, when you’re gonna, let’s say, drop the Ebook price to 99 cents for a particular week. So that’s marketing. But the way that it can work alongside publicity, is that you can utilize that on your social media, put a link to a review that you just got and they are all working together. So you’re utilizing a marketing tool. You’re promoting it on your socials. You’re pulling in an example of earned media that you’ve already gotten the credentials and basically can set you apart from the rest of the authors that are promoting their book on that day. So it’s all working in tandem together. But marketing is different than publicity and here’s the biggest differentiation. Marketing, you’re typically putting dollars into that. It is a paid opportunity. So it can be anything from an ad online, or something as old fashioned as creating bookmarks. Or it could be running a promo. It could be a price drop. All of those things, they involve money. Whereas publicity, yes, you’re paying your publicist because you’re paying someone to do it for you. But there is no money exchanged in publicity. And that’s why it’s called earned media.

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, earned media, not pay for play. It’s really about just putting more visibility onto the product or onto the title without it being something I’m paying to promote.

Marika Flatt
Right. And Joshua, when you and I talked last time, we were talking about the need to look at publicity and promotion for a year on timeframe. And, you know, you and I, we’ve both been in the book industry for a long time. So we see how things can cycle. Books can cycle in and out, up and down, backless and frontlist. And the opportunity that exists there. So we encourage authors to think about promoting their book for a year. That doesn’t mean they have to be on a full campaign with us for a year. They can be on different pieces of campaigns. So for instance, they could work with us on social media, before their ARCs are available. Then their ARCs come out, and we could do some long lead, and then that goes into short lead. And then maybe they drop down to what we call constant connections, which is more of a maintenance campaign. And then we even have another job after that, which we call next level PR, which is more of a membership group. But whether you hire a publicist to help you with it or not, there’s so much to be done. And you want to take advantage of the timely tie ins. And when you and I were talking last time, we were talking about when a book is a year old, and it’s the anniversary, that’s another reason to be pushing it out.

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, so what about an author themselves? If there’s an author listening today, and they’re like, you know, I wrote a book. It came out last year. It’s doing fine. But I want to get more out of it. The book itself is only part of the process, right? I have speaking engagements that I go and do, and I’m trying to promote myself, and the book is just part of that big picture. What would you say to an author in that kind of situation where it’s not about the book as much as it is about the person?

Marika Flatt
Right. And so it’s really about them as a brand at that point. And so we love looking at our authors as a brand, whether we’re starting from scratch, because a lot of times we are starting from scratch, and you and I could have a whole conversation about expectations related to that. But then sometimes somebody already has a brand that’s built in. It might not be, you know, on a national basis, they might just have built something kind of in their circles of influence. But regardless, it’s a brand, and so I encourage people and this is the way we look at our clients in that situation is think of themselves as an umbrella, that’s their brand, and everything falls under that umbrella. That could be not only the book, but it could be a course that they offer. It could be maybe they have clients that they meet with one on one, maybe they’re a therapist and they have a practice. Maybe they’re a speaker and so they are going out to speak. So they have all of these offerings under their brand. And then you are investing in publicity as a business. It is a business expense. It’s an investment. All the smart brands have done it for history.

Some brands are spending millions of dollars on a Superbowl ad and that’s advertising. But think about, I used to use this Bill Gates quote on my email signature for years that said, “If I only had $2, left, I would spend one on PR”. Yeah. So there’s a reason why big companies invest in PR. And when you think about it like that, you realize, not every month are they getting 20, 25 media hits. Maybe there’s months that are slower, but regardless, it’s an annual strategy that they are setting out, and they are making a plan for. And so you as an author, can look at it the same way. You can think, okay, this is my brand. I’ve got all these. I just had a meeting yesterday with an author in this situation. Now her book is not coming out until September, and she’s with a hybrid press but she’s doing it right and she’s thinking big picture. She’s thinking, okay, my publisher is doing these things already leading up to my book launch. I need PR by the Book to take the baton and run with it when my publisher isn’t doing it anymore. She’s looking like, okay, January is going to be a huge time for me because of my topic, New Year, New You. And then she’s even looking farther down into March with another timely tie in that she knows about. And so that’s the way to look at it. When somebody comes to us, and their book is already out, we vet that as what we call an expert’s campaign, which is really about the media, they don’t really care about your book, necessarily. They want to know, what are you bringing to my audience? So what how can you entertain, educate, inform, inspire my audience. And so that’s our job. Our job as publicists is to basically package that person into a pitch to show you as a host, what is this person going to bring?

Joshua Tallent
Yeah. And it’s about the visibility of the person. The product almost becomes the secondary thing. If you can have a really great conversation with a host of a podcast for half an hour about some topic, then it’s easier for you to say, yeah, I wrote this book about this topic. Or even if you’re talking about the book in the context of the of the podcast, there’s still this value of how do you interact with that with that podcast host? The story is you. The story is the person, not just the product, aand that’s an important thing to remember, I think, when you’re when you’re doing all that.

Marika Flatt
Oh yeah. And that brings up a good point about making those connections with the media representative that you’re talking to, whether it’s a journalist that’s going to create, let’s just say, a feature article in an online magazine, or it’s a podcast. It could be any format, but making those connections with that person is great, because then you’re you’re getting a fan through the host because you build that connection, and you have that rapport with them. And then they’re gonna continue to tell people about you and your book, long after the podcast ends.

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, that’s true. All right, this is great. Yeah, obviously like we talked about before, publicity is extremely important and keeping visibility of yourself and your titles is extremely important even in the long run. Don’t think of publicity or even marketing for that matter as just ending whenever the book is published. There’s obviously a lot more that can happen for both of those as you go down the lifespan of a book. So yeah, this is awesome. I’m really glad that you were able to come join me on the podcast. Tis is an important topic. We should have you back on again to talk about expectations. There’s always a lot of expectations on wha publicity should do or not do. Bring it back on talk about that. Before I let you go any, any places where people can follow your work online, follow what you’re doing, and then learn more about what PR by the Book can do for them.

Marika Flatt
Our main website is prbthebook.com. But I do want people to know that we have a service. I call it our nonprofit. But it’s called our author to influencer accelerator. It’s been around for four years. We designed it because not everybody can afford a publicity campaign. And so this is basically an education course that authors can utilize. I love for publishers to know about this, because when they’re sitting there, and they have an author saying, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? They can say, go to authortoinfluencer.com, get yourself signed up. You can sign up for a year. It’s something like only $38 a month. And not only can they get that education of all the information that they need to know, but they can also get into the private Facebook group where they’re going to basically be tethered to us at PR by the Book. Ask questions. We do a monthly office hour where they can get basically built in consulting. So I always like for people to know about that option because it’s accessible to everybody.

Joshua Tallent
That’s great. We’ll put a link in the show notes. Thank you, Marika. I really appreciate your time. And thanks for joining us on the podcast. That’s it for this episode of the BookSmarts Podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please leave a review or rating in Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast. And also please share this podcast with your colleagues. If you have topic suggestions or feedback about the show, you can email me at Joshua@Firebrandtech.com. Thanks for joining me and getting smarter about your books.