Emily speaks with Nicole J. Georges, author and illustrator of Calling Dr. Laura and the new OPB podcast adaptation Relative Fiction. Imagine that you have spent years believing your father was dead, then a $15 palm reader asserts that your real father is very much alive. Now imagine discovering that this wild statement ends up … Read more
Accessible research on Immersive Media & Books from Dr. Rachel Noorda and Dr. Kathi Berens If you’re trying to do research as a book industry professional, you’re going to hit paywalls—sometimes paywalls so large that your business is better off replacing NPD with a tarot deck and a crystal pendulum. Enter Dr. Kathi Berens and … Read more
Nicole Wolverton takes time out of her writing, studying, and editing schedule to discuss (and recommend!) women in horror. “If you think Carrie’s scary, think about a woman who has five to six decades to foment this awful feeling of rage.” You may have seen a lot of horror stories about puberty (Carrie) and childbirth … Read more
“If you have good customer research set up, it’s very hard to go wrong.” —Nadia Odunayo Picture this: You walk into a bookstore, and the first floor is filled with books selected based on your personal tastes. They’re not based on the comp title research you’re doing for work or the books you looked … Read more
“Whatever role you’re in, whatever genre you’re in, find something about it to love and be passionate about because it’s going to take a lot of slow days.” In this power-packed episode, we welcome back Nellie McKesson, founder of book design software Hederis, and meet Liz Gorinsky, president and publisher of Erewhon Books, a small … Read more
What do you do when you can’t find anything you want to read? You write it yourself. After plumbing the depths of Amazon for erotic romance featuring queer POC and coming up empty, Katrina Jackson took matters into her own hands and started writing her own. Seventeen books later, we chatted with her about why … Read more
Kimberly talks about rocking book PR inside and outside of a major publishing house. In this episode, we chatted with freelance food and lifestyle book publicist and Thursday Media founder Kimberly Escobar about the adorable perils of working from home (specifically, Zoom-bombing kittens), how both traditionally and self-published authors can make their publicists’ jobs easier, … Read more
Digital-only and digital-first means I’ll have to repeat myself, but figure out how to do so in a way that’s tolerable and sustainable for me and still interesting for people who are plugged in a little bit more. Michael R. Underwood’s book Annihilation Aria, published by Parvus Press, was supposed to come out in February … Read more
Kickstarter Publishing Head Margot Atwell talks crowdfunding books and money in book publishing. Margot Atwell, Head of Publishing at Kickstarter, talks with us about how a pre-order campaign on the crowdfunding platform can connect authors with hungry readers—thereby making their publishers very happy—and how to work on solving the industry’s biggest challenges: diversity, money, technology, … Read more
In which we learn the elements of how to design a book cover that ups your chances at sales success. “A successful cover is basically all of those elements: the typography, the category, and the uniqueness of the story need to be held together. And it just needs to look damn good.” Olivia Croom Hammerman, … Read more
