How to Crush Publishing Myths to Elevate Your Book Marketing

Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:
Friedman. Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, my special guest is Jennifer S Wilcoff. She's a multi-number-one international best-selling author, award-winning producer, and freelance writer. Known as the literary agent matchmaker, she's a sought-after book, business, and entertainment consultant with 20 years of experience; Jennifer empowers first-time writers and seasoned creators alike with the essentials to become bestsellers. Her experience in identifying marketable stories for books and Hollywood makes her a trusted industry professional. Jennifer, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:01:34]:
Thank you so much, Susan. I'm delighted to be here with you today.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:38]:
Jennifer, you and I were chit-chatting before we went on the air, and I know that there's an area that we need to talk about, and that is your expertise as a literary agent matchmaker since I get asked so often when people come to me and they say, how can I get published by a traditional publisher? How can I get a literary agent? What's the answer? What's the magic sauce?

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:02:12]:
Let's pull back the curtain and peek behind it a little bit. Because when you are an author, a writer who is submitting your project for the first time, what you wanna do is you wanna understand that you need tools, documents, and insight in order to get to where you wanna go. And you can get a literary agent and you can get a publisher. When I work with the literary agent matchmaker service, I work with both. And both want the same thing, and here's why. When you actually get a literary agent, their relationship is with the publisher. When you are submitting to a literary agent, you wanna be prepared with your highest and very best work. I'm going to also provide some other insights, Susan, after I answer your question.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:03:09]:
But this key component where we start from is you need to have a query letter and you need to have a book proposal with a platform if you are publishing nonfiction work. If you have fiction, you are going to need a query letter, sometimes a synopsis, sometimes competitive titles, and sometimes you're going to definitely need to have 5, 10 or 25 pages or the first three chapters. Everybody wants something different. Those chapters that you provide must be at their highest and best form. If you have misgivings or misconceptions that the literary agent or the publisher is going to edit your work and you're just going to send it in as is without any other eyeballs on it, I would encourage you to think otherwise. But that's where we start.

Susan Friedmann [00:04:14]:
The query letter and then a proposal, would you include in that proposal already how you would go about marketing it? How in-depth does this actual proposal need to be?

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:04:28]:
This is how we work. Right? When you have a platform, that platform is represented in your book proposal. The book proposal is a sales brochure for your book. Inside that brochure are different sections, And there is a specific section, so we're drilling down now, to the one that's called marketing and promotion. That section is all about you. Who are you? Who knows you? And what is in your plat platform already. What's your social media exposure? How many followers, fans and likes and other things do you have? Where is your biggest audience? Do you have a newsletter? Do you speak? Do you have endorsements? Do you have people who are giving you praise quotes for your book? There are all kinds of ways that we wanna understand what are you doing to promote yourself. Now I have people who also say my book is a film.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:05:34]:
Well if you are going to do that, your book proposal and that marketing section is very important because you also need to keep in mind that there's another section that follows it called competitive titles, which is what we like to call social proof. Social proof is when somebody else talks about what you're doing. And that means those endorsements are very important as part of your platform. Some people will get a publicist, That publicist may pay an influencer to talk about you and your book. That's an endorsement. But you may have other ways of getting that. When we actually look at fiction, you may also have the same thing where you might have praise quotes about your fiction. And you may have a specific way that you're going to market that's consistent with your platform.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:06:35]:
It's unusual if you are a self published author and then raise your hand and say I'm quote unquote ready for a literary agent? What you'll have to do is you'll have to evaluate your sales before you go to a literary agent because if you haven't sold thousands of copies of your book, they are not going to bank on you. And that's just the straight shooter truth. And I'm always a straight shooter, Susan.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:06]:
Yes. And that's really important. Now I've heard about 10,000 copies. Is that correct, or is there a different number now in terms of if you go from being self published to wanting a traditional publisher to look at you? What kind of numbers are we talking?

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:07:26]:
It's a combination. The formula is actually numbers and time. What we look at and wanna know is in the first 3 months, the most critical months of the book release, how many books did you sell? 10,000 is a good number. 25,000 is better. Higher you go, the better your number is. But the time frame we're looking at, we're not looking at over the last 5 years I've sold. Nope. That's really not what we're looking for.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:08:00]:
We're really looking for when the book came out 3 months later, this is what we did. And that's how we know.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:08]:
Okay. Now the landscape has changed a lot in the publishing industry as we know. Yes. When somebody comes to me and says, well, I want to be published by a traditional publisher, I ask, why is that? What they think they're going to get from being traditionally published versus what the reality is. Let's look at the reality. What are the advantages of being published traditionally?

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:08:41]:
It's a good question. You know, publishing and marketing go hand in hand. And the reason why I say that is the handshake is always there. You never pass the marketing responsibility to somebody else. You are 100% responsible for the marketing of your book regardless of whether you go with a large traditional publisher, a small press, or medium or large publisher with or without an agent. And that means you may be scratching your head, listeners. Yes. If you self publish an audiobook publish, you're gonna do the marketing too.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:09:22]:
Why? You're the face of the book. You are the person that needs to get out there. And sadly, in the publishing field, and many publishing houses, when they had to reduce their staff, they cut the marketing stuff. Oftentimes you may, as a new author, get a press release and you may get a presence on their website, and that may be exactly where it ends. All the planning, all the publicity, all the pieces that you would want to do, book tours, things like that, podcast interview tours, you have to do on your own.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:59]:
Yeah. It's interesting because that's the part that is the myth that people think, oh my goodness, you know, I go with a traditional publisher, and they're gonna market me like crazy. I don't have to spend any money. It's all up to them. But That's the myth. That isn't true because as you rightly said, you're still responsible for marketing it. And there's no better person than you to market your own book. As you and I had talked previously before we came on the air, that, yeah, I mean, nobody can have the passion for your work the way you have that passion.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:35]:
It's your baby.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:10:37]:
I tell people all the time that they are the captain of their project, Meaning, it came out of your ether, your imagination, your ideas, your business, your whatever. You drew this information together, the storyline, and you are the person who took the time to invest on putting it on the page. And to me it's yours. You are the steward. You are the mommy and the daddy. It is your baby. It's your opportunity to take your child out into the world and show them off for everything that they could possibly be. To give that power over to somebody else is asking a lot because they're never gonna feel the same way about the project as you do.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:11:31]:
I always say, Susan, that writing is not a solo sport. It is a team sport, and you need people to work with you on it. When you understand what to do and you know what roles and responsibilities you are doing and wearing those hats, whether it's all you or you're going to bring in people, you have to know what they are. You have to know what you're willing to do, and you have to understand in your own self what you don't want to do. And all of it is fine. You could do 5 things and market your book extraordinarily, but you don't have to do all the things that you see everybody doing. There are some core things that you want to do, but you don't have to do everything everybody else is doing.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:21]:
Yeah. That people see what other people are doing. They get overwhelmed, or they think, you know, they have to buy everybody's services. And, Yeah, there are a lot of mistakes that are being made because there's no real clarity and focus on what are the basics of the marketing that they need to do. Let's talk about first time authors with regard to traditional publishers. How are they viewed? Because it used to be that it was much easier to get into being, you know, traditionally published, and these days, I'm not sure. Talk to us about that.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:13:02]:
The number one thing to know is this, and then I'll give you the other number one thing to know. A, unpublished authors have the best chance of getting picked up by a literary agent because they have no track record. There's no sales to go look at. There's nothing to see, But we are interested if you've been published in other ways. You need to tell us that. Or if you're writing on a blog or if you have a substack, for example, or if you were published in a compendium book or a compilation, We wanna know those things. If you're unpublished on your own, we wanna know that because a debut author is wonderful and there are many literary agents who are love to work with debut authors. 2, here's the big secret.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:13:58]:
More than 60% of writers who have an agent first met their agents live and pitching them at a conference, event, or virtual opportunity, and then they followed up. So if you notice, I added that very important piece on the end. They didn't get an offer on the spot at the conference event or online opportunity. They followed up. Getting a literary agent is a lot like getting somebody that in your life that you're gonna have there forever.

Susan Friedmann [00:14:36]:
That's interesting that you say because I'm going back in time and thinking about how did I get my agents? And you're absolutely right. They were through referrals or I'd met them personally. I was referred to the so yes, it wasn't that I pitched anybody and was rejected. So much truth in that. I love that. Now, something else that I get a lot of, Jennifer, and that is I want to be a New York Times best selling author. That's almost like a fantasy. Oh, this is it.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:16]:
You know, I've reached it when I've become a New York Times best selling author.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:15:21]:
I help people become New York Times bestsellers, and it's about the marketing. Right? 1st and foremost, you have to write a good book. If you don't write a good book, it's gonna be a little harder. When you have a great product that has a big market, and you should know your market, you should always start with your target market and write that book for them in their language at their level for reading. What you wanna be able to do is understand for yourself you're gonna need a team. You're not basically going to just give it to, for example, a literary agent, have them take it, have them give it to a publisher and presto. I'm gonna take out my magic wand now and wave it because now it's gonna be a no. That doesn't work that way.

Susan Friedmann [00:16:13]:
Wouldn't it be nice if it did?

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:16:15]:
Yeah. Let me burst that bubble for a moment because it's important. What you really want to be able to do is you have to organize or campaign. I teach a really well known webinar or clinic that's market your book to success. I talked all the time about marketing before the book is released, during those critical months I mentioned, and then after I'm perpetuating. It's really important to understand the arc not only of your book but of your marketing. And that is essential in a New York Times bestseller because you're going to be selling thousands of copies, thousands, thousands, thousands. And it depends on the price of the book and what kind of book you have and category.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:17:09]:
As you know, there are fiction and nonfiction and children's, They have different categories at The New York Times. But one of the things to keep in mind is you're gonna need a publicity team member, you're gonna probably need a few marketing team members. You're going to want to build towards your release date. It's not, oh, I woke up today. My book came out today. You know what? I think I'll be a New York Times bestseller. It doesn't work that way. It's a planning strategic operation, I'll call it, to become 1.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:42]:
And how long in advance would you suggest that the planning, marketing takes place.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:17:50]:
I always tell people, if you want to really make a pop with your book, you should be planning at least 6 months ahead. Yeah.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:58]:
6 months is what I know. Yeah.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:18:00]:
And you need to know your release date. So you're actually coordinating your activities 6 months, 5 months, 4 months, 3 months, and building. I like to tell people marketing is like a roller coaster, and people always laugh and say, yeah. I know. It goes up and down and up. I'm like, yes. That's all true. But that's after you've already done the initial roller coaster you've got to climb up.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:18:37]:
And if you've ever been on a roller coaster, it has this really annoying irritating clackity clack that actually goes into your ears as you are rising above the theme park to get to the very top where you're gonna wind down and loop the loop and do all the fun things that come after that. That's marketing. All that clackity clack irritating stuff you have to get past and everything else that's marketing because you're gonna build all the way and you're gonna get to the top and you're gonna be like, okay, everybody, buckle up. Here we go. We're gonna go on the ride. And that's how it works, and it should be fun. It should be something that you wanna do again. Your excitement and enthusiasm should be contagious and you should be everywhere with your book so people know.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:19:29]:
Not just friends and family but you want to set yourself up so you can get beyond all of that. Get to the media. Maybe even pitch it where you can get beyond in Hollywood, which is also stuff that I do. Having a keen eye for story is one of those things where that story may live in a book. It could be nonfiction and a podcast or nonfiction and a talk show or a novel and a film or a novel and, limited series on streaming. Like, there are a million ways to think about your project. And 30 years ago, Susan, we couldn't do that.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:08]:
Exactly. I know. I remember those times.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:20:11]:
I mean, the world is 0 oysters. I tell people all the time, you know, you want people on your team that are just as excited, just as enthusiastic, just as lit up as you are about your project and that the project is their focus. It's not about them, They're doing what they love. They're in their genius. They're working on what they know. They're contributors, and everybody puts their hand in the middle of the circle and says 123 break. And everybody goes and does what they do, and you are like, wow, how did I get here? That's what happened to me with my first book and that's how I became a number one international best selling author with my first book and then became an award winning author with it because we had set all of that up. I didn't even know what was gonna happen.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:21:10]:
But I ended up in the studio enrolling interviews across time zones for 4 hour stints for 5 weeks after my book came out. Everybody wanted to talk to me. Talk shows and early morning shows and other shows and I was like, I was overwhelmed. And I didn't know that was gonna happen and I never planned for it. But that's what happens and that's part of the reason why I became a consultant because I had so much fun I wanted to do another one. And then I found out there were all these people who were calling my office who weren't. And I wasn't even a consultant yet, but I decided to say yes when somebody asked me for help. And that was nearly 20 years ago.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:54]:
That's fantastic. Now let me ask you, what are the chances of a self published author becoming a New York Times bestselling author?

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:22:06]:
So there are some books that actually are self published books that are New York Times bestsellers. And I'm sure that many people are not necessarily aware of them because self published books oftentimes get second fiddle. Right? And so they end up in a situation where they're like, oh, it'll never happen to me. I'm self published. No. No. No. And there are.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:22:35]:
1 of the ones I can tell you right off the top is the self esteem prophecy. That's one of the things that people always say, what do you mean the self esteem prophecy? Like, how do we actually, you know, know that? And for years, people didn't recognize that that was what we were talking about is that the New York Times bestseller list actually matters regardless of how you publish. The problem for many people for many years was that people who were actually publishing themselves felt like they were second fiddle. That really gave them a problem because they were like, I'm never gonna be considered ever. And then people gave up. Right? That became something that they got very, very frustrated about. But you can actually do it. One of the things that you wanna keep in mind is that there are books that began as self published books.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:23:42]:
So when you actually think about them, you might think about in different categories. Okay? If you think about the joy of cooking, which probably every household either knows or has a copy or has for many, many years. That book was self published by Irma s Rombauer when she actually privately published it in 1931. And all of us are still buying that thing today because in 1936, it was picked up by a commercial printing house and has sold over 18,000,000 copies of that book. Right? The other thing that happened, for example, in the finance category was when Robert Kiyosaki actually published his financial advice book, Rich Dad Poor Dad. That was really great because he did it in 1997. That book has sold more than 26,000,000 copies. We also get other types of books where we get children's books.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:24:44]:
Right? So people don't understand that The Tale of Peter Rabbit was actually self published in 1901 by Beatrix Potter. Can you imagine?

Susan Friedmann [00:24:57]:
I grew up with that. That was classic. It still is a classic.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:25:03]:
Yes. Classic. More than 2,000,000 copies, Susan are sold a year of the Beatrix Potter books.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:11]:
Yeah.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:25:11]:
And it all started in 1901. Now for those of us who are in the personal development world and say, oh, my self help book or no beer blah blah blah. Fine. Wayne Dyer originally published his book Your Erroneous Zones and he had a small print run of 45 100 copies. And then he started traveling across the country, publicizing his book on TV shows and things like that when you could do that in the seventies. It became one of the top selling books of all time, Susan, with an estimated 35,000,000 copies sold and spent 64 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Wow. Now let's come into the 2000.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:25:57]:
Okay? When we see something like What Color is Your Parachute, remember that book, Susan?

Susan Friedmann [00:26:03]:
Oh, I do.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:26:04]:
I bought it

Susan Friedmann [00:26:05]:
many years ago. Yes.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:26:06]:
Everybody knows What Color is your parachute, right? It was a job hunting guy and it still is. It's been on the New York Times bestseller list periodically for more than a decade. That was self published in 1970. And I know so many people who own that. So let's go back to the Celestine prophecy where I started. James Redfield published this book. It was self published after he was rejected repeatedly by publishers. He sold a 100000 copies of the novel out of the trunk of his Honda before Warner Brooks agreed to publish it.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:26:44]:
And in spite of drawing fire for its historical absurdities, the book has sold over 20,000,000 copies worldwide. One last out of the car trunk story for you and your listeners, which is super fun for me, is Dan Brown, who I'm sure many people have heard of because he is the person behind The Da Vinci Code. When you actually look at the Da Vinci Code itself, you say, oh, that became a a movie and everybody knows that and everybody's actually read it and it's something that led to a whole bunch of other things. Right? Wrong. That was actually not his first book. It was his second book. The Da Vinci Code was his second book. The first book was Angels and Demons, and he went around in his own car for many years selling angels and demons out of the back of his car.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:27:49]:
When he sold enough of them, they finally got wind of him with the Da Vinci Code. That's how The Da Vinci Code came to be. And when they found out he had angels and demons, that's why it came out after The Da Vinci Code because his first novel in 2000 was Angels and Demons.

Susan Friedmann [00:28:12]:
Yeah. There are so many stories like that. Those are fabulous, fabulous stories. Trends. Let's just touch briefly on trends, especially in nonfiction. Let's stick to nonfiction with regard to trends.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:28:28]:
The first thing I'll say is that every person that ever works in publishing will tell you not to write for the trends. They should write what you love. You should write what you're passionate about and that's what you should bring to us. That being said, there are trends. There are trends that happen. There are things that happen in society. There are things that happen socially. There are pandemics, for example, like nobody could have predicted that COVID was going to happen.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:28:58]:
And when COVID happened, it impacted society at large, not just on the health side, but in so many different ways. Right? Nonfiction, we're talking about wellness. We're talking about people who have to learn how to work at home, people who have to understand how to socialize when they can't be together. There was an outburst of trend that just sort of materialized all of a sudden out of thin air. And people were, like, scrambling to write something, which is fine. And they still are, by the way. But it also changed society. Then we have politics when we actually have politics that really gives us more fodder, which I'll sort of leave alone and tell them that they actually need to do things that allow us what's going on now and more importantly what relevance does your book have to the current trends that are going on on the news, on the radio and podcasts, online, in people's magazines and so forth and so on.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:30:11]:
That's really where we are.

Susan Friedmann [00:30:13]:
That's great. That's good information. Fabulous. I know that many of our listeners will want to know more about you and the services that you offer, Jennifer. Take it away.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:30:26]:
I actually work with Your Book Is Your Hook, and my website is your book is your hook dot com. I offer clinics, webinars and workshops to help people actually get to the literary agents and actually publishing their projects, all five ways. When you go to your book as your hook, you'll find that I offer a writer's room and I also provide office hours which is very unique. People can schedule a 30 minute or a 60 minute appointment with me to talk about troubleshooting, to get ideas, to brainstorm, to have me look at something. I also do assessments. I assess people's query letters. I assess people's book proposals. And as a matter of fact, I have a book proposal clinic that is coming up in June.

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:31:21]:
It starts Wednesday, June 5th for 6 nights in June. And when I do a clinic, I oftentimes will bring in those professionals, literary agents and publishers, to contribute to the experience that the writers are having so that they get it from me. My nickname is the Encyclopedia of Publishing and I've also been called that person who is a dream maker. I like to bring the professionals in for a few minutes to be able to tell people what it is that they like about the particular tool that we're talking about whether it's a synopsis or whether it's a book proposal. These are things that matter. The book proposal clinic has literary agents and publishers in it. Lovely. And

Susan Friedmann [00:32:23]:
Lovely. And I know that we'll put a link to that clinic in the show notes, Jennifer, as you and I discussed, so that's great. And we always ask our expert guests to give us a golden nugget, what are final words of wisdom you'd like to share with our listeners?

Jennifer S. Wilkov [00:32:47]:
My best tip that I can tell you is that it's you. It's not your book. It's you. Whether you write one book, whether you write 10 books, whether you make writing your career, or whether you do it when you have a great idea, it's always about you. And nobody is gonna know that you're a writer, and nobody's gonna know about your work unless you are willing to get out there and stop for it. You need to do it online, you need to do it in person, you need to do it in the media, and you need to open that door as wide as you're most comfortable with.

Susan Friedmann [00:33:30]:
Fabulous. Such words of wisdom and so much information listeners. You're gonna have to listen to this 2, 3 times or even more to be able to hear all those golden nuggets that Jennifer was able to share with us. So thank you so much for sharing that wisdom. And by the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected it to, lets you and I jump on a quick call because you've invested a whole lot of time, energy, and money, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call.
And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.