Marketing Monday - Gail Gauthier

Marketing Monday is back!

Please welcome Gail Gauthier, author of eight children's books, including The Hero of Ticonderoga, an ALA Notable Book, and the Hannah and Brandon Stories series. Gail just re-released her book Saving the Planet & Stuff, this time as an eBook. She's here to share what it's like to go through the eBook marketing process with a book that was originally released in hardback.

So without further ado ... welcome, Gail!


Saving the Planet & Stuff first appeared in 2003 as a hardcover book traditionally published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons and marketed for grades 5 and up. This year it has been re-released as a self-published eBook marketed for YA and up.

Back in 2003, my marketing efforts were pretty much limited to the website and blog I was already maintaining and a few press releases that I sent out to publications in Connecticut, where I lived, and Vermont, where the book was set. The bulk of the marketing was done by my publisher, while I worked on my next book.

I am the publisher of the eBook, so this time I’ll be doing all the marketing. Ten years have passed and my platform is a little more extensive, anyway. In addition to the website and blog, I have a professional as well as personal Facebook page, an author page at Amazon, and I’m active on Goodreads, where I have a second blog.

Beyond that, my marketing plan has been developed around the fact that Saving the Planet & Stuff is now an eBook. The first marketing task was acquiring a new cover, which was created by Eric Bloom. This eBook cover carries a little more weight than the covers of my traditionally published books did. For one thing, it includes the tag line “An Eco-Comedy” because I wanted to make sure potential readers knew that this book is funny.

In addition, you’ll see “Gail Gauthier Author of Happy Kid!” printed at the bottom of the image. It’s not unusual to see an author’s earlier work noted on the cover of a traditionally published book. The reference to the earlier book could help sell the new one.

With eBooks, it’s supposed to work the other way, too. If readers like the new eBook they’ve just read, it’s possible they’ll buy another eBook by the same author, assuming they know it’s available. That explains why Happy Kid! is on the eBook cover of Saving the Planet & Stuff instead of my ALA Notable book, The Hero of Ticonderoga. G. P. Putnam’s Sons has published an eBook edition of Happy Kid! while Hero is out-of-print. With my new Saving the Planet cover, I’m trying to market two books, Saving the Planet, of course, and Happy Kid!.

I understand readers moving from one eBook to another because I’m an eBook reader myself. I’ve been known to finish reading one eBook and buy another in the same series in the middle of the night while I’m in bed. My own eBook purchasing habits have shaped another aspect of my marketing of Saving the Planet & Stuff. With an eBook, you don’t have to wait to go to a bookstore to purchase it. You don’t have to pick up the phone and order it from a store or go on-line to do so. You don’t have to wait for the book to arrive in the mail. You can order the book from your e-reader and be reading it seconds later. I wanted that kind of availability for anyone who saw or read anything about Saving the Planet & Stuff.

While I have been talking about this publishing project at my blog, website, and Facebook pages, I waited until the eBook had actually published before posting the book trailer to YouTube or approaching many bloggers to request reviews or guest posts.

I didn’t want people to see a trailer or early review and not be able to buy the book right at that minute. I’m making the assumption that other eBook readers shop the way I do.



I’m also considering doing some paid advertising through Amazon at some point. Because Saving the Planet & Stuff is an eBook, I don’t have to worry about making big sales right out of the gate in order to keep a traditional paper and print book on store shelves.

This whole project is an experiment for me. At this point, the experiment is going to involve approaching bloggers and continuing with on-line marketing for quite some time, instead of putting everything up front, at time of publication.


Thanks so much for the glimpse into the marketing differences between traditional and e-publishing, Gail! Best of luck with your marketing efforts. Saving the Planet & Stuff looks like a lot of fun--can't wait to read it!

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Gail Gauthier is the author of eight children's books, including The Hero of Ticonderoga, an ALA Notable Book, and the two volumes of the Hannah and Brandon Stories series, A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat, and A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers, which were both selected as Junior Library Guild offerings. Her books have been nominated for readers' choice awards in six states, and published in foreign editions in Italy, Germany, France, and Japan. She has spoken in schools in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, as well as at professional conferences. She maintains the weblog Original Content, where she writes about children's literature, writing, and time management for writers.

Marketing Monday: Angela Cerrito and Holiday House marketing

As promised, today I have young adult author Angela Cerrito and Terry Borzumato-Greenberg, VP of Marketing at Holiday House for an extra-special edition of Marketing Monday.

Critics have had wonderful things to say about Angela's debut novel, THE END OF THE LINE:

"A thought-provoking look at culpability and grief," Kirkus Reviews

"Robbie's story has the potential to make young people think, care, and possibly change." VOYA


So let's find out how Angela and the Holiday House marketing team made it such a success! (Note: the first response is from Terry, the rest from Angela.)

Terry, THE END OF THE LINE is for ages 12+, which means that some of the target audience is young adults, and the rest is gatekeepers: parents, teachers, librarians. How do you market a book like this to effectively reach all of those potential readers/buyers? Do you put an emphasis on trying to reach a particular group?

Holiday House has always marketed to the gatekeepers, especially librarians and teachers. There are the tried and true ways which really are essential to establishing a book, such as sending advance copies to the key reviewers, to library systems and educators nationwide, and to the appropriate awards committees. Now with the internet, and social networking, there are so many additional opportunities!

We were so excited when Angela Cerrito’s debut novel was signed up for the Holiday House list. And one of the nice things that worked in the book’s favor was that seven of the eight novels published on the same list were all first novels! So with that, we created a fabulous marketing campaign: “7 Novels, 7 New Voices, 7 Incredible Stories.” We created reader’s guides and bookmarks, and we began promoting the list months in advance of publication at conventions as well as online. Librarians, educators, and booksellers all love to be in at the ground level to introduce new authors to young readers, so we gave them the tools to do that. Two professors were so impressed with Holiday House’s commitment, and to the books, that they put together a program at a national teacher convention to showcase the talent. It was a rousing success!

Getting the book into the hands of the right people goes a long way. And then the book needs to do the rest of the work, which of course THE END OF THE LINE did. We’re lucky to have Angela and her novel on the Holiday House list. They both have made an impact with readers. And we thank those all-important gatekeepers. . . .

Angela, how did you and Holiday House go about creating a marketing plan for TEOTL? To what extent was it a joint venture (hammering out what you could do versus what would best be handled by the Holiday House team)?

Holiday House did wonders with marketing THE END OF THE LINE from the start. The novel tackles serious subjects but the main character is fairly young. My editor, Julie Amper, guided the revision process with the end reader in mind. Holiday House’s marketing department created the marketing plan as Terry Borzumato-Greenberg mentioned above. When I learned of opportunities to promote the novel (a book launch in my home town, Skype visits with classrooms, speaking at a teachers’ workshop and displaying the novel at the SCBWI LA conference) I simply sent an email to the Holiday House to work out the details.

Basically, Holiday House is there for me when I have a question. Okay, Alison I’ll admit this embarrassing tidbit. I was concerned about the use of the word “gatekeepers” in question 1. I work in healthcare and in this industry a “gatekeeper” is someone who denies access to health care or specialized care. I was a bit concerned about the term being applied to parents, teachers and librarians who I really see as “gate openers” for literature. Haylee Gonnason, publicist at Holiday House, responded to assure me that the term was common in publishing and not negative. I think that publicists have at least two jobs in one. They have to work with professionals in the industry and the media to promote books and they must also educate authors who may be very new to publishing.

(I had no idea the term had such a drastically different meaning in healthcare. In fact, I love your term: gate openers. How can we change it?!)

As far as things I did on my own:

Teachers Guide: Natalie Lorenz created a teacher’s guide for TEOTL. I think this was the best thing I did to promote the novel. It leads itself well to classroom and teachers can use all or select parts of the guide. I love how Natalie created lessons for students with a variety of different learning styles. In January, the guide was downloaded from my website about once per day. This month so far it has been downloaded about 15 times per week.

Website: I created an interactive website for the book. The main character in THE END OF THE LINE is required to make lists. The first list is about who he is. Readers can send me lists about who they are and I will post them on the website.

Book Trailer: My daughter and her friends made book trailers (in a few different languages) for the book.

Blog Interviews: It has been so much fun to be interviewed by bloggers. I keep a list with links to all of the interviews on my website. I was honored to be interviewed by Cynthia Leitich Smith on Cynsations, Cynthia had read an excerpt of an earlier version of the novel many years before it was published.


Angela, how did you use social networking to spread the word about your novel? Do you have a sense of how well it helped you reach your target audience?

I’m not alone in thinking social networking is difficult to measure. I first and foremost use social networking to connect with my family and friends. Most of my FB status updates and comments have to do with real events in my life (the things my children say or what our family is up to next). I don’t shy away from new social networking opportunities (like tumblr / pinterest) but I don’t spend a great deal of time on them either.

I’m not sure if any of my social networking efforts (or even my website) helped “spread the word” about THE END OF THE LINE. But they are all landing places for people to find me after they have read the novel. After a school visit or presentation, I often receive website lists and friend requests from people who were at the event. That is the best indication I have that social networking is working for me.

Note: I love getting handwritten letters too! My habit is to respond to emails with an email and to snail mail with a handwritten letter or card.

I love that you send handwritten notes in return! Such a great way to establish a connection with your readers. TEOTL is listed as one of YALSA's 2012 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Readers and was selected for VOYA’s Top of the Top Shelf and Top Picks for Middle Grade Readers lists. Did marketing efforts lead to either of those honors, and if so, how?

I am thrilled and so grateful that TEOTL was selected to each of those lists. I have to credit the Holiday House marketing department for getting the book noticed.

TEOTL is a recent addition to the Great Scavenger Hunt Contest. Did marketing efforts lead to this?

I heard about the Great Scavenger Hunt from a reader a couple of years ago. But I wouldn’t have known how to participate as a novelist if it weren’t for The Elevensies, a group of debut authors whose first novels were published in 2011. I’m fortunate that my first novel came out at the right time for me to be part of this wonderful group of talented and generous writers.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be interviewed on your site!!

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Thank you, Terry and Angela, for taking the time to share your experience with us. It's a wonderful book and you've marketed it well!

Angela grew up in Dearborn Michigan. She liked school but she loved summer visits to her grandparents’ cabin on Pontiac Lake where they lived “like the olden days.” She spent her summers trying to protect her strawberry patch from muskrats (and trying to protect the muskrats from her grandfather), swimming with her sister, reading and eating mulberries right off the tree. After high school she moved to Forest Grove, Oregon where she tried to balance many part-time jobs with full-time school, found the love of her life and got married over a weekend in graduate school. She went on to become a physical therapist and has worked in Oregon, Wisconsin, Georgia, Italy and Germany. She started writing when she had the good fortune to be unemployed while living in Italy.  After writing a few novels, joining several critique groups, attending many SCBWI conferences and what seemed like thousands of revisions, her first novel was acquired by Holiday House and released in 2011. She is represented by William Reiss of John Hawkins and Associates. 

If you are a published author and you would like to share your experiences with marketing and promoting your book(s), I'd love to share your story! Please contact me at anpstevens [at] gmail [dot] com.  

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Marketing Monday: Holly Cupala

Marketing Monday is back! It's been a long time, I know, but it has been worth the wait!

Today, I have Holly Cupala, author of Tell Me a Secret (HarperCollins 2010).

Holly is currently promoting her second novel, Don't Breathe A Word (HarperCollins, January 2012; check out a two-chapter sneak preview). She's chock full of terrific information about how to spread the word. Read on to learn more!

How did you help to promote your first book, Tell Me a Secret?

I pretty much decided that I got to do this debut book once, so I gave it my all. Plus I have an amazing husband who did the same—we had a blast together and did some crazy things. Videos, sneak previews, trailer, events.

I worked hard to plan and work ahead as much as possible, especially with the blog tour and sending two-chapter sneak previews to 150 indie bookstores and at least that many bloggers.

We had a couple of audiobook offers, but we decided to produce our own so that we could hire award-winning actress Jenna Lamia, then ended up making a ground-breaking deal with Audible to distribute it (here). The TMAS trailer we produced was a finalist in the first SLJ Trailie Awards!

Awesome (and well deserved)! What are you doing to market Don't Breathe a Word? Are you trying to expand your audience with the second book, and if so, how?

After everything we learned from TMAS, we went for the highest impact efforts for the DBAW launch. We created a downloadable sneak preview booklet (http://www.dontbreatheaword.com/dbaw-preview.pdf), we’ve released a trailer with incredibly gorgeous graphics from our friend Realm Lovejoy (below), and a blogger fan generously put together a tour (http://www.hollycupala.com/2011/12/dont-breathe-word-blog-tour-coming-soon.html).

[Holly is also holding a contest for the trailer launch, so be sure to check it out!]

With the guidance of a couple of wise fellow authors, I enlisted the help of a street team to get the word out, so of course we’ve made stickers and posters and fun swag to send to them. We had a big launch party in Seattle, and I’ll be doing a few local and national events as well. I’m really excited to report it’s gone into a second printing, and I just found out Barnes and Noble chose DBAW as a Top Teen Pick for the month of February!

Sounds like your marketing efforts are really paying off! What advice do you have for debut authors who are just starting to think seriously about marketing?

Put a Google Alert on your name, your book name, your name + book name (spelling variations, etc., since if you are like me you will run into a fair number of misspellings). Watch for bloggers waiting for your book—you can always politely contact them about interviews, etc.

You can’t always send review copies (and most of the time publishers don’t give that many), but you can respond and see if they’d like to do an interview or guest post. As a side note, setting up blog tours can be very time-consuming, but there are a couple of blog sites out there that may want to organize one for you.

If you have an ARC to spare, check out some ARC tour blogs—they usually sign up ~10 bloggers who will mail one galley among themselves and review.

If you can get to a major conference (BEA, ALA, etc.), it’s great for exposure—see if you can get your publisher to sponsor you and/or schedule you for a signing.

And…pace yourself, because marketing can be consuming and exhausting! You can always do more, but I think it’s good to do what you can do well and what is fun for you.


Thank you, Alison, for inviting me to your blog, and I hope your readers enjoy Don’t Breathe a Word!

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Thank you Holly, for taking the time to share the secrets of your marketing success!

Holly is the author of Tell Me A Secret (HarperCollins 2010) and Don't Breathe A Word (now available!), two young adult novels about...well, secrets. Readers and reviewers are saying very nice things about her novels—she hopes you will read them and tell her what you think.


If you are a published author and you would like to share your experiences with marketing and promoting your book(s), I'd love to share your story! Please contact me at anpstevens [at] gmail [dot] com.  

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