How to market a book in the age of TikTok

A 20-year publishing veteran dishes on the strategies that actually sell books.

Book publicity is a mixed bag these days. On the one hand, it’s never been easier for an author to form a direct relationship with their audience with tools like Substack and TikTok. On the other hand, more books are published each year than ever before, which means competition is fierce. Most newspapers have laid off their book critics, but at the same time there’s an ever expanding ecosystem of podcasts that are eager to have on book authors for longform interviews.

Probably nobody is more knowledgeable about marketing books in the modern age than Kathleen Schmidt. She spent nearly 20 years working for almost every major book publishing company, and she now runs her own firm that specializes in book marketing. She also writes Publishing Confidential, her insider account of how the book industry actually functions.

In a recent interview, Kathleen walked through nearly every aspect of selling books, from choosing the right cover to courting influencers to advertising on Amazon.

You can watch, listen to, or read the interview down below:

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Summary

Kathleen Schmidt discussed her career trajectory in publishing, starting with a publicity job at Carol Publishing in 1996. She highlighted the shift in book publicity, noting the rise of self-published authors and the decline in media coverage. Schmidt emphasized the importance of authors building their own platforms and leveraging social media and newsletters. She shared insights on the challenges of book tours, the role of ARCs, and the effectiveness of paid media, recommending Amazon ads over Facebook and Instagram. Schmidt also discussed strategies for non-fiction versus fiction marketing, the impact of book covers, and the evolving landscape of media outreach.

Highlights from the interview

Breaking into Publishing

Simon introduces Kathleen and asks about her background in publishing. Kathleen shares her early career journey, starting with sending resumes to publishers in 1995-1996. She describes her first job at Carol Publishing in New Jersey, which paid $23,000 a year. Simon inquires about Kathleen's work with major publishers like Penguin and Simon & Schuster. Kathleen details her roles at Dutton Books, Plume, Simon & Schuster, Pocket Books, Atria Books, Rodale Books, Running Press, and Skyhorse Publishing. She mentions her experience as VP of Publicity, Associate Publisher, VP of Marketing, and Literary Agent.

This is back in the day when the New York Times still printed their help-wanted ads. So I was scouring them one Sunday, and I came across an ad saying “publicity assistant needed for a small publisher in New Jersey, must love pop culture, must have good sense of humor.” So I was like, that's me. And I interviewed with Carol Publishing, which was an independent publishing house in Secaucus New Jersey with the warehouse attached to it, and I got my first publicity job for $23,000 a year. So at that point, that was a lot of money I was making, more than a lot of my friends in publishing were making. And that's how I got my first big break – working with the Spice Girls on a photo scrapbook that we published. So that really was when my career took off.

Shifts in Book Publicity

Kathleen discusses the shift from more media coverage to fewer media outlets for books. She highlights the rise of authors handling their own marketing and the impact of BookTok. Simon and Kathleen debate the power of authors today versus the past, with Kathleen emphasizing direct audience engagement. 

I think the biggest shift is that now there are more books published than there is media to cover them, and that's a tremendous shift that we've seen. So when I first started out, there were a lot of books still being published, but there was also a ton of media that you could get for them. So one of the earliest books I worked on was, I forget the title of it, but it was this guy who assisted his wife with suicide. She was terminally ill, and I got a front page story on the Daily News  – that's unheard of. You know, that wouldn't happen today. And I think what we're seeing now with media is the journalists are taking the power into their own hands and starting newsletters and starting their own media companies. Authors do have power still, but once they're published by the Big Five, their power diminishes somewhat. And unless you're a huge New York Times best selling author, you're not as high up in the ecosystem as you would be otherwise. So yes, BookTok has made a difference with some of that, but the biggest, biggest shift in what I do is seeing the media shrink and more books get published.

Current Business Model and Client Base

Kathleen shares her current role running a one-person firm focusing on PR, marketing, and branding for authors. Simon asks about Kathleen's business model and client base. Kathleen explains her firm handles PR, marketing, and branding. She mentions that most of her clients are individual authors, with a few nonprofits and hybrid authors. Simon inquires about the financial aspect, and Kathleen explains that authors often use advances or personal funds to hire her.

I work mostly with individual authors. I do some stuff for nonprofits that are publishing adjacent, but I would say 99% of my clients are authors.

I will take on self published authors if I feel like they really have something special, you know. So right now I only have one self published author. I have maybe two hybrid authors – that means that they're paying the publisher to publish their books, and the publisher handles distribution and stuff, and then the rest of them are traditionally published.

I try to be aware of the fact that not everybody has a ton of money to pay for publicity. The fees are all over the place for doing what I do. So I try to cater to every kind of budget. But yes, most of the time, authors are either taking from their advances, or wherever they're getting income streams from, and they use it to pay publicists.

Newsletter and Marketing Strategy

Simon asks about Kathleen's newsletter, Publishing Confidential, and its role in marketing her services. Kathleen shares the history of the newsletter, which she started in 2018 and moved to Substack in 2023. She explains that the newsletter has been a significant marketing tool, with 80% of clients coming from it. Simon and Kathleen discuss the importance of newsletters and Substack in the current publishing landscape.

When I first started Publishing Confidential, I tried doing it in 2018 and I did it through MailChimp. I was between jobs, and I was kind of in the mindset of, let me see what this would be like if I wrote about the industry in an honest way. And I think I got out three issues before I got a job as a literary agent, and then I couldn't do it anymore, so I had like 50 email addresses, and in 2023 I was kind of like, let me see what this Substack is all about. And I went on there. I knew nothing about the platform, really. I just knew that it was a good place to do a newsletter. I got my designer to do a logo, and the rest is kind of history, and I just started writing honestly about the industry, and what came from that is people seeking me out for my services. So it was interesting, because I didn't even have my website up fully until a year ago, and so the Substack was really the place where people were finding me. I would say 80% come from the newsletter and 20% come from referrals and things like that.

Strategies for Nonfiction and Fiction

Simon and Kathleen discuss the differences in marketing nonfiction versus fiction. Kathleen explains that nonfiction is easier to pitch due to its news hook and topical relevance. They discuss the role of book covers in sales and marketing, with Kathleen emphasizing their importance.

[Book covers] play a huge role. We're in a world where covers need to look really good online, and designers take that, and publishers take that into consideration when they're designing book covers. But the other thing is, when you're browsing in a bookstore, that's the first thing you see. And I know, if nothing else, I am the ideal consumer, because I like stuff, and I will go into Barnes and Noble and what attracts me to a book is a cover. I could know nothing about the book, and I will go up and read the jacket copy because I was attracted to the cover. So the cover is one of the biggest elements of marketing a book, and it's super important. 

Distribution and Influencer Engagement

Simon asks about the role of ARCs (Advance Review Copies) and their distribution strategy. Kathleen explains the strategy for distributing ARCs, emphasizing the importance of pitching to interested parties first. She discusses the role of influencers and the challenges of getting organic engagement. Simon and Kathleen talk about the impact of social media influencers and the importance of quality over quantity in book tours. Kathleen also shares her thoughts on the effectiveness of podcasts and Substack for book promotion:

So I work with quite a few authors being published by smaller presses. And smaller presses either don't do physical ARCs, they just do digital ones, or they print a very small amount of them. You know, if you're with a big publisher, they'll print more. But I think since the pandemic, everyone's being kind of conservative with their numbers, because during the pandemic, what publishers had to do was send everything digitally because of supply chain problems and everybody working from home. So if you wanted to see a book, you had to get it digitally, or someone had to go try to print out a manuscript and overnight it to someone. But the issue with ARCs is that either too many are printed, too little are printed, or none are printed. And as much as I would like to say media has advanced, reviewers and critics still want the printed ARCs. They don't want the digital ones. So it's very hard to work with solely digital ones. It's doable, but it's hard. It's hard. And sometimes, if it's a hybrid deal where the author is paying the publisher to do this stuff, the author will pay for them themselves. Even in some traditional houses, authors will say, I will pay for extra ARCs – that could happen at a mid sized publisher,

The highest number of ARCs I ever saw printed was 1,500 and that was because it was a big book. The publisher was sending ARCs to all of these trade shows and conferences and stuff, and really putting everything out there. Normally, I would say the average these days is about 150 to 200 ARCs.

What I find is the most prudent thing to do is to pitch people first and see if they're interested in receiving an ARC, and if they are, then send something to them, because journalists do not like to get things they didn’t ask for. A journalist was telling me the other day that they got four of the same ARCs from a publishing house. I'm like, That's  not great. That's a result of crushing workloads, and departments that don't get staffed correctly. You know, publishing is very much about doing more with less. And to that end, I feel like pitching first and then sending the ARC saves people money and time. 

As for influencers on TikTok and Instagram, publishers usually have marketing departments that send out influencer boxes and things like that. So I kind of let them do that part and stick to working with my authors on what ways they're connecting with their audience, and stick to the traditional media or pitching newsletters and things like that. I do think that the BookTok stuff gets misunderstood sometimes, because a lot of that is organic. And when publishers do send the influencer boxes, I can't say that a ton happens for books that way. Teenage girls who discover a book, and they do a Tiktok video where they're crying about it or something, and it gets like 2 million views, you can't plan that,

Paid Media and Amazon Ads

Simon and Kathleen discuss the effectiveness of paid media, including Facebook and Instagram ads. Kathleen shares her experience with limited success from these platforms and the importance of Amazon ads.

They discuss the strategy for targeting keywords and the role of metadata in Amazon ads.

What I always say is, go for Amazon ads. I've seen them work. About 80% of books are bought on Amazon. So they're the book retailer these days. And if you really want to get your book in front of readers who read things similar to what you're writing, Amazon ads are the way to go, and you don't have to spend a ton of money on them.

So for the first 30 days, when you're advertising a book on Amazon, they do automatic targeting for you. So they're the ones that are driving the boat with keywords. And so the metadata, which is the data you put into a system about a book like the synopsis  and the keywords that you're going to choose for the book – a lot of publishers have what's called a title management system that all these things get put in, and it feeds directly into retailers websites. So Amazon will take that information and they'll automatically target your audience for the first 30 days. After that 30 days are over, depending on how much money you put in for the first 30 days, let's say you put in $300 and you get those 300 clicks the first 30 days, so your budget is empty, and you have to start over the second 30 days, you can do targeting by hand, so you could see what keywords Amazon used, and if they worked, just use them again, or pick your own, or expand on them, anything like that. 

Simon asks about the importance of pre-sales and the challenges authors face in generating momentum.

What I know is that pre orders are incredibly difficult to get, and what I know is that the average consumer wants what they want when they want it. So those two things don't jive together. I find it really depressing that publishers are still pushing authors to get pre-orders. That is one way that publishers determine what their first printing is going to be of the book. But it can't be the only way. So what they're looking at is pre-orders for the book, plus whatever their retail accounts are ordering, so pre-orders, plus whatever number of books Amazon is taking, or Barnes and Noble or independent bookstores, and they're basing their first printing, which is how many copies of a book they're going to first print to get out to retailers, basing it on that. And I can tell you from my experience that preorders, unless it's a highly anticipated book – like I worked on Michael Cohen's first book, and that was, you know, highly anticipated. There were a ton of preorders for it. Then I worked on smaller books, and they had maybe 200 preorders even though the authors were hounding people to do it. And I think it's just wrong to keep putting the onus on authors to do this when it just doesn't work. It's not predictive of what a book will sell or how a book will do.

Building an Author Platform

Simon inquires about advising authors on building an audience and platform. Kathleen explains her approach, which is individualized based on the author's interests and content capabilities. They discuss the importance of video content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Kathleen emphasizes the need for strategic planning and the role of newsletters in audience engagement:

My approach is individual to the author. So if an author doesn't have any platform at all, I will talk to them about what they're most interested in doing. Are they more interested in doing a newsletter? And if so, what kind of content can they produce that people will want to read? Because you can't just write a journal on on Substack and expect people to read it. So I want to be very strategic about that. If it's something like they have an Instagram account, but they want to grow an audience there, or they have a Tiktock account, and they have something really interesting that they can parse out and make it almost like their own little TV series on Tiktok in different parts, then I will work with them on that same thing for Instagram. Video is king, right? So I work with them and talk about what you could do on Stories versus Reels, you know, versus your Instagram grid. So it's all like mapping out what's best for the author and where I think their audience lives on each platform. If one platform should overshadow others, we talk about that as we go along.