The Publishing Performance Show

Leah Paulos - The Pitch Perfect Formula: How to Get Media Coverage for Your Book

• Teddy Smith • Episode 81

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Leah Paulos is the founder and director of publicity for Press Shop PR and Book Publicity School. With a background in journalism as a writer and magazine editor at Condé Nast, Leah brings a unique perspective to book publicity, having been on the receiving end of pitches. After transitioning from journalism, she founded Press Shop PR to help authors navigate the challenging world of book promotion, especially as publishing houses provide less marketing support than in the past. Her team has worked with nearly 350 authors, from bestsellers like Neil deGrasse Tyson to debut novelists with small independent presses.


In this episode:

  • The difference between publicity and paid advertising
  • How Leah's journalism background informs her approach to publicity
  • Case studies of successful book promotion campaigns
  • Finding the right media outlets for your specific book
  • How to create an effective pitch for journalists and media outlets
  • Establishing credibility when self-publishing
  • The importance of appearing in various media formats
  • Overview of Book Publicity School's programs and offerings
  • Overcoming the intimidation of self-promotion
  • Practical steps for authors to start their publicity journey


Resources mentioned:


Connect with Leah Paulos:


Connect with Teddy Smith:

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[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Hi everyone and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. Today I'm really happy to be joined by Leah Paulos, who is the founder and the director of Publicity for Press Shop PR and the book Publicity School. So thank you for joining us, Leah. 

[00:00:18] Leah Paulos: Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:00:20] Teddy Smith: Yeah, my pleasure. Well, tell us a bit about your background.

[00:00:23] Teddy Smith: 'cause I know you've worked with a lot of famous books and lots of great books. So tell us a bit about your background and what led you into doing publicity. 

[00:00:32] Leah Paulos: Yeah, so I am one of the rare book independent book publicists who did not come up and get their initial experience in publishing. Yep. So I actually have never worked in a publishing house.

[00:00:46] Leah Paulos: I rather came from journalism. I was a writer and magazine editor, for the first years of my career, and that honestly was the best training of all for doing publicity because it is, you know, I was on the other end. Of the, the work that we do now. I was the one receiving pitches. I was the one figuring out how, what we wanted to cover, how we wanted to cover it, how to make a story out of something that people pitched us.

[00:01:17] Leah Paulos: And that's really what what we do at, when you're doing book publicity, that's really what you're doing, right? You're figuring out how to position a book so that a journalist can write about it so that they can make a story out of it really easily. 

[00:01:30] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So publicity and PR for people who've never heard, like, don't, are they the same thing?

[00:01:38] Leah Paulos: Yeah, pretty much. You know, we in for, for publishing it's generally referred to as publicity. But people use them pretty interchangeably. 

[00:01:49] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So the main aim of your job as a publicist is to get people who have got books, get authors and writers to, you know, get their books more famous, but more people seeing them.

[00:01:58] Teddy Smith: Is that sort of summary of it all? 

[00:01:59] Leah Paulos: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is really about figuring out how to get a book out to its audiences through through earned media. So it's not through advertising, which is paid media. It's by positioning it in such a way that journalists or influencers, or. You know, anybody that has an audience that they can speak to, figuring out how to present the book to them in such a way that they'll cover it and then the book gets exposure in front of their audience.

[00:02:33] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Okay, great. So you just said earned media. So what, what's the, what is the, what is earned media? What does that mean? 

[00:02:41] Leah Paulos: Media is different than paid media. Paid media is advertising. If you want to ha completely control the message and you want it to be a sure thing, you can pay for it. That's what advertising is.

[00:02:55] Leah Paulos: Publicity is is different. It is. You have to. Sort of sell the ideas on, on their merits. So you have to get people to want to write about it. They're, you know, we don't, we don't ever work in any sort of pay for play type environment at Press Shop. It's really about. Making people interested organically and wanting to cover it because it's an interesting story and because their, their audience that they've cultivated, their listeners, whoever it is, will find it interesting.

[00:03:29] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Amazing. Now with Press Shop pr, obviously you, me, just mentioned you've got your background in journalism, which makes you stand out slightly to the. Other publicists in the industry because you've been on the receiving end of this publicity. So I guess your advantages, you know how the other aspects works, is that, is that what made you found pre shop PR in the first place?

[00:03:49] Teddy Smith: I. 

[00:03:51] Leah Paulos: Yeah, so I mean, I loved being a journalist. Um, I did it for, for several years. I think for me the, the, the impetus for, for changing over was a couple things. I mean, one was I, I worked at Conde Nast, uh, which was at Times Square, and I commuted to Times Square in New York every single day. And I finally, after, not, you know, a couple years, I was like.

[00:04:16] Leah Paulos: I do not wanna do this anymore. I don't like commuting to Times Square every day and sitting in a cubicle. So that was, that was the thing I would say that just led me to, the immediate thing to get out of journalism. And then I sort of thought, all right, well, what, what should I do instead? I was doing a lot of freelance writing, so that was still journalism, but on a you know, a freelance basis.

[00:04:36] Leah Paulos: And then from there I kind of pivoted to working with people. Who, whenever I, I just found that whenever I told people that I worked in magazines, they were always asking me, you know, how, how do you get into these magazines? especially when I was doing copywriting for various companies, they were like, oh, you worked at Conde Nas?

[00:04:56] Leah Paulos: Like, I would love to be featured in these magazines. How do we do it? Um, so I was always talking to people about that. And you know, it's the kind of thing when you work in a certain space, you, things seem obvious to you. Yeah. And then you get out of it and you realize, oh wait, this is not so obvious to everybody who's not in this space.

[00:05:15] Leah Paulos: So that was sort of how I moved into publicity is I just, it was sort of an organic consulting, with various people about how to, how to put themselves in front of editors that could potentially cover them. And then I got a, my first book client was kind of random. Uh, it was. He was married to somebody I was working with on some copywriting for her company, and that was my first entree into publishing and I just ran with it.

[00:05:43] Leah Paulos: I mean, I've always loved books and writing. I. and so as soon as I started working with, with him, his name was Frank Delaney. He was from Ireland. He had a, a big bestseller called, called Ireland. And then I worked with him on multiple books and, you know, from there I just built, built the business out of that and really realized that I.

[00:06:03] Leah Paulos: There has been, there's a huge need, um, especially the way publishing has been changing and the media world has changing, has been changing. It's really left authors in this position of not having enough promotional support from the publishing companies, so it really left this opening. For authors, you know, a service that authors really needed.

[00:06:28] Leah Paulos: They worked really hard on this book. They, you know, pour their, pour their heart and soul into it, and then it comes out. And the publishing company for all sorts of reasons, business reasons for the, because the media industry has just changed so quickly and publishing doesn't tend to change quite as quickly as, as anything else.

[00:06:49] Leah Paulos: It's sort of. Created this space where, um, authors really needed extra support. So that was sort of why we founded it or why I founded, um, pre shop pr and we have been doing it ever since. Yeah. And a lot of authors don't really come from a business background often, so. Concepts such as publicity and the marketing are quite unusual for them.

[00:07:14] Teddy Smith: You know, they're quite artistic, creative people. So coming to an expert like you is really helpful. I mean, it's clear you've worked with quite a diverse range of authors and you started with Frank Delaney, so let's hear about some of the authors that you have worked with and here's some of the case studies about what you've done with them to make them successful.

[00:07:32] Leah Paulos: Yeah, so. Probably close to 350 authors now. We're a team of five and we've been around for, for a while at this point. So it's been a, a really big range. We have the, the really big, you know, the number one bestsellers that we've worked on, the books like March, which is behind me here on my wall. For anyone who can see on video which, you know, won a National book award was a huge bestseller.

[00:07:58] Leah Paulos: We worked on, on Tyranny by Tim Snyder, which also was a number one bestseller. Right after the. 2016 election here in the us. So we've worked on a number of really big books like that with Neil deGrasse Tyson. And then we also work with on books that are, you know, debut novels from small independent presses or, uh, short story collection or you know, a academic book where the author doesn't have much of a name and they, but they wanna break out to.

[00:08:29] Leah Paulos: Be you know, break out of their particular academic niche. So it really runs the gamut and. It's different from from book to book. Obviously, when we are promoting a book with a really big name like Nail deGrasse Tyson, it's a different story. We're not have to, we don't have to sell nail deGrasse Tyson.

[00:08:47] Leah Paulos: It's rather how to strategically figure out. Okay. What is going to be the most impactful for this book? What can we, we wanna get a late night show. We wanna get a morning show, we wanna get this. So which are the ones that we're gonna try? And we try to put all those pieces together. So that's a really different way of working than when we're working with a, an author whose name doesn't mean anything to the people that we're gonna be pitching and they're not known.

[00:09:15] Leah Paulos: Yeah. Then it's really about. Putting, putting their story forward, figuring out the most compelling possible way of positioning their work, making sure that journalists understand how this is new, why they should cover it, if it's nonfiction, how it's pushing the narrative forward on a particular topic. And also.

[00:09:40] Leah Paulos: You know, one of the key things we do with books that are well with all books really, but it's so important for a campaign these days, is, you know, media is so incredibly fractured now. Everybody has their own feeds. They have their, you know, podcasts. Q they have, um, the substack, they hang, they, they subscribe to, there's all sorts of ways that people are getting their own information.

[00:10:04] Leah Paulos: And so, you know, you wanna, you really need to figure out the different audiences and where they are getting their information. So, and you wanna figure out the different, like a couple different spaces. So just, you know, as an example. We worked on a book, it was a memoir called A Place Called Home. It was a memoir about a man, it was a, a man's story.

[00:10:26] Leah Paulos: His name is David Ambrose. He grew up in foster care, had a terrible childhood. So it's, it's, it's a lot about his, his childhood. And now he's a successful, guy. He works at Amazon. He is an executive at Amazon. He has his own foster son. So for a book like that, you know, we wanted to think how are we going to find, get in, how are we gonna promote the book to.

[00:10:51] Leah Paulos: The, all the different audiences. So you wanna think in this, in this case, it's not just that it's a memoir. Memoirs can be really hard to promote. But we saw when we started working on this book that, you know, there's the people that are gonna be interested in it from, you know, they're interested in foster care, they're interested in child poverty.

[00:11:10] Leah Paulos: We can go into that category and. Get a lot of coverage. We can also pick up the people who do cover a memoir. He's, he's a gay guy, so we, we pitched into gay media as well and got a lot of coverage there. He also is, like I said, an executive at Amazon, so there was sort of a business story and a really.

[00:11:29] Leah Paulos: You know, sort of a lifestyle story, a kind of a feel good story. I mean, he's a great personality. He's done really well in his life, so we could pitch it into, into that space as well. So that's one thing, one example that you know every author can, can think about is what are the different ways that you can.

[00:11:49] Leah Paulos: Position your book the different audiences and make sure to you know, get yourself noticed, get in front of the, the people that have those different audiences so that it can sort of be part of a, a well-rounded campaign. 

[00:12:05] Teddy Smith: So it sounds like even depending on different books and different authors you have.

[00:12:11] Teddy Smith: A different strategy for how you would publicize a book. So it would be different for, as you mentioned, someone like Neil Degrass Titan, who I'm guessing you're gonna try and get him on famous TV shows. Whereas with someone who's self-published their first book, they need to think about different ways they're going to get publicity for their book.

[00:12:27] Teddy Smith: 'cause obviously it's gonna be on a much smaller scale. So for people who are maybe just starting out and are finding the idea of publicity quite overwhelming, what would be the first steps you think they could do in order to understand. Where the channels would be best for them to try and get publicity in the first place.

[00:12:45] Leah Paulos: Yeah. So one of the things, and I recommend this in all of our, book publicity school workshops, is to get started to, get out of this space that authors often find themselves in, which is, I know I have to do a lot. I know I, I wanna get my book out to all these people. I see this happening with other books and.

[00:13:06] Leah Paulos: I just don't know how to do it. And you're googling around and getting so much advice from podcasts and, you know, various places, that feeling of overwhelm and just not knowing what sort of a paralyzation I. One of the best ways to get over that is to come up with some books that are somewhat similar to your book that have come out in the past year or two or three at the most, and, just really map out exactly where they've been covered.

[00:13:35] Leah Paulos: So if it's a book that has somewhat similar audience. Get out a spreadsheet and just map it out. What did this person do? What, happened? Did they get a trade review? Did they get a feature in their local paper? Do they have a big substack? Did they speak on, six different podcasts? Did they do a local bookstore event?

[00:13:56] Leah Paulos: Whatever it is. just actually map that out for a number. As many books as you can find that fit that description, which is they did well, they came out in the past couple years and they are roughly in the same space. Or at least, there's some element of similarity. You know, it doesn't, so for example, that book I was just mentioning, you know, that could be used as a, if, if someone wrote another book about foster care that could be used as a, as a comp title for this kind of research.

[00:14:26] Leah Paulos: Then you would kind of ignore the parts that don't relate to your book. Like if the elements of the business and entrepreneurship that we pitched because of his career, you ignore that because, but, but look for the overlap and, and get what you can there. That's a really great way to get started for a number of reasons.

[00:14:46] Leah Paulos: One. It takes it out of that really abstract kind of overwhelming thing where it just feels like, I have no idea where to start. This is a crazy world. What am I gonna do? It gives you like, okay, this is exactly what you do. It's right here. Yeah. And then it also gives you specific things that you can pitch.

[00:15:05] Leah Paulos: You know, you can say like, oh look, that podcast, I've never heard of that podcast. But looking at it, they've got, you know. However many social media reviews, it looks like it has a dedicated audience. And it looks like a good audience for my book. I'm gonna add that to my list and, and try to reach out to that, that show about my book.

[00:15:23] Leah Paulos: So I think that's always just a great way to start for anyone, but particularly for authors that are feeling a bit overwhelmed and stressed out. 

[00:15:36] Teddy Smith: I know that that strategy works for reaching out to podcasts because that's exactly how we got in touch in the first place. Whether you got in touch with me.

[00:15:43] Teddy Smith: Yes. Yeah. So there's living proof that getting in touch with the right audience, people can work 

[00:15:48] Leah Paulos: here. Here we are. This is exactly a, a case study and, and making this happen. 

[00:15:54] Teddy Smith: So when you are working with, let's think about maybe what you just said about finding those. The competition when you're working with a new book author that you are working with, is, is that the first step that you do as well?

[00:16:05] Teddy Smith: You'd find the competition, understand what they're doing so that you can maybe map out a kind of, is it map mapping out an audience profile? I. 

[00:16:14] Leah Paulos: Yeah, I mean, so I would say that we've been doing this for a long time, so we don't fully map it out because in that same way, because we don't, we don't need it to serve all of those same purposes.

[00:16:24] Leah Paulos: Yeah. You know, like we know what a general campaign will look like. Where we do do it is in, in finding the other outlets. So finding, so if we find a book and then we'll, we'll look and see what, what are all the shows? Who are the journalists that, that reviewed them, who mentioned them on Substack?

[00:16:41] Leah Paulos: So we absolutely do that for, for our books. That is, it's really necessary now. I mean, even though we've been doing this for so long and we've got, you know. So many contacts, people we've worked with, you have to be doing it now because everything's changing. You know, it's changing so incredibly quickly.

[00:17:01] Leah Paulos: I think. The, the rate of change has been quite high for, for many years now, but it's accelerating even more. So you have to be nimble. You know, we can't rely on, oh, we did a book like this a year and a half ago. Let's just go to the same people. We absolutely will go to those, those project documents that we have and, and pull out the contacts.

[00:17:22] Leah Paulos: But it's not enough because. Some of them are, some of them aren't around anymore. Others, you know, there's a, a whole bunch of a whole new crop. Maybe this guy had a podcast and now he is like, all right, forget that podcast. I actually prefer a YouTube show and have a new producer. So you just really, there's no substitute for getting down in the weeds and doing that real time research.

[00:17:46] Leah Paulos: Mm-hmm. So yeah, we do, we do do a lot of looking into comp titles all around. 

[00:17:51] Teddy Smith: Yeah. When you are doing publicity for the first time, are you thinking about trying to aim for more specific publications to get featured in, or is it better to go wide to get that more general publicity? Or does it really just depend on the, the book?

[00:18:08] Leah Paulos: No, it depends on the book. I, you know, I'd say that the way we think of it now is that people are getting their information from so many different sources. And so you really wanna be in a lot of different places because if you say are like, ah, I don't really like interviews I'm gonna really try to like, you know, maybe place an op-ed and an essay and hopefully it'll get reviewed and I can do a written q and a.

[00:18:32] Leah Paulos: Like, okay, great. But then you're, you're missing out on all of the interview opportunities from podcasts and radio. So you know, you just wanna make sure that you are in. A lot of different, you're showing up in a lot of different media formats as well as in different audience spaces. So, you know, the general ones can, can be fantastic in that, you know, some books have more of a, a general audience appeal.

[00:18:59] Leah Paulos: So you can go for, you know, here in the states like NPR, that's sort of more less focused in general. Venue, but then also, you know, that doesn't mean that because you're gonna go for that, that doesn't mean you should bypass those niche targeted outlets where maybe it's not. Huge. Maybe they have, you know, 500 downloads an episode or something for a podcast.

[00:19:24] Leah Paulos: Mm-hmm. Not, not big. But if it's, if that's 500 people that are exactly the kind of readers you wanna reach, great. Go for it. If you think about, I. You know, the, the book tour, the traditional book tour that used to be a staple of, of publicity campaigns. That was, you know, publishers would send authors to, you know, independent bookstores.

[00:19:49] Leah Paulos: They'd often fly them, fly them there, put them up in a hotel, and even a successful one would be, you know, maybe 50 people there. And you know, if you think about about numbers, even a small podcast is, you know, you're reaching more people. Obviously there are other benefits to reading in a bookstore and you know, you're part of the literary community.

[00:20:10] Leah Paulos: You're talking in real life to people. The bookstores then can hand sell your book. So I'm not saying that there's no benefit and that there's, there's no value in that. There is quite a bit of value, but. But just in terms of authors who sometimes are like, oh, I've never heard of that podcast. Does anyone listen to it?

[00:20:29] Leah Paulos: Is it really worth doing? I would err on the side of yes, which, you know, again, there's all sorts of podcasts that are, you know, complete cranks and there's no barrier to entry. So I'm not saying you shouldn't, you shouldn't vet it, but you know, if it's on the smaller side and you haven't heard of it, that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile thing for you to do.

[00:20:49] Teddy Smith: Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, when I'm guessing I, I have to, a lot of people ask me if they can come on the podcast and I have to make sure that it's all really people that are speaking to the target audience I have. 'cause yeah, as you mentioned, there are some smaller podcasts that, that, whilst they have a smaller audience, the people, all the people listening are interested in self-publishing books and, you know, learning how to make more sales to their books.

[00:21:08] Teddy Smith: So it can be super relevant to get onto the right places. 

[00:21:12] Leah Paulos: Yeah, definitely. 

[00:21:14] Teddy Smith: So we talked about two steps to the publicity process. So firstly, you've obviously got looking at what your target audience, sorry, your competition is doing and working out where they're getting shown. Then you're looking at the outlets that they're getting shown in and whether they would be taking on people as well.

[00:21:30] Teddy Smith: The third part is, I guess, outreaching to them and making sure that you get accepted onto their shows in their magazine or whatever their media is. So. When you're contacting journalists, people who own these sorts of businesses, what are the main mistakes you need to avoid? 

[00:21:48] Leah Paulos: Yeah, so I could talk on and on about that.

[00:21:54] Teddy Smith: I should share your pitch in the show notes so that people can see what a good pitch looks like. Yeah. 

[00:21:59] Leah Paulos: So you know, I mean, you want to think when you have a book, you first of all need to think about. Or you have to disabuse yourself of the idea that you need to present the entirety of your book in this pitch.

[00:22:13] Leah Paulos: Yeah. You know, you as the author are gonna know all of the ins and outs of this book, you know, the, the breadth and the nuance. You do not need to put that into a pitch email. The pitch email should be pretty short to the point and have a specific ask. So. You know the, you wanna think about what is the purpose of this pitch letter?

[00:22:34] Leah Paulos: It is to get someone to request the book and read it, and then hope in the hopes that they will consider the ask. The ask being. Well, you have me on your show. Can I send you a copy for review? So that's the purpose. 

[00:22:47] Teddy Smith: Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:47] Leah Paulos: And then you'll have to think about also that, you know, how, how is it landing?

[00:22:53] Leah Paulos: You know, what you are landing in an inbox that is most likely overflowing to somebody that is very, very busy. They do not wanna be hit by a massive wall of text where they have to read to the third paragraph to even understand what your book is about. They need to understand it really, really quickly.

[00:23:12] Leah Paulos: You know, the first couple sentences should be like, bam, that's your hook. That's the story. You need to give journalists. If you want them to cover your book, you need to give them a. Way for them to cover your book, which means a story. They don't cover books. They're not there to say, oh, you know, Judy wrote a book.

[00:23:34] Leah Paulos: Who cares? They want to know what Judy's book has to offer, that their readers and their listeners or their audience is going to find interesting and valuable. So you have to give that to them in your pitch. So, you know, that's one thing. The other thing is you want to make sure to, you know, at the same time, make sure that the, just the bare bones facts are there.

[00:24:00] Leah Paulos: That's one thing that people forget all the time. They just, you know, send a thing and forget to say like, when did this book come out? Who's publishing it? You know, all, all of those things. But you know, you want to keep in mind that. Anytime you are writing a pitch to someone, you are considering the person and considering what they need.

[00:24:22] Leah Paulos: Journalists need stories. Journalists need something new. They want, they don't wanna do a retread of something that they've heard 10,000 times. And they need the, the, the actual information. They need the facts and they need to know that it's sort of trust that they can trust it. So that's, you know, if it's not.

[00:24:41] Leah Paulos: If it's traditionally published, great. That is a shorthand for a pub, a journalist to know, okay, like this has been vetted by editors, it's gone through this professional process. The publisher is behind it. That's a shorthand for like, okay, this is. You can skip that step. When you are approaching a journalist about a self-published book, you don't have that.

[00:25:05] Leah Paulos: So you do need to find other ways to show your credibility to them very quickly. 

[00:25:11] Teddy Smith: Okay? So whether that's 

[00:25:11] Leah Paulos: your website or your institutional affiliation or your track record doing this or your. Peak engagements, whatever it is, you have to know that when you're reaching out, if you don't have a traditional publisher behind you, that is part of your job.

[00:25:24] Leah Paulos: That's what a journalist is gonna need to cover you, because they don't, they're busy, they don't have time to be like going down a rabbit hole to be investigating, you know, your sources or you know, you need to make that really clear to them. 

[00:25:38] Teddy Smith: Right. Okay. So could you give an example of what that might look like?

[00:25:41] Teddy Smith: So would it be, say for example, if you've got a big Instagram account, it could be that, or would it be something different? 

[00:25:46] Leah Paulos: For, yeah, for someone who's self-published, you mean? 

[00:25:48] Teddy Smith: Yes. Self-published. Yeah. 

[00:25:50] Leah Paulos: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I mean. It can be, you know, including a, a big social media account, whatever, say you have spoken at, you know, this place, that place and those names have some, some recognition.

[00:26:04] Leah Paulos: Ideally you would have a really professional looking website as well so that you can point direct people there as well. And on your website you wanna keep that in mind as well, that you are not only. Talking to potential readers. In your website, you are also making the case to journalists that you are a, a reputable source, that you're gonna give them a great story, that you're trustworthy, and if they are going to consider interviewing you, that you're gonna be a good interview.

[00:26:32] Leah Paulos: You know, plenty of people can write a good book and then they get on an interview and then they just don't explain it very well or. You know, whatever, whatever reason, they're, they're not great. So, you know, you wanna make all of that, all of that really clear to the journalist. But, you know, other things it can look like is if you've had other, other books that have been published.

[00:26:55] Leah Paulos: If you have blurbs from people that are you know, putting their reputation sort of on the line. If there's a blurb by somebody who has a, a reputation and they've taken upon themselves to like, yes, I, I stand by this book, I, I support it. You know, that's, that's one thing. So, you know, you just have to figure out the, the other sort of ways that you can have some credibility.

[00:27:19] Leah Paulos: Also other media attention that you've gotten is also really helpful in that regard. 

[00:27:23] Teddy Smith: Right. Okay. So actually in the email you could say, oh, I've appeared in this magazine. I've appeared in this blog, whatever. 

[00:27:29] Leah Paulos: Yeah. Yeah. So you don't wanna, you know, depending on which place you are going to and how it corresponds to the ones that you've already appeared in you know, you don't necessarily wanna put all of them in.

[00:27:40] Leah Paulos: But if you have been featured in a prominent newspaper or you know, a legitimate journalist has written a piece on you, that's an incredibly useful. Thing for you to include, because that, that gives you credibility. They assume like, okay, this journalist looked into it, they presumably had a fact checker check on it.

[00:28:02] Leah Paulos: So yeah, you wanna put in a few things like that. You also might wanna put in you know, a clip from an, an interview so that if you're reaching out for other interviews, they can listen and make sure that you, that you sound good. 

[00:28:13] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Good. Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you. Now you've obviously got.

[00:28:18] Teddy Smith: Of experience about this, which is why I'm guessing you created book publicity school in the first place. So what was it that inspired you to create the program and give us a bit of an overview about what authors can learn and you know? Yeah. The main aim of the program would be, 

[00:28:31] Leah Paulos: yeah. So the reason we launched book publicity School was.

[00:28:37] Leah Paulos: In this, in this environment, people, publishers require authors to do so much work. Like that is a part of the publishing process. Now, agents look for that, that, that this author is gonna bring, you know, a promotional mindset when they decide if they're gonna take an author on. And when the agent pitches a publisher, they also wanna see that.

[00:28:59] Leah Paulos: They wanna see that the author is going to be engaged and promote the book and that. You know, the, the people at the publishing houses know that they don't have the resources that they once did and that they wish they still did. They don't have those, so they do require authors to do take on a lot of that promotional work.

[00:29:17] Leah Paulos: And then authors are like, well, I. I'm an author, I'm not a publicist, I'm not a marketer. I don't know how to do that. So, that is really why we started book publicity school, was to educate authors in what, what they can do, how they can navigate these spaces. I mean, basically doing, promoting your book in with publicity is asking an author to navigate the space between the publishing world and the media world.

[00:29:49] Leah Paulos: Effectively, and the media world is really fast moving, very quickly changing. It has its own protocols. You kind of have to understand it. Publishing is also a sort of opaque world. It's, you know, a little intimidating. It's, you're unclear who you should ask about things. So you basic authors are tasked with navigating between these, you know, sort of opaque, sort of intimidating, mysterious worlds and to do it really well to support their.

[00:30:20] Leah Paulos: Their book, their baby that they've been working on for however long. So it's hard to do that when you don't understand those spaces. So that was what we wanted to do, is share all of the, you know, insights that we have from working on the front lines at PR shop, doing, you know. Five, five of us publicists doing book publicity campaigns every day.

[00:30:41] Leah Paulos: We wanted to share what we've learned that authors can implement for their own campaigns, for their own book promotion. I. So we do it in the form of workshops and, and coaching. We've got a whole bunch of different programs that, that we work with authors on. We've got a couple crash courses which really just drill down into some of the specifics that are needed for every campaign.

[00:31:04] Leah Paulos: So. You know how to, how to create that pitch. How, what do you, what do you say in the pitch? Like we talked about what are the formats, what is the information? What, what should it look like? We do also one about building your media right? Outreach list. So how do you, like, what does that actually mean to, to build that list?

[00:31:21] Leah Paulos: What do you, what do you do? Like what, how do you sit, sit down at your computer, and how do you start? Where, where do you go? What, what do you need? So that's another one. We do another one on author platform building. And then another one on post publication promotion. So those are, we have those four one-off classes.

[00:31:38] Leah Paulos: We have a six week program as well that includes all of that information plus, plus some other topics like op-eds and excerpts and making yourself in into an expert and pitching yourself as an expert. How to work with your publishing, whoever is assigned to you at the publishing house. And then we also have a Facebook group where we actually give people feedback on their pitches.

[00:32:01] Leah Paulos: So they'll put in a pitch and we're like, well, you know what? I. You know, I, this, this sentence is really interesting, but that's the seventh sentence. I really had no idea what you were talking about until then, you know, we you know, we're, we're very nice about it, but we also also, you know, we're, we're straightforward.

[00:32:18] Leah Paulos: If I read a pitch and I'm like, I actually have no idea what this book is about you, that's not good. You need to, you know, start at this point and go rework it. We do a lot of that in the six week program, and then we also work in a six month program where we work with people on a longer term basis.

[00:32:33] Leah Paulos: Hmm. So all of those workshops are included, but then they also are getting one-on-one support from me and my team. 

[00:32:41] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So with the six week program, it sounds like it's quite step by step where it takes you from just taking a book and working out what your strategy's going to be and then how to implement it.

[00:32:50] Leah Paulos: Yeah, exactly. It's really, we call it the intensive, and it is, it's intensive. I mean, it's in, in that it is a real. Primer for people who, you know, need to get up and running. They don't really understand the process and they want to know all of the different elements that they will get them from. You know, this point to closer to publication, I.

[00:33:16] Leah Paulos: We, you know, because, and I mentioned this before, that one problem for authors in this space is that there's a glut of information in some ways. So one thing we really do in the six week and all of our classes is we make sure to keep them. On the smaller side so that we can give you know, custom advice.

[00:33:36] Leah Paulos: So, you know, not everything we say is gonna be relevant for each person. So I can say like, Hey Teddy, you know, this thing I'm gonna talk about right now, it's not really for you. You know, we're gonna get to this other thing. And, and that's gonna be for you and Margaret. You could ignore that and listen to this one.

[00:33:52] Leah Paulos: So, so we do try to point authors to the specific elements that are gonna be. Really worthwhile for them. 

[00:34:02] Teddy Smith: Yeah. And so by the end of the six weeks, what would people who have taken that intensive course, what would, what would their outcome be? Yeah, 

[00:34:08] Leah Paulos: I mean, I. So we always want people to have a pitch by the time the courses is ready over that we've looked at, we've given feedback.

[00:34:19] Leah Paulos: We always do it. We, we suggest a q and a that they, they do a q and a as well as part of, for part of their pitch materials. So we want them to have that ready to go. And then also the, the start of their media list. In general, a media list should be a, a living, breathing document. You know, we are never finished with our media lists because there are so many places to go in this environment.

[00:34:40] Leah Paulos: But you, we want our, the authors to have both of those two key pillars of any campaign. The, the pitch materials and the media list. We want them to have, you know, a decent, a decent startup, both of them. At the time that by the time the course is over. 

[00:34:58] Teddy Smith: Brilliant. So it's like by the end of the six weeks, you have got everything you need to do and, and also the strategy to start getting that publicity and start moving forward.

[00:35:07] Leah Paulos: Yes. Strategy and sort of a roadmap. They, you know, people come out of that six week workshop saying that they have, you know, a, a roadmap, a schedule with. You know, to-dos on a specific with a timeframe built in so that they can sort of go forth and execute rather than flailing around trying to figure out, you know, where to start and what to do.

[00:35:33] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Brilliant. Well, thanks so much. I mean, I just. There's been great overview of exactly what publicity is and how the, how the book publicity school exactly works and what, what people can expect to get from the end of it. Have you got any advice for people who are maybe a bit intimidated by the idea of self-promotion?

[00:35:50] Teddy Smith: You know, a lot of people would get quite worried by emailing these huge brands like Conde Nast or something like that. So, you know, give some encouragement for the people who are worried about it.

[00:36:04] Leah Paulos: It's just the way the world is now. You know, every author just needs to do it. And you know, I think you just have to get out of that, that mindset of, of feeling uncomfortable about it. And think about, you know, think about an imaginary friend of yours who's very creative and talented, who, you know, came up with, you know, some new multimedia exhibition or, you know, put in their, you know, paint, you know, has an amazing, gallery exhibit of their artwork you, and they said, oh, you know, I am so excited about this. I've been working on it for so long, but ah, like no one's coming and I hate promoting myself. You'd be like, well, you have to, you know, there's no, like, you have to let people know you've done all of this work.

[00:36:51] Leah Paulos: You, you owe it to the work to Yeah. To tell people about it. So, you know, kind of stepping back and, you know, I'd say the same thing to auth authors, you know, it's. It's you, you are putting this out into the world because you think it's valuable and you're not. You're, you're doing a disservice to, to your work if you're not gonna let people know.

[00:37:13] Leah Paulos: The other thing is, is, you know, a slight, a slight reframe is that you're not like promoting yourself. You're promoting your book. Like, you think this is valuable? So you are gonna tell people about it? It doesn't have to be like me, me, me, me, me. It's like your book. Your book, your book. Yeah. So that's, that's one thing.

[00:37:31] Leah Paulos: And the other thing I would say, if people are intimidated about, you know, say there's a podcast that they love and they think they would be great on it, but then it's just like, ah, it's hard to press send. Is this okay? Just send it. Like, what is the worst that can happen? Yep. Like what is the worst that can happen?

[00:37:51] Leah Paulos: They are gonna, they can ignore you. They can say it's not a good fit. Okay, then you're right back where you started, which is not being on the show. 

[00:37:59] Teddy Smith: Yeah, I would say, I'd say don't worry about them ignoring you because think about how many emails you ignore yourself and yeah, 

[00:38:07] Leah Paulos: totally. Yeah. No, you cannot take a non-response from an email personally.

[00:38:11] Leah Paulos: I mean, I would be just a shell of a human being if I did that as a publicist. I mean, you just as a publicist, you have to learn that. There are a million reasons why someone doesn't respond to your email. It may have been buried in other emails. Maybe they're on maternity leave, maybe they're just working on a big store, a different big story.

[00:38:30] Leah Paulos: There are so many reasons, and I. Just do not take it personally. That's so important for authors because it's hard. It's, it's you. When we're working on a book, we have that, that professional space. We didn't write the book. We, we promoting it. We, we care about it. But it can be harder for authors 'cause it feels personal.

[00:38:51] Leah Paulos: Like, oh my god, you know what, doesn't anyone. Write me back about my book. But you just have to, you know, just really try to tamp down on that, that, that tendency. 

[00:39:02] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Well, brilliant. I mean, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I think it's been a great overview of how publicity works and I.

[00:39:10] Teddy Smith: Yeah, I really would recommend people looking at the publicity school. It's, there's so much to learn. It's a step-by-step program exactly for how you can start doing a publicity and become an expert in it in a really short amount of time and you're handheld along the whole way. So it is a really great program.

[00:39:24] Teddy Smith: So thanks so much for sharing with that. 

[00:39:26] Leah Paulos: You are welcome and not to, I completely should have told you before that we also have a free monthly class at book publicity school. So if anyone wants to check it out, they can they can check out the free, the free class. It's called the 1 0 1 and it's. It's right on the homepage.

[00:39:40] Teddy Smith: Oh, even better. Everyone loves a bit of a freebie, so thank you very much. That as well. So if people want to find you where's the best place to do that? Not physically, I mean like online obviously 

[00:39:53] Leah Paulos: in my office in Brooklyn. So they can find the two websites are press Shop, pr. So press, press a button, shop Pr, three Ss, two Ps in a row.

[00:40:03] Leah Paulos: I always have to tell people that book publicity school.com is a little more straightforward. And then we are also on LinkedIn and Blue Sky, and that's just under my name. Also on Facebook, if you look up pre shop or book publicity school and we are on X, although we are moving away from it.

[00:40:23] Teddy Smith: Right. Good. Well, thank you so much for coming on and hopefully we'll speak again soon. 

[00:40:28] Leah Paulos: Excellent. Thank you so much. 

[00:40:29] Teddy Smith: I thank you so much for tuning into the Publishing performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world.

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