At Digital Book World last week, one insightful discussion was a “fireside chat” between Bradley Metrock (host of DBW) and Liz Perl, the EVP and chief marketing officer of Simon & Schuster. Perl has been with the Big Five publisher since 2008 and previously worked at Rodale, Penguin Random House, Avon Books, and HarperCollins.
When asked to discuss marketing best practices, Perl said, “There is no one silver bullet.” Instead, what drives success of a title is cumulative. “That’s why marketing campaigns have to be cross-platform and multi-dimensional,” she said. Whenever her team thinks they have a “perfect combination” to break out a title, they find that formula doesn’t work for other books.
Physical advance review copies (ARCs) are still very important, especially for fiction. Perl says that word of mouth is required to sell fiction and to break out fiction, and the only way to get word of mouth is to get people to read the book. That requires sending out advance review copies. “I wish that digital ARCs were the answer—they’re part of the answer,” she says. But Simon & Schuster still “blanket[s] the world” with the print ARCs, tapping the influencers—often booksellers and librarians—whom they think can bring marketing momentum to a title. S&S then backs up that effort with other tools, such as digital marketing and Goodreads marketing.
One of the innovative marketing efforts from Simon & Schuster is the Alexa skill known as the Stephen King Library. While Simon & Schuster considered doing a broad book-recommendation skill for Alexa, Perl said they realized that’s too big for them to do well. Instead, “We have to think about an arena that we know and somewhat own and that we can support—readers that we know and can speak to.” Simon & Schuster owns the Stephen King library except for a couple of titles and, Perl said, “Steve loves new technology, and he loves when we surprise him with something new.” Right away, her marketing team was able to identify a big question that King readers have: What should they read next from his extensive backlist?
The Stephen King Library app helps readers identify the next title to read through a series of subtle and inventive questions set to music. “Instead of it just being ‘Are you afraid of clowns?’ it packs some surprises.” While Simon & Schuster has been pleased with the results from the app—they do see it selling books—they also have to consider their resources and how to continue that form of marketing. “The King skill is created to be dynamic, and we have a new Stephen King title every year. What do we want to do new to update the skill?” Perl said. She says it’s necessary to pay attention to the ongoing marketing needs of an Alexa skill—it’s not “set it and forget it.”
Perl also mentioned a multi-faceted marketing effort with author Mo Rocca, who appears on CBS Sunday Morning. Since Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS, there was an opportunity to launch something meaningful that would be a book “and something more.” The result: Mobituaries, first launched as a podcast and promoted on CBS Sunday Morning. While the effort was very successful, Perl says, “We did learn that podcasts can be very expensive when you let the talent go to town on production value. It ended up being a surprising price tag. This is a lot of money for something that doesn’t generate revenue. We learned our lesson there: it doesn’t have to be a Cecil B. DeMille production to be of value.” The tie-in book, with stories not included in the podcasts, will come out in November. “Stitching it all together, we’ve created a fun brand that has legs,” Perl said.
Bottom line: As the discussion came to a close, Perl said that backlist discoverability is a real issue for Simon & Schuster. They publish 2,000 new books a year and have a 30,000-title backlist. “Every year you’re expected to drive growth, and the industry is flat. So where do you drive growth? We are absolutely looking to the backlist to drive that growth. How do we surface those books?” While she left that mostly as an open question, she did say they succeed through email marketing, which has the highest conversion of any marketing Simon & Schuster does.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
I can vouch for CBS Sunday Morning moving oodles of books.
The one and only Ron Charles did a segment with me on Zoom For Dummies. That week, the book sold about 900 copies.
Pic here.
I enjoyed the brief segment. I’ll note that I had reached out to him. My publisher did nothing to land the placement. So there’s that.