Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast
Ready to supercharge your author journey? Join bestselling author and book marketing maven Penny Sansevieri and savvy publishing insider Amy Cornell for lively, no-nonsense conversations filled with smart strategies, creative inspiration, and publishing know-how you can actually use.
Whether you’re self-published, traditionally published, or somewhere in between, this podcast delivers real-world advice to help you sell more books, build your platform, and thrive in the ever-evolving publishing landscape. From clever promo hacks to critical industry insights, each episode is designed to move the needle on your success.
Fresh ideas. Actionable tips. Unfiltered talk.
If you’re serious about your author career, hit subscribe and tune in—your next big breakthrough could be one episode away.
Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast
Book Marketing Without Burnout: Do Less, Reach More Readers
Feeling like you’re doing everything and getting nowhere? We’ve been there, and we’re pulling the brakes on burnout to rebuild your book marketing on a foundation that actually moves books. Because book marketing burnout is real—and if you’ve been feeling stretched thin by ads, social media, newsletters, and endless promotion tasks, this episode is your reset. In this week’s Book Marketing Tips & Author Success Podcast, Penny and Amy break down what sustainable book marketing really looks like and how authors can simplify their efforts while improving results. You’ll learn why focusing on long-term assets—like your Amazon retail page, your newsletter, reader relationships, and a clean author website—outperforms chasing every new trend or algorithm shift. We also dig into practical fixes for author burnout: reducing social media overload, tightening your PR strategy, and creating evergreen newsletter templates you can reuse year-round. Whether you’re an indie, hybrid, or traditionally published author, this episode delivers smart, sustainable strategies you can maintain—and that actually sell books.
The heart of this conversation is sustainable marketing. We walk through the assets you control and that work 24/7: a clean, on-brand website; an optimized Amazon page with compelling description, keywords, and A+ Content; and a subscriber list you nurture with useful, human updates. We highlight local wins you can drive—libraries, bookstores, festivals—and the power of genuine thank-yous to reviewers and influencers. Finally, we share a quarterly audit routine to decide what to cut, what to keep, and which single experiment is worth testing next, so your effort compounds instead of scattering.
If you want clarity, fewer moving parts, and a plan you can actually maintain, this one’s for you. Subscribe for new episodes every Friday, text podcast to 888-402-8940 to share your questions, and if you found this helpful, leave a quick review to help other authors find us.
Help shape our 2026 content by taking our 30-second listener poll!
📱Text Penny & Amy: send us your show feedback, burning marketing questions and new topic ideas!
Text the word PODCAST to (888) 402-8940 to sign up to send us messages and receive new episode announcements. And don't forget to save our number!
Check out our Book Marketing Jumpstart options if you're ready to take your brand, platform and SEO up a few notches.
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
- Be sure you're following the show: by clicking the + Follow button on the top right of our show page. If you're already following you'll see a ↓ downward arrow.
- Locate Ratings & Reviews: Scroll down on our podcast page until you find the "Ratings & Reviews" section.
- Rate the podcast: Click on the stars to give the podcast a rating.
- Write your review: Under the star rating there will be the most recent review and just below that click "Write a Review" and compose your review in the text box that appears.
- Save: Once you've written your review, click "Save" to submit it.
Can't use Apple Podcasts? Email us your review and we'll put it on our website: inf...
Hello and welcome back to the Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast. This is Penny Sanseveri and Amy Cornell. And we're really excited for the show. I know we say that all the time, but we're really excited for the show. The show is kind of a blend of two ideas that Amy and I have been talking about, uh two areas that authors really struggle. So we hope that if this is you, uh I think we've actually all struggled with this, that you will really enjoy the show. But first, we're we're so excited. So we're sitting in the green room and we so a couple of things. First, we have a listener survey and we're really trying to shape the shows for 2020, 2026. So we would love to get your feedback on the show. And I'll tell you something. If you fill out the form or if you've already filled out the form, and of course it's anonymous, so it's not gonna, you know, I'm not asking you to send your confirmation of what you what you said or the comments that you put or anything like that. But if you forward to me, if you send me, send us an email and let us know that you filled out the form, we'll send you some cool swag. Uh just as a maybe it's a bribe, call it a bribe, whatever. It's also kind of a bribe because we just win the green room. We went into some of the responses that we've gotten. And one of the listeners said, would love to hear more of Amy's point of view. And I'm like, okay, so I'm what? Just nothing. Like apparently more listeners want to hear from you, Amy.
SPEAKER_00:And I um my initial reaction was they, it's probably somebody who thinks, like, there's some commentary bubbling under the surface here that they need to grab their popkin popcorn for. And they're probably like, maybe we should let her talk more because she'll probably put her foot in her mouth or something and we'll get a good laugh out of it. That's hilarious.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, I can tell you right now, there's with Amy, I've been working with her for over 14 years, there's always something bubbling under the surface. So you are not wrong. Uh, but yeah, I let's hope that nobody gets on the survey and just like, oh, Penny needs to shut up. Um, I don't like less that penny person that'll just be the Amy show in 2026. But we appreciate. So if you fill out the filled form, just shoot us an email, let us know. We really appreciate this. You are the reason that we do these shows. We want you to shake the shows. And, you know, by doing so, we'll hopefully make uh populate the calendar with more ideas that are really going to help to drive your success. The other thing that I wanted to remind you all is text the word podcast to 888-402-8940. You can talk to us directly. We've gotten some responses. I am like shocked at how many people love communicating with us in podcast forum, in in, I'm sorry, in text um about the podcast. It's really, really cool. It's been a really cool surprise that y'all are so vocal about shows and questions and ideas and things like that. So keep them coming. Um, and and that's part of the reason why we wanted to do this topic today, because I really feel, and Amy feels the same way. There is uh sometimes it's really hard to keep going. And we get that, and we hear that a lot from authors. So burnout, which is the first piece of this conversation, is something that I mean, a lot of authors really face. And it's, you know, you sit there and you're just like, oh, like, you know, the whole model, like, nothing is working. I feel like I'm just throwing a bunch of stuff up against the wall and I don't really know. I mean, Amy, you and I both hear this, right?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. And I think it especially it stays front and center for me, especially communicating with a lot of our clients every day, because so much of what we do also comes with the option to learn the next steps, take it to the next level if they want to. Not every client wants to do that, but a lot of them do. A lot of people work with us because they do want to learn and they want to become more savvy and they want to do their next book release better. You know what I mean? But so with that, I mean, it's like drinking from the fire hose sometimes, you know, especially and it it comes with a mix of both excitement, but also like, where do I start and what do I focus on? And trying to juggle all the things when in reality that's really not ever what we encourage anybody to do. Don't try to do all the things at once, you know, just to check it off your list. We you guys probably anybody that's listened for a while hears us say that all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Well, but I mean, we're always, I mean, authors are told, and I see this at when I speak at writers' conferences too. Authors are, you know, talk about drinking from a fire hose. I mean, I see authors coming out of conferences, and I and I think conferences are really important. So I just want to say, let's just kind of reframe that. I think conferences, conferences are really important, but you know, authors come away from events or online classes that they take or whatever, like I have to do it all, right? I have to like, we have to post ads, we have to, we have to run ads, we have to post on social media, we have to build our email list, we have to do a book tour, we have to do a podcast tour, then we have to launch another book. And it's like, wow, like no wonder that everybody just feels a little deer in headlights. And it's kind of, I think, one of the reasons why, you know, now, of course, day after Thanksgiving. By the way, we hope you all had a really great and awesome and amazing Thanksgiving. But I think this is kind of the season where we, and this is part of the reason for the timing of the show too, is, you know, we are we're kind of sitting back and we're reevaluating and we're looking at how far we've come this year, or in some cases, that we feel like we haven't come far enough. And I think that a lot of the burnout isn't necessarily coming from the marketing itself. Although, you know, you and I had a conversation in the green room just about authors doing things that they've literally never done before in their life, or like we're in Amazon ads or something like that. So there's that part of it. But it also comes, in my opinion, and this we'll dig into more in the second half of the show, is unsustainable strategy stacking. Like stacking strategies one on top of the other that just aren't sustainable to do, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right. And without a consistent plan. Also, yes. I think for most people, even if you're not a huge planner, you know, which I guess I I probably consider myself not that, I'm very much like, okay, I can handle 48 hours at a time most usually in all areas of my life. But even then, having something consistent that you can count on that you know is solid and that you've spent a little time setting aside and planning out and confirming these are the right things, the confidence that you get from that makes such a big difference compared to frantically trying to just do all the things to say that they've been completed.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's that's absolutely true. And you just, you know, it becomes checking off a list as opposed to is this really something that's gonna matter to my readers? And that's where kind of stepping back and re-evaluating sort of helps with that. And I see this a lot with when I when I teach on doing Amazon, you know, Amazon ads, right? So, you know, a lot of times authors will get into Amazon ads and then they feel uncomfortable doing like they again, this is where the learning curve, like they they feel like they have such a learning curve, and I I I I'm uncertain as to whether or not, you know, I did it right or something. And so, you know, checking once a week becomes checking every hour, which is not sustainable either, because it just you can't get any good data that way.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Um absolutely anything that you're refreshing constantly it turns into busy work that is not productive.
SPEAKER_01:Right, exactly. And you know, your your um uh your sales rank on Amazon, this is another place that authors are like, um, I'm just gonna refresh this all the time. I'm gonna, you know, the Amazon sales rank is wonky at best. And it's, you know, it's affected by a whole bunch of other things that have little to nothing to do with the fact that you just posted something on social media, right? Or that you're running an ebook promo or something. So those kinds of kind of manic checking is also something that I think really gets to the to burn out. Amy, you want to talk about so because this is one of our particular pet peeves too. It's the social media overload. And it's easy to get into, believe me, it's really easy to get caught up in it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. I mean, talk about a rabbit hole, right? I was gonna say the same thing with ads, because once you start looking at things and you're like, well, why is this? Why is that? And you know, there's a difference. Let's be very clear. There's a difference between doing self-education and going down a rabbit hole. They are not the same. And so the social media overload, you know, feeling pressure to post daily, spending more time creative, creating content than you are writing, because, you know, again, this is about sustainability. What makes more sense for you long term? Posting on Instagram every day, or spending that time working on your next book? You know, let's let's be realistic about what's really going to feed your brand long term.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, here's a secret nobody else pays attention to us as much as we pay attention to our own work. We get into traps like that too, Penny, right? Where uh even with our newsletter and the timing and when it went out, we used to be so much more rigid about this day and this time and at this hour and all that kind of stuff. And then we realized nobody else is tracking that closely. You know, we were, and so it was something we were obsessing about when at the end of the day, it's like, you know what? It's better to send it out when we have the good content that we really wanted to focus on ready to go. Right. Yeah. And that made such a big difference. And another one is obviously comparing your engagement numbers to others. You know, if you're looking for an author and they've got, you know, 3,000 followers already and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I have 150 followers, what am I even doing here? You know, it's yeah, it makes, you know, but we talk about all the time quality over quantity, numbers can be very deceiving across the board, but especially on social media. So for what it's worth, if you are, if you do want to do some like market research and see what other authors are up to, check their engagement, you know, check the likes, check the comments, even like be a little sneaky and click through on some of the accounts that are following them a lot. Just make sure they look like real people. Again, I just got done saying don't go down the rabbit hole, but candidly, if this is really something that you are hung up on, then doing some of those checks and kind of get like resetting what your parameters are for success on social media really makes a big difference. You know? Yeah. Like, what are you here for? And we talk about this a lot. Don't be everywhere, be everywhere that matters. Typically, for most people, being on one primary social media account is all you need to do. It just really is based on your demographics. And we've done plenty of shows about knowing who your readers are. That work is so important. Like, don't skip over that. It it really does connect to every single thing that you do marketing-wise, knowing the ins and outs of your readers, not just the kind of books that they like to read, but also their lifestyle, what other content they're looking for, what intrigues them. You know what I mean? Like if you are looking to build a brand, your brand can't just be to sell your book. You know, your brand has to be bigger than that. And I'm a huge fan of using a scheduling app or an app that, you know, you can do a bunch of content at once and then set it up to post for you. Those are brilliant. And even if you have to pay a little bit, if social media is really something that is important to you, or if we're being realistic, is something that is pretty critical based on who your reader market is, because that might be something too, whether you like social media or not, you might have to come to terms with the fact that, like, well, my demographic is on social media a lot. You know, they're probably looking for me on there. You know, once they finish my book, they want to see my Instagram account or whatever. So that might mean that's where you need to be. Schedule content, you know, set it and forget it. I love the idea of setting aside a couple hours at the beginning of each month and jamming out your content for the month. And then if something fun comes up, you snap a picture, great, post it, whatever. But then you know you've taken care of business, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that, and you know, the interesting thing though, too, is that social media we've done. I actually just taught a class on Saturday about how deceptive social media can be and how it feels productive, but it really, and sometimes it is productive. Like I don't want to sit here and just like, oh, Penny and Amy are just slamming on social media. Sometimes it is productive, certainly, but social media doesn't sell books. Social media is a great way for you to increase your visible your broader visibility, certainly, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do it on every single platform, right? So find the platform that really resonates. We talk about this a lot. Success leaves clues, right? So find other similar authors and start to follow them and see where they're getting a really good vibe, like where they where they are spending the majority of their time and let that inspire, don't copy, but let that inspire your your choices. So if you feel like you're just gonna complete overload, I love the schedule and we do it. So I will jam out posts for an entire month and um just get them posted and just yeah, kind of set it and forget it, right? In a way. But you're better off being in one place and being and staying super engaged in that one platform than trying to be on, you know, on all of the things, because that's just not that's absolutely not sustainable. Um so newsletter burnout. Now, newsletters, we've done shows on newsletters, newsletters, we're a huge fan of that. Um but I think that authors who are hyper focused on I must build my list, I must add more people to my newsletter, I must grow my numbers, are less focused on the content. And Amy talked about this earlier. So our newsletter, like we were so like, oh, we've got to get this out a particular day. Consistency is really, really important, right? You want to be successful in anything. People ask me that all the time. Like, how have you, how has your company lasted 25 years? I mean, first off, we do great work, but we're also consistent about everything that we do. That said, you also have to weave in a little bit of flexibility and you have to remember that everything that you're doing is re has to be reader-facing. So it's less about you staying on your schedule as it is about growing that connection with your readers. Because when you grow that connection with your reader, the build your list will happen because readers will share. Like, this is a great newsletter. Your time is better spent creating content that your readers are really gonna love and then repurposing that content, right? So um something, and it's taken us a long time really to get here with our newsletter because we serve, yes, we serve authors, but we serve authors who are in all different stages of writing their book or putting their book out there or the number of books that they have out. So we're, you know, much like when we create the podcast, a lot of times we're meeting people at very different places in their author career. So what we, you know, what I always recommend to authors and what Amy and I have kind of come up with with our newsletter is evergreen templates. So we have evergreen pockets within the newsletter that we fill. And for you, that might be a writing update or books I'm reading or highlighting a reader or something like that. Creating some kind of a master template for your newsletter so that you're not sitting there every month saying, What am I gonna write about? Right. It's a much better way to stay on track with your newsletter as opposed to, I'm not getting any, why am I not getting any signups? What's happening with my, I mean, signups are really important. And we have done whole shows on, in fact, I think if you go to the newsletter show, you'll be able to hear it on how to grow your newsletter list. But figuring out how to, you know, creating an actual template for your newsletter and different, you know, different elements that you can even, you know, you don't have to have, you know, reader spotlight in every single newsletter. But, you know, I mean, if you're doing a newsletter once a month, and honestly, by the way, for those of you sending your newsletter out once a week, God bless you. I know Amy, sorry, Amy just like threw up in the theory of the recording.
SPEAKER_00:But short list of things I do every weekend, honestly. Right.
SPEAKER_01:But, you know, I mean, does do you really have I mean, is to me, the content is much more important than the frequency. And honestly, we get so much stuff in our inboxes. It's in, it's, it's, it's, it's insane. And half of it, I mean, I don't know about y'all. I'm assuming that everybody is facing the same thing. But, you know, I got I got some notice today for like, oh, you've been a you're gonna get some kind of award and blah, blah, blah. It's super exciting. And it was like award for like science fiction book of the year. Oh, congratulations. Thanks. I because it felt super appropriate. It's right up there with the Oprah book club that I got a couple months ago. Um you're much better off focused on less, you know, reader connection than frequency. So if you have my permission, unless you're getting great open rates setting it out every week, then God love you. And then we would like to have you on so you could do a show about what your secret is to that. But exactly once a month, honestly. I would, you know, less is really more. Right. Uh, you know, especially if you have really, really good content, right?
SPEAKER_00:And I think when people say I don't know what to write about, they're kind of, and this is not a knock, but they're kind of missing the point of a newsletter. And we need to reframe the purpose of the newsletter, how it serves your recipients, how it serves you, because really if you get the right frame of mind for what it's for, there really shouldn't be a lot of this, I don't know what to say. And I love your I your recommendation of, you know, figuring out these are the different things I'm going to rotate through that I can that I get excited to talk about, that I can talk about, that is consistent in my life, that's consistent in my author journey. And then you don't hit those roadblocks where you're like, I have nothing to say. Because yeah, again, if you're if you're getting to that point, then you're not using your newsletter in the right way or for the right reasons.
SPEAKER_01:Well, but the other reason that you should, and this is the same thing like when I, when I was talking about my, when I was teaching that class on um, you know, social the social media class on Saturday, the more that you can identify the tracks that you want to speak to, whether that's in social media or in your newsletter or writing blog posts or doing podcasts, whatever that is, the more that you can identify those those quote unquote tracks or templates, right, that you're gonna, that you're gonna address, the more that this, the more that ideas will jump out at you. But if you're approaching your newsletter with every month you're like, oh my gosh, what am I gonna say? Like you just said, right? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna say? Yeah, no wonder you're burnt out because who has that time to be that creative? Like you're reinventing the wheel every single month. So stuff will start to jump out at you, like, oh, I could talk about this next month, or I could talk about that. And this is something that I can like save. And Amy and I do this with the podcast too, because sometimes we get like idea bunnies that just multiply and they end up filling our offices. But then, you know, we kind of break it down. We're just like, oh, we should just do this, you know, and and these ideas will start to kind of pop into your mind, and the new it becomes it just becomes so much easier.
SPEAKER_00:You know, exactly. Um, so next next one. No, I love this. The spray and pray mistake for you know, this is pitching, PR outreach, getting a hold of media, wanting to get coverage, you know, and this happens, the burnout starts to happen when you are just churning these out. You know, you're just you you got your list, you're hammering them out. It's more about getting it done than it is about, again, I, you know, I know I said it when it came to the newsletter, but you really have to understand the purpose of what you're doing, but then you really have to also put yourself in the position of the recipient. What are they looking for? What's going to catch their attention? What's going to set you apart? And also, Penny, I think it's equally as important to think about they get dozens, sometimes hundreds of these a week, right? So how can you stand out and be respect but while also being respectful of their time? How can you make that yes something easy for them? Because when you go about doing anything with the right frame of mind and really understanding the goals, both for you for yourself and the and the recipient, things get a lot more structured, which then leads to things getting a lot simpler and easier to manage.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, and when you just hammer out a bunch of pitches and they're not customized and they're not personalized and you haven't done your research, you're realistically, you know, I'm just gonna say it, you're probably going to get a lot more no's andor complete silence, which is devastating. Yeah, exactly. Like we don't put time into this with the like, you know, assuming we're going to get no's across the board. Like obviously, we put our time and energy in the marketing for a positive response, no matter what it is. But it's just this is one of those things where quality over quantity is going to serve you in the long term. So you're much better off spending your time personalizing five or six pitches to the exact right people that you know are interested in the kind of content that you write, whether it's genre fiction or nonfiction. You know, just the more confident you are in your choices and how you approach them, the better response rate you'll get, which means you don't have to just hammer out dozens and dozens and dozens of these hoping that something just sticks. You know, so you definitely you don't want to confuse volume with impact. You know, you can have a lot more impact with less work if done the right way. And that's what we'd really encourage everybody listening to focus on.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I completely agree with that. And I also think that there is a pressure to, there's a pressure to do, because you and I've done, I mean, cumulatively we've done well over 35 years worth of PR, right? Given our time working together. Yeah. So we've seen a lot of authors feel very desperate to get attention. And I understand that. I understand the desperation to get somebody to notice this book that you have worked so very hard on. But here's the thing: here's the deal is that if you are, if you're just like Amy was saying, spray and pray, you just throw a whole bunch of stuff up against the wall and you hope that some of it sticks, the majority of it is not going to stick because you're pitching out of sort of desperation rather than pitching doing something that's really quality. And very likely when authors that, you know, Amy and I have worked with who come to us after having done a lot of pitching on their own and not gotten a lot of results, a lot of times like they're pitching the wrong people, right? So I want my memoir on the Today Show, for example, and we've done whole shows on this so we don't have to go too far down the rabbit hole. Is there really an alignment? So you may have a staggering story that everybody should read, and I get it, but is this really something that a national media outlet is going to feature? And the answer is maybe very likely no. But there's maybe an there is potentially another more productive way for you to approach the pitching for your book, whether that's national media or podcasts or reviewers or bloggers, whatever that is. It is going to feel so much more productive for you to feel to be selective in your choices, personalized in your pitch, and you know, focused in terms of how much you can actively do every week than it is just to say, because this is where, so this is kind of the birth of where a lot of uh uh hybrid publishers and indie publishers will sell these press release packages, right? So they sell these press release packages and they used to be a lot of money, like I don't know how much they cost now. Basically, they write a press release, which that's first wrong. I love to get my use my little sound effect. That's the first wrong answer, right? Because there is a book published every eight seconds. So writing a press release for a book is not my favorite use of your time, right? Or your money if you're having somebody else do it. So you're writing a press release, they're writing a press release of the book, and then they're sending it out to like 5,000 media people across the country, and that's another wrong answer. I've seen lists that come from those. So basically what they do is they they just grab a whole bunch of media and they spit your press release out to them. I've seen romance novels go out to, I've seen that these pitch lists and some they go out to like Car and Driver or Birds and Blooms. You know, I mean, they're they're uh the overreach is not gonna help you. In fact, uh it's just it's a complete waste of and they're expensive. Like I saw one of them was like$1,700. I'm like, whoa, I could be spending that money on something so much more productive. So that's that's something just something to think about.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, and Penny, you always talk about everything is your resume. So you really want to question also like, do I want my name going out to places that are wildly inappropriate for my book? You know? Yeah. It's like you don't necessarily want that to be. I mean, I realize the world is huge, media is huge, but believe it or not, it's actually not that huge. You know, people talk, people work for multiple outlets, you know, especially when people freelance, things like that. You just never know, right? And so that's another reason to be thoughtful with your pitching. It's all about like that is your brand, that is your resume, that is what you're putting out in the world. So, I mean, if anything, just knowing that you're putting high quality communication out there and to the right people says a lot about who you are as an author. And I promise it will get you a lot farther than all these nonsense connections that you know what I mean. Because Penny, you and I get you you mentioned it recently just a few minutes ago, you and I get really nonsense stuff. And what's your initial reaction?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. It just, it's yeah, it's just a complete waste of my time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. Like I'm always like, oh God, you know what I mean? Or like when people write us and say, dear sirs, it's like, oh yeah. You know, yeah, it's like, no, no, sirs here, but thank you. You know, it's like I would never that am like ever, ever, ever respond to another email from that person, even if they finally figured it out, because I'm like, clearly, you do not care enough about my time or what we actually do to bother doing additional couple minutes of research. And you know what's so funny?
SPEAKER_01:You know what's so funny is I got invited to do this online virtual event and they they emailed me and they sold it, like, oh my gosh, this is huge, and we have 30,000 people drawn. I'm like, wow, that's a big number. Like, this is impressive. And so I, you know, they said, well, you know, here's a calendar link, you know, book a 10-minute call. We'll talk to you about the event and everything like that. Two days later, I got three emails, separate emails from them with the same exact, which of course they're inviting a lot of people, so I get it, right? Um, with separate, so three separate emails over a few days. One was to Randall, right? So same thing, Mary Randall. The other one was to, they were all to guys, basically. So maybe I don't know, they people think that I'm a dude. So I don't know. But um, and so I wrote them and I said, you know, not Randall, not Jimmy, not whatever it was. Oh yeah, we're just we're just sending this out to a lot of people. I'm like, okay, so what that tells me is that you're not being selective. Like, I'm not really as special as you made me feel with the initial email because you're basically saying, I mean, yeah, okay, so just to be fair, like I get it, like email systems can, you know, glitch, and I get all the things, but it's kind of weird that it like sort of happened over a few days, and all of a sudden all these weird, weird random emails just anyway.
SPEAKER_00:I know, and it always infuriates me for whoever hired these people to do that too, you know.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, we live in an age where it's very easy to not feel special. Like, and this is not me going all Tony Robbins on in his podcast, but because we get so much spam, we get so much crap, we get so much dear sirs. Emails. I mean, we get all of this stuff. It's really easy to make the people feel like you're wasting their time. They're not special. They're not important enough for you to pay attention. And I'll tell you something, cutting back on the time that you're spending, that you're feel like you're spinning your wheels and taking, like, if you're like, I have to pitch like 50 people this month or something, try to pitch five and do it really thoughtfully.
SPEAKER_00:You know what I mean? Um exactly. Like you're so much more likely to get a response if you show those five people that you pay attention to what they cover, what they're interested in, some of their previous work. And honestly, in in the long run, you still end up spending less time than you would have trying to make this massive list and shoot out template emails.
SPEAKER_01:For sure. Yes, absolutely. And I think that so, so on the heels of this is um uh the topic of sustainable book marketing. And I am such a fan of this, and I don't mean to sound like I'm 900 years old, but sometimes I look at like I look at all these new trends like, oh, look at this brand new, like, like there was like, I don't know, that now there's some new social media site like Blue Jay or Bluebird or something like that. I don't even know what it's called. And threads, like threads really went nowhere, but everybody kind of jumped. I mean, I don't know, did threads really go anywhere in terms of a social media site? Like I know Instagram is still kind of trying to push it, but I I I think it's really sort of fallen flat. There are so every year Amy and I see uh, you know, a new social media trend, a new must-do thing, a new algorithm, a new thing that authors feel like they have to chase. Right. And I'm a huge look, if you have the time, if you've learned all of these things, if this show is like Penny and Amy are not telling me anything that I don't know, awesome. As I said, you come on the show in 2026 and you can teach a class. I think that's great. Like, how did you do it? But if you've mastered all the things, then go chase that shiny new object. But if you haven't, like the majority of us, or we're still kind of like trying to play catch-up with all the things that are already on our plate. Um I really recommend that you take a look at everything that you're doing and find the foundational pieces that you really want to invest your time in in the new year and really own those, right? And I think, I mean, Amy, do you want to talk a little bit about what we mean by sustainable marketing? Because that's the these are actually the fun things. And oddly enough, we've done a ton of shows on all of these topics, which is great.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And this, I mean, sustainable, we all we already kind of know what that means in everyday life, but this is truly the kind of marketing that actually grows with your brand instead of distracting you from everything else that you need to be focusing on. So everything we covered in the first part of the episode where we talked about all those burnout trigger moments with all of like where we see it happening most, this is the exact opposite. This is doing the kind of work that grows with you, that doesn't throw up a big roadblock in your plans to continue writing that next book. These are the kind of things that just feed into everything you're doing and the momentum builds organically. And this is about, you know, we talk about reader relationships. That's very important. Really, a lot of the sustainable stuff really does come down to the effort you're putting into your brand and then also what you're putting into, like Penny said, your foundation, you know, because we talk about it a lot, but I really think it's it's one of the most important things that gets overlooked is doing things in the right order. And there's so much time and energy and money you can waste on marketing if your foundation isn't set up properly. And by that we mean your Amazon retail page. Everything that is static, that is there for people to judge you on needs to be top-notch. You know what I mean? Because you can't control when people will land on your book page. So you need to make sure that it is ready to convert when they get there. And building from that makes a lot more sense. And sustainable marketing comes from that solid foundation. And what's great about that is that you control it. You are in charge of how great your retail page looks, how much energy you've put into a really great description, filling out all that author-central content that also helps convert readers, creating A plus content, all those things, that's not an algorithm telling you what to do. That's not a trend. That is just good business, right? Right. Right. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And I think that when you, and you know, a lot of times, again, because the flashy stuff is really fun and we all want to chase the new thing because we feel the pressure to do so, right? We feel like if I don't chase it, I'm gonna get left behind. And then I'm not gonna sell books and the pressure to sell books and the competition. Like I get that, I get the whole like hamster wheel that we're kind of all on. But the foundational pieces, so like the, you know, like your newsletter, your website, as Amy mentioned, your Amazon retail page, those are things that you can control, right? So and they're not other, I mean, I realize Amazon is an algorithm that we've done whole shows on that. But these are pieces that you can control. They're not necessarily part of a trend cycle, which may be big now and not so big in six months. Um, because social media platforms and trends, they do come and go, and they are important to pay attention to, certainly. But if you haven't spent enough time focusing on your reader relationships, you know, your newsletter, your brand, those are the assets that you own, and those are the things that can really that can pay off way more in the long run. And let me give you an example. And I've cited this author, so this is not a news story, but I've cited this author before in other podcasts that we've done. There was an author, and she really she was traditionally published, she wrote uh romanticy. So a mixture of if you're not familiar with the genre, it's fiction, it's uh romance and fiction and uh fantasy. And she had built her uh newsletter and her reader relationships and all the things, and she's like, you know what? I'm gonna publish this next book. I'm gonna independently publish. She put in she put a call out to her fan base via her newsletter, and within 48 hours, her book launched, it had eight, 4,000, excuse me, 4,000 ratings and reviews. Right. Focusing on reader relationships, and again, we've done whole shows on this, focusing on reader relationships, focusing on the things that are really sustainable, um will pay off for you in ways that we we that Amy and I can't even express. And I think we have expressed actually well in in prior in prior podcasts that we've done.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And I think again, it comes back to I love that the focus of sustainability is what you can't control. You know what I mean? Like pitching to national media is sketchy as hell. Yeah. Like again, there's a time and a place and a reason to go after it and shoot your shot. Like I totally get it, but it is you can't control the response for a laundry list of reasons that we won't go into here. But focusing on what you can control is so much more sustainable. And we've done shows on local, anything local libraries, local events, local retail. These are all really important things because you actually have your hands in that. And you control the momentum, you can control the contact, you can walk right into that bookstore and chat with the owner or the manager. Those are the kind of things that are much more sustainable because you actually have your hands in it. And there aren't these million other factors involved completely out of your control that determine whether or not it's worth your time, you know? Right. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:No, I I completely agree with that. And I think that, you know, connection with readers, connection with local. We did a whole show on local, right? Yep. Um, connection with local bookstores, festivals coming up, things like that. I mean, those are the those are the connections. And then, you know, obviously, connections with any relationships that you've built or that you are working to build with bloggers and influencers and things like that. Like one of the things that I am a huge fan of is I'm a huge fan of like thank you notes and acknowledgements and things like that. Like that's always been kind of part of my DNA. When you think about so we talk a lot about relationships with readers, but when was the last time that you thanked, and you know, I'm sure you said a thank you, like you got an email from somebody and they said thank you for, you know, you said thank you so much for your review, et cetera. When was the last time that you sent like thank you notes to um, you know, industry people who have helped you or influencers who, you know, those kinds of things. You don't have to send everybody like gift baskets and go crazy or whatever. I mean, if you want to, that's awesome. And if you have swag, that's even better. Like that's really fun. Those are really important relationships. And sometimes when we get so caught up in, I must do all these 50 things today, we forget about fostering those and nurturing those because these are relationships that are gonna carry with you're gonna carry with you throughout your entire writer career. I mean, Amy, yes, don't you agree?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, absolutely. And I and again, the idea of creating real relationships with these people instead of transactional, you know, relationships. Yes, it's so important because if you get a feature or a review from a blogger or an influencer, 100% stay in touch with them, say your thank yous, because absolutely that gives you the opportunity to when you release your next book, you can offer it to them again. And you can also gently, you know, kind of say, or if you have a friend or a colleague that you think would also, you know, enjoy it, I'd love to send them a copy too if you want to let them know. You know what I mean? That kind of networking is really important, but you can't just say that to anybody. You have to say that to the people that you've actually put the time and effort into getting to know a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think that, you know, um building reader relationships, we don't have to, you know, keep because we know we've talked about that a lot in the show and we've done other shows on that. Super important. Owning your platform. A lot of authors that not a lot, but enough that it's worth mentioning, that come our way don't have a website, right? Focus on the things that stop putting all of your eggs in, you know, a social media basket that may or may not help you, or may or may not even be there, or who knows what, right? Social platforms are borrowed spaces, right? I used to refer to them as like crop sharing, like years ago. People did crop sharing and the thing, the lamb goes away, and then there goes all the things, right? Social media is kind of the same way. Focusing on the sustainable habits, your website, your author page, your author retail page. Um, and then, you know, I think, Amy, I think it's fair to say, you know, to do an audit like once a quarter in the coming year, just set some time aside and figure out like, is everything that I'm doing still aligned with my goals? And do I have the time to add something to my plate in terms of, you know, new trends that may be happening and things like that? I mean, what do you think?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I love the idea of doing an audit. And I love that you mentioned that the things that basically the most sustainable sustainable efforts or things that you can have associated with your brand are the ones that are working for you 24-7. You know, like your website's doing that, your retail page is doing that. You know what I mean? What you put out there into the world is doing that. And yes, there is a time and a place for taking a chance and on marketing efforts that are a little bit riskier, because obviously that's also part of expanding. But you really want to make sure that everything that is working for you 24-7, that people can access and read and reference and learn about you whenever they want to is top-notch. And I can't emphasize enough how much easier the marketing gets when you have all of those in place because then the people that find you through other means completely out of your control, they're seeing a great website. And I don't mean expensive, I just mean clean, up to date. You know what I mean? Matches, matches the tone, the genre, the topic. You know, they get to they find your book on Amazon and your description's excellent. You know, you've filled in your author central content, you've got A plus content up there. Your bio really makes sense for who you're trying to reach. Those are the kind of things that are literally working for you nonstop, even when you're sleeping, even when you're focused on writing your next book. So when authors skip those, it it's just baffling to me. You know what I mean? And especially when they skip those and then instead are spending their time, you know, like we talked about at the beginning of the show, kind of spray and pray and doing all the things to check it off the list because that's what you're supposed to be doing and that's what marketing is. That's really not what good marketing and branding is.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's not. And I think that I think that you can, I think that once you have kind of dipped into this little mini self-audit, um, asking yourself, you know, how sustainable is your marketing? Then you can start to layer on trends, as I said, you know, if you feel like your reader actually spends time there. Because again, remember, it's not so much about hopping on the next big fancy, shiny trend, but it really has to matter to your reader. At the end of the day, that's the only thing that matters, right? Is your reader there? Is your reader on TikTok? Is your reader on threads or whatever? You know what I mean? Um, and then decide what, you know, and just be willing to say no to, and that's something that has been really hard for me, because as Amy well knows, like I want to do all the things all the time. It's really hard for me to say no, but at some point you cut, you have to just be, you know, I mean, it if it's gonna waste your time, it's not gonna impact your book. And then, you know, six months down the road, your book's still sitting on on Amazon with not a single review because unfortunately you've been focused on the wrong thing. Yes, exactly. You know, so we hope that this, I know this episode was sort of a combination of all of our ideas and all the things, but we really hope that this episode has been helpful for you. And again, we love your feedback. Um, fill out the really cool survey that Amy designed because we really would love to start to shape our shows in 2026 to um what you want and what you want to hear more of and what you want to hear less of. And please don't say that you want to hear less of me because then I'll just cry. Um But we so appreciate you. We hope that you have a really good, we have some really cool stuff coming up in December. So stick around uh through our uh then the as we close out our fifth year, we're gonna start our sixth year in uh in the new year. Don't forget to text podcast to 888 402 8940. And if you have not yet done so, please subscribe to the show so that you get notified. Every Friday we are in your feed and we would love a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much. Bye bye.
