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
New Year, New Launch, New Podcast Format = Smarter Author Wins
We are so excited to share our new podcast format! In this short episode we break down what to expect in the new year! Based on your feedback and input, we're changing up our podcast to serve YOU even better!
Ready to stop guessing your next marketing move and start stacking real wins? We’re sharing a flexible monthly roadmap that pairs structure with freedom, so you can either follow along from January to December or drop into the exact topics you need right now. Each theme stands on its own yet builds momentum toward the moments that matter most—like hitting holiday sales without the last-minute scramble.
We break down how seasonal timing naturally supports author goals: fresh starts in January for planning and positioning, spring cleanups for visibility, midyear platform tune-ups, and fall strategies for peak buying behavior. Along the way, we commit to clarity you can trust. You’ll also get updated takes on evergreen essentials—think Amazon optimization, category strategy, keywords, pricing psychology, and retail page conversion—because what worked five years ago likely won’t move the needle today.
Our approach is reader-first and action-driven. Whether you’re drafting, revising, or heading into launch, the focus is on consumer experience: how readers discover your book, feel confident in it, and decide to buy. We’re doubling down on 30-minute episodes packed with practical steps you can apply the same day, so learning turns into measurable progress. And because your input sharpens our aim, we’re keeping the listener survey open to steer topics that deliver the highest impact for your brand and your genre.
If you’re ready for a smarter year—clear priorities, timely updates, and no fluff—this roadmap is your guide. Hit follow, share this with an author friend who needs structure without rigidity, and leave a quick review to tell us the next topic you want prioritized.
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.
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Hello and welcome back to the Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast. This is Penny Santov and Amy Cornell. And if Christmas is your holiday, we hope that you had a great one. I can't believe we're at the end of the year, December 26th, only a few more days until the new year. I I don't even know. Again, we've said this so many times, the year has just flown by. Um, this episode, we are unpacking some really exciting stuff for the new year. Really looking forward to this week. We also did a uh with your help listeners, we also did a listener profile. And as it turns out, y'all are really eager to learn. You are in it to win it, you're in it to do the work. Um, you're not looking for weird, cheesy shortcuts, which we are not about. And that was that really inspired where we want to go with the show in the new year. So we thought we would give you kind of a sneak peek of what we're doing. So we are introducing um sort of a loose monthly roadmap approach. So it's not a strict January's about this and February's about this. But each month we're gonna have an overarching theme with every episode that's kind of stands on its own. So January will be about, you know, and we're gonna we'll we will unpack that in the January episode. So really think of it more as a menu in terms of um where we want the year, where we want each month to focus and and where we want the year to go. Ideally, and Amy and I talked about this yesterday during our show brainstorm, is if you listen to the show from January through December, by the time you get to this, like, you know, because we get to July and like uh authors start to think about, oh my gosh, I gotta start thinking about holiday sales and blah, blah, blah. I gotta be prepared. The way that we want to develop the shows in the new year is that every single month is gonna help you get to that next level and to that next goal. So when the holidays roll around, you're not gonna think, oh my gosh, I'm too late to start pushing for holiday sales. I mean, that was kind of the idea, right, Amy?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, exactly. And we want you to know that just because we're covering a topic about, say, branding, doesn't mean it's not going to help you if you're still in the drafting phase, right? Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, if you're revising something, you know, we are still going to make sure that every episode is very educational and very much all the information any of you listening need to have. But we wanted to set it up in a way that for those of you that wanted perhaps a little more structure in terms of, because we talk about a lot, right, Penny. We talk about doing the right things in the right order. Yeah. So we really wanted to structure next year in a way that helps authors that can kind of that that resonate with that, that kind of guide you to do things in the general right order. So we're not skipping the line. We're not, you know, necessarily focused on something that it should be happening six months down the road, right when your book releases. You know what I mean? So we really wanted to give you something that you could follow. But at the same time, for those of you, because this was a big part of the poll, a lot of you said that you like to look through the episodes and you look for topics that resonate with you for what you're dealing with in the moment. And we totally support that, right? Yeah, exactly. You're dealing with a challenge or you're prepared to release, or you're 30 days out from release, or whatever it is, and you scan the episodes to see what do Amy Penny have to say about what I'm dealing with right now. And so we still want you to be able to do that, you know. But then this is a great way. It's kind of like a little insurance policy. You can kind of say, okay, if I listen to all of January, these are all going to organically work together and build off of each other in a way that just amplifies what you can get out of each episode.
SPEAKER_00:Right, exactly. Because we notice that, you know, certain weeks of the year naturally align with what authors are thinking about. So January is always about fresh starts, right? Spring is great for visibility tune-ups, and fall is always high season. And so that's what we are um, you know, we're leading into the seasons and while still making every episode specific and actionable and totally standalone. So, like Amy said, you can scroll back, you can jump in anywhere um that you like, just in, you know, if you feel like you uh feel like if you missed something. Um so our promise for 2026 is to keep it simple, practical, no fluff. I mean, that's kind of what we do already, right? But I feel like in our sixth season, like we've really like one of the things what I found was really interesting is that the majority of our listeners do not go back to season one. They don't start with the first season, which actually is fine because I gotta tell you, as much as we loved doing the show from day one, season one, we were really kind of getting our sea legs, right? We're really kind of figuring out how the dynamic and doing this show together and that kind of thing, even though we worked together for a ton of years, like it's still a different sort of dynamic. And that's really interesting. And I think that authors, our listeners are thinking that they really only want to go back through the last year, which again is fine. Um but what we are gonna do too is we are gonna do updates to existing topics. And Amy and I talked about that. Like I know we we say a lot, we want to we want to keep pushing out fresh new content, which we always do. But at the same time, there are topics that deserve repeating because they need an update. So anything on Amazon, you'll hear that, that will still be part of our repertoire for this year, too. Um, updating existing topics with new, fresh information because everything is changing all the time in terms of publishing and right.
SPEAKER_01:And that's one of the exciting yet also kind of daunting aspects of sure. Yeah, on top of your marketing and your branding. And we see it all the time, right? When authors come to us, Penny, and they say, I've been doing this, that, and the third. And I'm sure you and I both sometimes are like, well, that may have worked five or six years ago. And sometimes we get authors that you know haven't released for a while. I'm like, well, that may have worked 10 years ago, right? And just because it worked at one point doesn't mean that's how it works anymore. And Penny and I are very much focused. Those of them listening for a while probably realize this, but we are so hyper focused on the reader and consumer experience. And that's really the value I think personally that we bring to both the podcast, but then working with our clients as well, is that always making sure that they stay connected to the people that end up reading and consuming and purchasing their books, you know, versus kind of blanket marketing concepts. We really like to tune into what keeps an author's brand going long term, right? And that is those reader connections. That is staying in tune with what your market is looking for and what they're looking for in an author or in a thought leader, you know, and staying really grounded in those foundational pieces. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. And I think that the other thing that we're gonna do, and we we already do this, but what Amy and I had, and we had this discussion yesterday during our podcast brainstorm, where we kind of talked about the year and what we want to do and what we don't want to do. One of the things that we don't want to do is we don't want to create, we don't want to have nebulous um show titles and nebulous descriptions. And we already, we already very much veer away from that. Like we're not fans of throwing in some weird thing where you think you're getting one thing and you're actually getting another. Because Amy and I are huge fans of podcasts. We listen to a ton of them, and we do unsubscribe from shows that do that. And you and I have had this discussion, right? Or shows are like, oh, hyped up, we're gonna talk about XYZ. And then you listen to the show and they maybe mention it for three seconds and they move on to something that you weren't really interested in. And that is something so you will know exactly what the episode is from the title. We're very specific about that. So you can go and pick whatever you want to, you know, what whatever you want to focus on. Um, if you feel stuck or whatever is going on for you, if you're struggling with something, the episode, the show title will definitely indicate what it is. And so, you know, you can pick it. I'm sorry, am I rambling? I'm rambling. I am so rambling. But Amy, we talked about this yesterday too, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. I mean, we want to make sure that so not only are we going to give you a slightly more structured pathway to follow if that's what you're into, you know, but again, still making sure that individual episodes, you can jump into any episode and still get what you're looking for if that's what you're struggling with in the moment.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, we want to really make sure you understand what you're getting into because we respect your time and we respect the fact that you have a lot of learning to do, right? And if you're gonna do this correctly, you need to jump in and figure it out and then start applying what you're learning in the episodes.
SPEAKER_00:Right, exactly. And we also got a lot of feedback uh in terms of the show length, too. So that was another thing. Because in the in year one, we used to do mini sodes. So we did, you know, a full episode and then a mini sode. And then we kind of got away from that, I think, in year two or three. And um, one of the things that we're finding from the listener feedback is that y'all really like the 30-minute shows. So we're gonna keep, we're gonna stay with that structure. Some of them might lean a little bit longer just because, again, we love to yada yada, as you know. But we are gonna try to keep it to that 30-minute structure. So again, we were that the survey is still running, by the way, and we're gonna keep it running because we wanna get your feedback so you'll be able to see that in the show notes. But I'm really excited about this, Amy. Are you just I'm really looking forward to 2026?
SPEAKER_01:I am too, because I think I love that we have both the combination of listener feedback and a really clear path forward because we get excited, as you've said, we get excited talking about this stuff, but we really want to make sure that we're always addressing topics that are current and valuable and make sense for what you can run with and how you can improve your brand and your platform and all those things. And so I just, you know, it's like, especially for me, this, you know, the idea of having like a more structured format is like, whoa, Amy's really embracing this structured format, which is not typically the direction I lean for anybody listening, but I actually got really jazzed about it because it really helps us see a big picture of where all the content is going. And it's fun to see how everything will be building on individual episodes, will build into something bigger that y'all can use.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I gotta tell you, and and then we'll let you let y'all go and get back to your holiday celebrations or that weird in-between time between Christmas and New Year, even if Christmas is not your holiday, that weird kind of time where there is no time and we all kind of sit around in our PJs and watch movies and eat cheese, or maybe that's just me. I don't know. But we're gonna let we'll definitely get back to that. But I have to say, yesterday when we were doing our show brainstorm and we were starting to outline the shows for the for the first quarter of 2026. Man, I got so excited. Amy was like, highlight the shows that you want. I'm like, oh, I want to do all of them. All of them. Thank goodness there are five Fridays in in January because there were so many shows in January that I wanted to do. So we are really looking forward to the new year. We hope you are too. Again, the survey is in the show notes. Feel free to fill it out at any time. We're gonna keep it up there. We're gonna keep it going through January and probably even through Q1 of 2026. We want to wish you all a very amazing new year, um, full of all of the good things that you want. We we love y'all. We are so grateful to have you as listeners. Um, be sure to sign up for our Tech. We can so many Text or Listeners, which I love so much. Uh TechSource Podcast to 888-402-8940. And we will see you back here uh on January 2nd, 2026. So happy new year, guys. We really look forward to 2026. Baby, happy new year to you. Thank you, you too. All right, we'll see y'all next week. Bye bye.
