This one's a calico. But I she it's funny because she never comes up on the desk until the moment I'm about to do something, and then she shows up.
Oh, well, thank you.
She loves the spotlight.
She does. She is. She is.
Katrina, would you just would you prefer that
we just wait one more minute, or do you want us to get started?
Looks like we can start.
We can start? Sounds good. Okay. Hi, everyone. It's so good to see you.
Sort of, and thank you for joining us. What I thought I'd do is, I'll just introduce myself first, and we'll get into some housekeeping before we get started.
My name is Randy Chan, and my pronouns are he/
him, and I am the Director of Channel marketing at HTP
Books. And HTP stands for Harlequin Trade Publishing.
So in my role, I'm just responsible for marketing our books in the US,
even though I'm based here in Toronto, and my team handles all marketing to libraries, to Barnes & Noble, and to independent books stores.
And I've worked in publishing since 1998, which I suspect is longer than most of you were born.
And I was at Penguin Random House Canada for 16 and a half years before I joined Harlequin, and prior to that I was at House of Anansi Press and HarperCollins Canada, and I've also taught at the publishing programs at Humber, at Centennial,
Sheridan, and Simon Fraser University. And lastly, I just wanted to squeeze in a shout out, I was part of a BIPOC of Publishing in Canada group. Last year, I was part of their mentorship program and I just wanted to say what a terrific group that is if you're
interested. You should definitely check that out. And one of tonight's panelists helps run that organization's page.
So that is me, and I will start off with a land
acknowledgment. The Canadian Publishers' Council operates within the city of Toronto on the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit,
the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse
First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13,
signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Williams Treaties, signed with multiple Mississaugas
and Chippewa bands. We acknowledge that our speakers and attendees come from a wide range of territories and lands across Turtle Island, and to learn more about the traditional Indigenous lands
you are on, you can visit the websites Whose Land or Native slash Land websites. And then I'm sure many of you know the drill by now in terms of webinar etiquette.
This webinar will be recorded, and only the speakers will have their camera and microphone functions enabled.
So please use the chat and Q&A. functions in the toolbar.
I see many of you already are using it. And it's at the bottom of your screen.
So share any questions you might have we'll reserve time at the end for your questions, and if you have any issues along the way, just contact the host using the chat function. If you require closed captioning, you can enable that function in the lower right hand section of the Zoom window which reads live
transcription and a transcript of this webinar will be available in a few days, so let's get started.
I've been so looking forward to speaking with Marisol and Paige tonight, they're both smart and talented, and you're gonna learn a lot from them.
So, Marisol, would you please introduce yourself to everyone.
Yes. Hello. Hi! Thanks for joining us. My name is Marisol Fokes.
I work as a marketing coordinator at HarperCollins Canada, and I primarily specialize in Children's and YA books.
So if you ever see a YA book or a children's book in Canada, I probably helped market it from HarperCollins.
Yeah.
And Paige?
Hi, Everyone! I'm Paige. I am the Consumer Engagement Manager at Penguin Random House Canada
right now. I work with all of the corporate accounts.
So anything you see from Penguin Random House Canada online, I probably touched.
I help with the website. And I'm really excited to be talking to everyone tonight.
Well, really, the first question just to start us off, I'm sure a lot of people are just wondering what is both of your educational and professional background.
What was your path to getting a career in publishing. Marisol,
can we start with you?
Yeah, for sure. Please excuse my cat's paw.
She's trying to be a part of this. But basically, I have an undergraduate degree in English literature, and I have a Master's degree in comparative literature.
But I do want to preface it by saying that you don't need either of
those degrees necessarily to get into publishing. And I've also recently completed a certificate of publishing with Toronto's Metropolitan University, which is something that I was working on part-time pretty much since the day I was hired up until now. So I started
publishing in 2019.
Okay.
Yeah, I have a very similar background. I had a double major in English and Professional Writing at York University.
And then, after that I went into a publishing certificate at Centennial College, which led me to the internship that led to where I am now.
I know I'm the Moderator, I'm not supposed to answer all the, answer these questions, and you should hear from Marisol and Paige.
But I will say, when I did my English degree. You know I spent 4 years sort of just, you know, just doing it, and kind of being robotic, but it wasn't until my first day at Centennial College in the publishing program where things clicked where I finally, I, I literally had a voice in my
head, saying, Oh, like this is what I wanna do. This is, now I know, and I really never looked back.
But yes, given the attendees here tonight are considering a career in publishing,
tell us what your current job is very specifically, what are your day to day duties?
What are you responsible for? What? What would a typical day look like?
Can we start with Paige?
Hmm.
Yeah, so I do a bunch of different little things which you'll find a lot in marketing is like, sometimes you're not just doing one job specifically, depending on your, like, the size of your company.
So right now I work on the influencer marketing for our company, so I help maintain the database that we have of influencers who do outreach for us.
I run a program where we offer influencers books.
Another part of my job is, I do a lot of content for consumers.
So I try to find where consumers are engaging with our brand online, what kind of books they're reading, and what kind of trends are happening, like on TikTok or on Twitter like, if anything is happening, and it's a moment, how can we make that about our books?
So that's basically my job in a nutshell.
It could be as much as putting some stuff up online. It could be coming up with listicles or coming up with broader campaigns like, right now, we're working on our Black History Month campaign by partnering with influencers and running some ads so it's mostly about just reaching our
consumers in, like, the very different pathways that you can do that.
Hi, yeah, I am really similar to Paige in the sense that I wear a lot of different hats which I think you find in big and small publishers, most likely. But similar to Paige,
I also work with influencers, and help oversee our influencer program and our database as well.
We've also launched an influencer newsletter, which is something that I'm involved with.
But, as I said, kind of in my intro, I really focus primarily on kids and children's marketing.
So YA books and younger is what I primarily focus on.
So I help with the content creation and social media management
for various digital channels that we have for those kinds of brands and titles that we use to market them digitally.
A lot of my marketing experience is in digital. So a lot of it is social media, newsletters, anything that you can think of online, including maintaining the websites which you know, Carousel, that you see that change thematically
each month those sorts of things are all things that I have a hand in.
And most recently I've moved into something that we call list management.
So a marking list management is essentially the list of books in a given season that you are looking after to make sure that they have marketing plans and executing them accordingly.
So I really help with that, and then oversee kind of the marketing efforts that go towards all the different children's books on my list.
And I think that's why I love talking to you both.
I just feel like you definitely represent, you know, the way forward, the future.
I, I come from sort of tradition where we just spent money to market books, which obviously is still true and you, you all do that as well.
But I came from a tradition where you know you had a book.
You had a budget, you advertised a book through print newspapers, magazines, radio.
And nowadays I do feel like there's just a whole other landscape out there where we're actually reaching
gatekeepers, and we can do that organically, we can do that
paid, but it's just a new, it's just a new way forward.
And you both are definitely leading the charge. So let's get into skill set.
I think people on, at this event will want to know what skills are or experiences were important for you, or just for all the, any candidates that are looking for, for a marketing career.
Marisol?
Yeah, what types of skills? I, the first thing I wanna say is that I do think personality is a big part of it, and something we were talking about a little bit.
Yes.
Before we went live was how everybody comes to publishing and thinks they're gonna be in editorial.
But if you have the personality for it, I highly encourage you to consider marketing and publicity, because I would say that marketing is creative,
it is full of big personalities, and lots of fun, creative ideas.
So it is a really fun place to work. So in terms of skills, I think an outgoing
personality is always an asset. You don't necessarily need to have one.
There's obviously a lot of marketing that goes on behind the scenes.
But if you do like putting yourself out there, you like to create content, and maybe you already are a content creator in your own time.
Those are all great skills that you can use, especially in the digital marketing realm where we are working with online creators.
And we're working to create content online to promote our own books.
I would say, writing and editing skills are always useful in publishing.
You don't have to be obviously top tier. You don't need to have to read an entire thesaurus, but I think, having a good grasp of grammar and just kind of the regular rules of language, are really an asset especially when you're writing marketing materials which can be anything like
newsletters to captions on social media. And I think the last thing would be time management and organization which I'm sure is a requirement for probably a lot of jobs and a lot of office jobs where you have to do a lot of different tasks, at different times, but for me, keeping track of
my different tasks, my different projects and making sure they stay on track. That has been a skill that I have been in progress learning probably, since I started, and will continue to work on throughout my career. But I would say those 3 are probably the biggest for me, at least.
I completely agree with all of those, and I also wanted to add a curiosity.
So something about marketing is that it's always changing like Randy was talking about, the base that has changed and how we market things.
So curiosity, a willingness to learn, and always be constantly on the search for the newest thing is something that's really useful in marketing.
Having an eye for the bigger picture, because whenever, especially if you're in a digital space like we are, whenever you're online, anything you're seeing is something that you could be using to adapt to your job, so like training your brain that way to sometimes think of content, that you're consuming as content that could potentially
be used for work is a really hard one to like train your brain on.
So I highly recommend sometimes like looking at something and being like paying attention to how you're being marketed to by other companies and also adaptability, because, like we said the thing, everything is always changing, so being able to adapt at a moment's notice and sometimes like look into something different or like something happens
online, and you suddenly can't post what you were planning to post, having an adaptability and a willingness to have things change, on a change on a moment's notice is really useful, too.
Totally, agree.
And I think about like the times that I've had to go through all the different applicants for an open position, and I'm always looking for something that's, creativity is, is certainly something there.
But I'd like both of you said just something that demonstrates something.
Your passion for books, whether it be your publishing education or your Instagram, or your voluntary experience, or, or the fact that you worked at a bookstore, just, just help, those things are helpful to round out who you are in a way that sometimes I don't think a resume necessarily shows that.
And if, if I may, I will just say, sometimes I think people disqualify themselves from a marketing career, because they think that oh, I have to have a really outgoing personality.
I have to be really gregarious, and I'm not that, and, and I don't have an outsized personality.
And I really don't think that's true at all.
I think you know, and I, I hope you'll agree or feel free to disagree.
I think you're if you're introverted or a nerd, then let that shine and, you know, and Paige, I mentioned this last week at the panel we were at too, you know.
Yeah.
If you're kooky, then show your kookiness because you absolutely never know how your particular super power is going to fit into the needs of, of the company or the department, because if I, if I was a hiring manager, and I only hired people that were just like me that would just make for a disastrous work
team. So you know, there isn't going to always be a clear answer, but definitely get across what your skill sets and your personal best assets are, because you never know what's what we need to fill in the gaps and to complement what we have
Wow!
Yeah, I think, like more so than like a big personality as well,
it's like teamwork, like being able to work with other people is like the big skill to have, because, especially in my role, I work with a lot of different teams.
So, not even just within marketing within, like the entire publishing house.
So, being able to like, adapt to different personalities, and like how people work is really useful for the marketing
experience, versus like being outgoing. I wasn't outgoing to begin with.
That is something that you will grow into like when you're in these roles.
Yeah, I do think collaboration is such a huge part of it.
And like obviously marketing is such like a creative area of publishing.
Yeah.
I think that the more creative and collaborative you are like the better the results tend to be with like more, multiple input I think, is usually where it leads to stronger ideas.
Exactly, agreed. Well, I mean as much as it's important to highlight the wonderful things about working in publishing, I think it's equally important to be transparent, especially to people out there who are considering a career in publishing, just to be transparent about the challenges of the industry. So I wanted
to ask you both, are there any barriers that you personally experienced when entering publishing?
And if so, how did you navigate it? Are you still navigating it to this day? Paige?
Yeah. So the biggest one, I would say, is cost. Like there is a cost barrier sometimes to working in publishing specifically, I'm just thinking of my own experience.
When I got out of university with that initial degree I tried applying for a couple roles and never heard back.
It wasn't until I got my publishing certificate that I started hearing about the applications that I put out.
And obviously there's a cost barrier there, because you have to pay for some of these certificates, and I was very lucky that I had like family support.
So I was able to do that. That was a privilege on my part.
Another cost barrier would have been back when I first started.
We were still doing honorariums. That is something different at Penguin Random House now, you get paid a decent salary. So before then there was a cost barrier because you had to be able to afford to like work until you got that honorarium at the end of the internship, so those are like the 2 like beginning cost
barriers that I had. Another one was obviously being a person of color
entering this industry, and often in a very white space. So sometimes feeling othered or feeling like you were the one that was going to be
the person asked to do big campaigns like Black History month, or making sure there is support being the one having those thoughts before it became something that was more common in the marketing departments
now where it is not just you asking those questions, but feeling like the only in a room, is something that people still deal with, depending where they are.
Marisol?
Yeah, I definitely agree with Paige. I think cost is a huge barrier to a lot of people who want to enter the industry. For me, with the publishing certificate,
that was the reason why I actually, when I started my certificate, I only enrolled in one course because Toronto Metropolitan's course, or their certificate at least, it was very fortunate that you didn't have to sign up for the entire certificate all
at once, so I kind of like dipped a toe in by just registering for the core course to give it a try before having to put all that money upfront, and I was very fortunate that way that I didn't have to pay all of it at once. Otherwise I'm not
sure I would have. And similar to Paige as well, like I didn't really get any calls back, or really started applying for publishing jobs until I was in that course.
So that was really kind of like the defining moment when I went into this career,
I think, at least for me. But I do think in like, at least in the past few years, like I started working in the industry in 2019,
I think, just in those few years, like I've seen a really good change being made in the industry, so it has improved.
But I do think especially working as like, a woman of color,
there are still times when it is awkward, or times when you don't necessarily feel comfortable.
So again, those are, they are entries. It is a predominantly white industry.
So I think people color, they will still find that in the workplace.
Yeah, unfortunately. But it's true.
I, you know, just, you both brought it up, I am still sort of surprised, and I'm still tired of being the only one
sometimes in, in the room, most of the time, actually. It's, it's, it's like 2 different realities, right?
It's the diversity that I see in my personal life, with friends and family and the culture that I consume versus the reality of the offices that I, I work in.
But, you know, I, I do think I think publishing is making an earnest attempt right now to diversify.
I think we're only just starting to scratch the surface of, you know, the different reader communities that we could be publishing for.
Yeah.
But I, I, I did want to. So we burned through some of the questions that we had prepared.
But if I may, we'll get to the the chat box questions as well.
Some of them, I think you've addressed already as well, but I did have one off the cuff question, which we didn't talk about in advance, but I, I did want to just ask you both.
What are you most excited about right now? And you know you could tell us about a book that you're most excited about a project
you're most excited about, but I'd just love to know what's igniting your passion right now, and I'll, I'll, just in order to give you a little bit of time just to think about it,
I, I will say for me. We're preparing for a trip to Seattle for the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute, and that's the largest annual gathering of of booksellers in the US.
And there'll be 1,500 bookstores, booksellers there.
And last week, when Paige and I were on a panel, someone asked us about the health and the state of independent books stores, and I could only point to Winter Institute as a proof that actually bookselling is alive and well.
And, and we're gonna see that in a couple of weeks in Seattle.
But, but, Marisol. What are you most excited about?
What I'm most excited for is TikTok, which is gonna sound a little funny, but I think it's the fact that the discussion, I mean, I obviously, as I mentioned, have a background in digital marketing.
And that's really where I got my start, even before I was in publishing.
But for me, TikTok has taken off in such a great way, and I feel like I've been watching the evolution of BookTok since March 2020,
when I think a lot of us maybe signed up for our accounts
for the first time. And I think now, seeing how even like these more institutionalized forms of media, like the New York Times and CBC,
are now doing kind of like exposés on how TikTok has influenced the publishing industry, and how BookTok has really influenced the way we are reading, but also the way readers are connecting with each other online and with their publishers.
I think it's just been a really incredible thing to see.
I think it's very easy for older generations to kind of like, you know, like bemoan TikTok, as kind of like a child's app, and this and that, and all these silly dance trends.
But I think it is really incredible to see how communities are being cultivated online on that kind of app.
And I just think it's really incredible to see a new and emerging community of readers that is really just, has completely upended the industry in such an incredible way that people really were not expecting. Like I remember, in 2020 being like, we should make TikTok, we should make a
TikTok account, and people being like, No, no, we're gonna wait it out.
We're gonna wait it out. And, you know, you end up waiting it out until it's like 2 years passes too.
And then everyone's suddenly like, Why aren't we on TikTok?
And I just think, seeing that, and maybe you know a part of me feels like, yeah, I was proven right because I knew it was gonna be big.
But I think just seeing how the conversation has evolved, and how really, now, I think a lot of TikTok creators are holding all the cards, that really has me excited, because I think it's just a new evolution in how we market digitally, and I'm really excited
to see where it goes and like where it will be, and even in 5 years on that app.
Yeah, to jump off of that, I'm really excited by the work that we started doing with influencers specifically like in platforms like TikTok.
Because I feel like there's been a shift in expecting the publisher themselves to be like that presence online versus like working with creators who are already in those spaces.
We're already like talking about all the books they're excited about.
So fostering those relationships with people who are already like reading
these books, who are passionate about them versus finding, like the content yourself, I feel like there is like a shift toward the partnership aspects of it that I really love, especially because I love giving someone a book.
And then, then them ending up really liking it, and posting about it, and like seeing all the comments that I get when I send books to people about how much they enjoyed a book, so that stuff really brings me joy when I, like, weekly get to go in and see what the, like, reviews
have been from influencers, and I think that that is like where we're going forward.
I feel like the influencer space is gonna continue to grow because there are those parasocial relationships where people are looking for those recommendations from human beings.
So I just love that partnership aspect of marketing right now.
Okay.
I have one more question off the cuff before we can move on to the the chat box questions, but it's just very simple.
It's, it's a question that you're probably asked
every party you go to, whatever. But what are what are one or 2 book recommendations that you have for this?
Okay.
Oh, well
And I'm sorry I, I just sprang that on you.
But Paige?
I'll go first. I'm currently reading The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, which is a,
it's a backlist, which means it was published a couple years ago.
It's about a woman who has 2 alternate lives that you're reading from.
So her fiancé dies, and so she has a life where her fiancé no longer is with her.
But when she takes these pills and goes to sleep she can see him in this alternate life.
So it is very heartbreaking, but it is so, so good, and I picked it up on a whim.
So that's my first recommendation. And the second, I'll just pull because it's on, like, it's here, Normal People by Sally Rooney, because my friend is currently reading it
and we've been talking about it. And this is just what I go back to time and time again.
Yes.
It's gonna make me re-read it now. I think, for me, the number one that I'm most excited for is Yellowface, which people will know is coming out soon,
I think. I'm sorry, I can't even remember the date, like I'm, I'm bad.
But Yellowface by R.F. Kuang is coming out soon.
I'm incredibly excited for it. I read the manuscript, I think, in like a day, like I just was, like, everybody needs to leave me alone because I'm reading this book right now and disappeared, for I think like 24 hours while I was reading
it. It was just incredible. I really loved Babel when she wrote that one. I just thought it was really incredible book.
But this one, I think, is going to break her out in a new way.
It's a little bit more. It's a bit it's, it's obviously a lot shorter, but it's more contemporary, and I think it hits so close to home.
And the fact that it really tackles a lot of issues in publishing, things that are like systemic, like racism.
And you know, cultural appropriation, these sorts of topics that I think a lot of people kind of shy away from.
I think she addresses them head-on. The main character,
are they likeable? Absolutely not. But you are still glued to the journey, and waiting for the downfall the entire time.
So I think it was just a really incredibly well-written book, but I just can't wait to see the online discussion
that is gonna take place around, around it. I was already on Goodreads, like trying to read the early reviews of it, which obviously I don't recommend anyone do.
They should always read the book before they read the reviews.
But yeah, I thought it was really great book. And I was really excited for that one.
And the second book that I want to recommend is also one that's not on sale yet, but it's How to Kill Men and Get Away with It by Katy Brent, which is coming out this spring, and it's just a really hilarious almost like a chick lit-y, like, feminist
revenge fantasy is the best way I can describe it, and it essentially follows like an influencer in London, England.
And basically how she kills men and gets away with it.
So you'll have to read more to find about it.
That sounds so good.
Yeah, if you love the strong female characters and kind of are looking for, you know, a comeuppance for the bad men in the world, that's gonna be the book for you,
for sure. It is a lot of fun.
Sold
Sounds awesome, and, and I, I don't have a book recommendation, but I did want to say I was at an event fairly recently, and the, the one author said he starts every morning off by reading poetry, and I just thought oh, so.
And then I realize, oh, I've got a lot of poetry books, but I don't, they're kind of gathering dust.
I, I don't know. So I started the year off,
I keep one book of poetry at a time beside my laptop,
my work laptop, and every morning at like 8:55, before I start logging on to work, I, I consciously read 2 or 3 poems, and it's just my little way to say I, I'm choosing beauty to start my day
off and I choose words and beauty, and let that guide me so it's pretty cool.
Awesome.
Thanks.
I, I'm liking this so far. Oh, so the I mean the Q&A
chat box is lighting up, I do think I'll go through some of them, and some of them, I think, will acknowledge that we've already answered.
And please don't feel like you both have to answer this question just whoever feels like they've got the answer.
Just, just start in. One of the first questions we had, was to address the difference between marketing and publicity, because, of course, there's a publicity panel right after this one.
But what would be the key? Differences for, for for either of you.
I mean, I have an idea if you want me to go.
Yeah, go for it.
Okay. So I think marketing and publicity work very closely together.
But publicity mainly focuses, at least in my publisher, tends to focus more on media relations and kind of making those contacts in the media.
So that's how, when you see cover reveals in CBC, or when you see, you know, different news outlets like The Social on CTV covering different books,
a lot of that is through publicists hands. So they are sending out early advanced reading copies to media, and they're pitching the media for ideas on events, for coverage for the authors, and especially when there's different things happening around the year.
Like, I know, obviously, we have the coronation, for example, coming up in the spring.
So that's what our publicists will be pitching a lot of royal books to the media, I think,
like when that interest is high. That's for the publicist to kind of know what's going to be interesting then, and really push it to the media to kind of get those books more coverage.
And it really subsidizes marketing in the sense because marketing is more so bound by a budget that we are given down based on different projections and different ideas of how well a book is going to do so.
Marketing really has kind of a set number of building blocks that we can work with to push a book.
And we obviously do everything we can for it. But I think we're a little bit more limited that way.
So that's why it's great that the 2 departments tend to work together
to support the efforts across the board.
Yeah, definitely. The easiest way I describe it is publicity tends to be free
avenues versus marketing, where we tend to spend money in order to reach consumers.
Another thing that our publicists do is they will escort authors to all of their publicity.
So like they will go to, like, Good Morning shows, so that they, the author, is always with somebody who will be taking them from each engagement, especially because they're the ones that usually set up the engagements that they'll be doing.
And someone wanted to know if you felt that, or at least in your experience,
if a publishing certificate was absolutely necessary to get into marketing specifically.
No.
I don't think so. I mean I don't think so, and I would never tell anyone
it is because I think there are plenty of people who have marketings, or have publishing significance and don't necessarily work in publishing.
And there's lots of people with marketing certificates who do work in publishing.
So I think it's more about getting kind of like transferable skills.
Or skills that demonstrate your interest in books, but also your ability to market different items and putting them together to create like a strong resume for book publishing.
Yeah, I didn't have it, like the only marketing experience I had when I first joined the industry was that I had a BookTube channel.
So like even just being a part of the online spaces and showing your engaged where people are talking about books would be a great first place to start versus spending a ton of money to get a certificate.
Fully great, totally great.
Yeah.
There's a question here about internships, but I do think we've touched on that.
I like this question about, how do you conduct market research in publishing,
which is a great question, and how do you find out where readers are, and what type of content they want to see? Which is the million dollar question.
Yeah. Okay. Well, for my publisher on our end, there's kind of 2 ways that we do market research.
So the first way is through the marketing department, which is people like me, who are on social media, and what are doing what we call social listening.
So we're essentially like just listening to the conversations that are happening online.
Both so that we can create content that like serves the nation, like the needs of what people are looking for online, but also so we can understand, like the different cultural nuances that are happening.
And how discussions are unfolding, and why they're happening, and why something is trending.
So I think, blending that and like that's what marketing is doing, is like looking at those social media conversations and just kind of those kinds of conversations that are happening.
But the other kind of market research that is going on is also, I think, through sales. And sales is a lot more data driven where they're looking at kind of sales numbers for books and looking at like titles that are similar, books that have similar themes, books that, you know, share similar
genres, and they're looking to see how they're performing as a way of kind of predicting and kind of trying to sus out what's going to do well next, or what people are interested in.
For instance, I'm sure some people have noticed this, but after Song of Achilles came, well,
not after it came out, but after it blew up on TikTok, I'm sure people started to notice suddenly
there's kind of like a Greek mythology revival that's happening across a lot of publishers.
And I think that's kind of like one of those instances where people are going,
Huh! Song of Achilles is selling really well. What else is similar to Song of Achilles that we can sell?
And I think that market research is then saying that oh, there's like, actually an interest
and there's an appetite for more Greek mythology, for more like sapphic and queer retellings of these kind of stories, and I think that's where we're seeing that interest now.
And publishers responding to that. So sales and marketing are both doing their own market research and we kind of meet in the middle. And sometimes they'll have something and marketing
will be like, Oh, yeah, I saw that, too. And other times sales will say something, and we're like, Huh, and we're like looking online.
And we're like, Oh, yeah, I do see that. So sometimes it kind of goes both ways. And we'd be in the middle with our data.
Yeah, and there's a role specifically within my marketing team where someone is doing data, like is the data analyst, so they do all of like the research.
And they pull reports for our marketing specialists. So they know, like where they should market certain books or what platforms work really well for certain titles, and we also have, like an advertising team, that will like watch the ads to make sure what's performing well and we can switch things up if
things aren't really reaching our consumers. So those are the 2 main ways.
It's very data driven. We call them the performance marketing team because they're looking at the performance of the advertising to see what is working and what is reaching people.
That's great. Now, Felicia gave us a heads up that we probably asked this question, and I know you guys have the answers to this.
Someone asks, Do you feel the need to be in Toronto to work in publishing?
Whew? Hmm!
Yeah. On my end, I do. I think my publisher, we obviously were working from home during the pandemic, but now we've moved into hybrid model.
The hybrid model was at first one day in the office a week, and now it's kind of being highly recommended, that it's 2 days a week in office.
So I would say that we are encouraged to be in the office, but that being said, there are some positions that are fully remote.
And so it kind of depends on your position, because marketing is collaborative.
It's considered like more important, that we are in the office.
But, for instance, there are sales reps, and there are publicists that are working on markets and working in different regions of Canada, and they don't necessarily need to be in Toronto.
They'll only come in for a sales conference, or when we have some kind of big meeting going on.
Those are the only times they come in. So I think it depends on the role.
Yeah, and I'd say, like, Penguin, we are encouraged to go into the office if we do live close to one of our offices, we have 2.
We have one in Vancouver and one here in Toronto.
I would say when I first joined the industry, I had to move to Toronto.
That was also a barrier, was location, like I had to physically move to the city to get a job. I would say that we are a little bit more flexible with like the amount of time, like days of the week that we're in the office.
It's like team by team, based on what your specific team members need.
So if most of your team is working remotely because they move during the pandemic, then we are working remotely and like, we've made updates to the offices that we're in, so that like remote working is more accessible and easier because we have more like meeting availability,
and like software technology has been updated to make sure that the hybrid situation doesn't impact people who don't work in the city anymore.
And I guess I would, I would just say also, if you don't live in Toronto, you know,
Hmm.
do research. There are regional publishers. There are tons of jobs that you know,
Yeah.
Appetite, I'd noticed, just posted up for either Vancouver or Toronto, or remote, and so I do feel like there are opportunities to, don't necessarily feel like your career will be sabotaged if you don't live in Toronto.
Hmm.
Oh! The same person asked a question about just any tips to break into the industry, which I do think we did touch on.
I, I would just say one to that person, never underestimate the power of getting a mentor, or just, not even getting a mentor, just taking someone out for coffee, you know, reaching out to these people.
Chances are, people in publishing, at least my experience, and I, I think Paige and Marisol will agree,
we, we love our job so much that we're happy to help, and if you want to pick our brains and go up for coffee or, or hop on a virtual call, you know, maybe at that moment we're too busy, and we'll, we'll defer for next week, or whatever but chances, are
you're gonna get someone to to be able to sit down with you.
So don't underestimate the power of, sort of that,
who you know kind of mentality, and don't be afraid to reach out.
Okay, so was one question here, From yesterday's seminar, I heard that the editorial department works on books years in advance for children's books and books being worked on
now for fall 2025, even. What does this translate in terms of the marketing department?
Are you also working so far ahead? What, what is the timeline look like for for you both in your day-to-day?
Yeah. For me, I am definitely working ahead. So right now, with something that I'm doing, is putting together
marketing plans for Fall 2023. So for books that are going to be publishing in September until December
are plans that I'm creating right now, while I'm obviously actively marketing our Winter '23 titles, which are books that are going on sale between January and April of this year.
So I would say like, it's almost like 9 months in advance, I think.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, for me, slightly different, because I do more campaign focused marketing versus title specific marketing.
So I'm working a couple of months out. So like right now, I'd be working on what we're doing for like March and April.
And that was February. Like it's usually at least 2 months out, normally like for gift guide, and like bigger campaigns, it'll be 6 months out.
We're working already on what everything is going to be, because there's a lot more moving pieces.
But then you're still hearing about all the books that are coming out in a couple of years, because we do have like big company-wide meetings where we're talking about the books that are coming.
So you can start planning ahead and knowing these are like the priority titles that are gonna be coming into your campaigns.
To know what I'm doing right now. Sorry I'm, I am paying attention, there's a lot of questions, and we only have about 5 min left.
There was one person who just wanted to specify what was the organization we were talking about
that Paige runs, so if you just wanna say
a few words about that. Yeah. So, BIPOC of Publishing in Canada is a nonprofit that I started with 3 other women of color who are also part of the industry.
And basically, the whole point of that organization is to give a community space for people of color working in the industry because we found that we were very siloed where we were working,
often the only's in the room, but we knew there were other people working, so that's an organization specifically for people who are currently working in the industry.
But we do have a mentorship program that we run every year for 6 months, which Randy was also talking about, that he participated in last year, where we pair people with mentors from the industry and they build like a fostered relationship. It's not necessarily going to lead to a job at the end of it, but it
will provide you with a network and other people who are interested in joining the industry, which is one of the most useful things to have, is having, like a network of people who are trying to achieve the same things as you, because often the people who are in junior positions are the ones who'll be like, I met
this person through this, and vouch for you in that way, and like, when they're already in the company.
Yeah.
Thanks, Paige. Honestly, it's a great, it's a great organization.
I'm gonna merge a couple. I, I am just putting myself in the shoes of people who are attending tonight.
One of the questions was about salary, entry salary, if you don't mind, and feel free to be transparent, the other question is, is there a lot of overtime work in marketing?
Or is it more of a 9 to 5? And I think those are really technical things for people to learn.
And I think you both you both are in it, and you do it.
So what would you say?
Yeah, I don't mind being transparent with, like the salary I started with. I started at $38,000 when I joined the industry as a social media coordinator.
Right now we've increased our entry level and entry level salary to the 45-46 range for all of our entry level across the board, like across the entire company.
It's like entry level is the same versus each department being different.
And that's something that we've been working on for a while.
Our interns get paid, I think, around $18 an hour.
I'm not quite sure if that's increased as well.
But the last time that I was made aware of it was that, and then what was the other portion of it?
Was oh, 9 to 5 elements. It depends on the time of year.
Fall, I am definitely working after 5 PM. And when, like, I'm doing new influencer mailings, it's after 5 PM.
But there is an ebb of flow where sometimes I'm not as busy because all the campaigns are up and I can breathe for a minute where I'm logging off right at 5, and I do try to do that.
Like I do to the best of my ability to sign off, because we are all very,
we are passionate about our jobs to the point where we would work after 5, just because we're enjoying it.
Good.
Yeah, I agree. Oh, sorry, Randy, did you want to say something first?
No, no, you just, Paige, you mentioned how busy you are in the fall.
But why is that? Explain?
Yeah. So in the fall, most of our, like, tent-pole titles, like the really big titles that we're backing,
are, they come out, like, that is just the busiest period in terms of the amount of books that are being released.
And so, therefore, as a marketer, you're marketing more, and therefore you're trying to reach more people and your campaigns get a lot bigger and also that's around the holiday period where we do most of our sales.
So that's that's the main reason I'm mostly busy is because I'm planning for the holiday period which starts around October.
Normally people are searching for their holiday books.
Marisol?
Yeah, yeah, so similar to Paige, I started on 35,000 a year
in 2019. I was fortunately bumped up in a evaluation
they did at the company to find that I was underpaid, so I was bumped up, and obviously have since progressed
since then. I believe that our entry level salaries are higher now, I wouldn't say they're exceedingly higher, but I think they are higher than what I started on originally, and similarly, I think our interns are earning slightly above minimum wage but maybe like $2 more
Yeah.
than minimum wage, I would say, but it is paid properly as opposed to how it was even just a few years ago, where it was an honorarium of about a $1,000 for 3 months of work.
Yeah. I, sorry, what was the last oh, right? Yeah. Similar to Paige as well,
yeah, I think, fall is a really, really busy season. And sometimes there are ebbs and flows.
I think this year like one of my New Year's resolutions was to try and log off at 5 PM
to prevent myself. But again, it also depends on the area of marketing you're in.
I find that when I was working even more on the digital side and the social media management side, you're kind of like checking your phone notifications out of hours just because of how that that position works.
But I think, depending on who you are and how you manage your time, like, you, you should be able to do it within 9 to 5, and I'm a big advocate of not doing it outside of your assigned working hours.
But how is that working for you, Marisol? Or have you been logging off at five?
It's, it's, it's been going well. You know, my husband noticed he was like, you know, you haven't been over-working this month, so I think it's been,
I've improved for sure.
Good for you. It's 6:45 right now.
I know that the publicity panel begins soon at 7, so we will wrap up.
I think there are tons of unanswered questions in the chat box.
Some of them might be answered in the next session as well.
I do want to encourage attendees to be in touch with any or all of us in, you know it's not hard to reach out on LinkedIn or other ways.
So hopefully, we can continue the conversation further. Just a massive thank you to Marisol, to Paige for their time.
Yep.
Their wisdom. I know you both just through other avenues, and I'm so glad we got to spend this time together, so I hope you all enjoyed the session, and I hope our paths cross again soon.
Yeah.
Yeah, thanks so much, Randy, for having us. And I did just wanna say that I do do TikTok on publishing.
So if people are interested, they can follow me there. My same at, and I also have contact in my Linktree.
So if you want to get in touch, feel free.
Perfect. Well, thanks again. Have a good night, everyone. We'll talk soon.
Cool, thanks, so much
Bye.
I figured it out, but, thank you, is it like I was like going?
Oh, yeah, I like went to log in. And I was like in the marketing session.
I don't know how to get out of the marketing session.
70'clock.
I'd be curious to know if people are joining us from like across the country, if, I know
sometimes the conversation surrounds the fact that Toronto can be a little bit of a, do
I have to live in Toronto to do this? Be good to know if there's people from other places.
Yeah. Oh, here we go. Hey, Montreal, Alberta
Oh, awesome!
No look. Alberta Montreal! Oh, New Brunswick, love it
No.
Hey! Hi! Everyone! Welcome from near and far. So good to see you, you all from kind of here,
there, and everywhere. We're kind of at 7, and I think we're moving into our session for today.
So welcome, one and all to the Publicity Session of the Canadian Publishers'
Council's Doors Open Publisher, Publishing Webinar Series.
Before we get started, I would like to start off with acknowledging the land that we are living and working on today.
Sam, Adria, and I are all in Toronto right now, and The
Canadian Publishers' Council also operates in the city of Toronto, or to Tkarón:to, on the traditional territory of many nations
including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat peoples.
It is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.
We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty
13, just signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties, signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. We acknowledge that our speakers and attendees from come from a wide range of territories, as you have all let us know just before
we started, and we invite you to learn more about traditional, Indigenous lands by visiting Whose Land or Native Land to find a little bit more about where you are living. In terms of etiquette
for this evening. Thank you all for taking the time to join us. As a reminder,
this webinar will be recorded, and as such only we, the speakers, will have our camera and microphone functions enabled.
If you have any questions, please use the Q&A function in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen to share any questions for the Q&A portion of the webinar at the end. And if there are any issues you wish to bring to our attention, please let us know you can contact the host using the
Chat function, and that will be monitored by our host and our tech savvy people in the background.
And if you require closed captioning, you can enable that function in the lower right hand section of the zoom window which reads, live transcription, and a transcript of this webinar will also be available in the days following the conclusion of the session.
So that's all of our wise en place, and you will find all of that in the chat as well. And as we move into it, I will introduce myself, and then I will introduce my lovely colleagues.
So my name is Cayley. I use she/they pronouns, and I'm a publicist at Simon & Schuster Canada.
I work with Canadian and international authors on both the adults and kids and YA
side of things. I am never far from a cup of tea and an ever-growing TBR pile.
I am a graduate of the Humber College Creative Book Publishing program, and I also moonlight as the Event
Coordinator for Junction Reads, the local reading series here in Toronto.
I live in Toronto with my 2 cats, who, as you know, maybe you will see,
maybe you will not, and dozens of comfy pillows. Again,
picture here. You can find me on Instagram @cayleyisreading. Sam Devotta uses
she/her pronouns, and is the Senior Associate for marketing and publicity at Tundra Book Group, where she works on kids titles across North America.
She has a publishing certificate from TMU, formerly known as Ryerson, and has been with Penguin Random House Canada for 5 years and counting.
Outside of work, Sam spends a lot of time talking about
YA books and pop punk bands, often at the same time. Adria Iwasutiak uses she/her pronouns, and has been working in book publishing for almost 20 years.
She started as a publicity intern at McClelland & Stewart, and has gone on to work in publicity,
marketing, and sales-focussed roles with both small and large presses.
She was a publicity and marketing manager at Penguin Random House Canada, and in 2015 joins Simon & Schuster Canada, where she is Vice President, Director of Publicity and Canadian Sales.
Now that's us! And with that, I am delighted to get things going and to be a part of the CPC Doors Open and this publicity session. Like a lot of people, I grew up reading voraciously,
I think this is a super common theme of people who are interested in book publishing, and who work in book publishing, and I always felt at home at the Scholastic Book Fair, which I feel like is a very common feeling. Despite that, I took the long way 'round, and I did my undergrad in
Conflict Studies and Human Rights, and then, many later, many years later, did the graduate program in publishing
as I mentioned before. My question for both of you is, did you go into school with the goal of getting into publishing and into the book world?
Adria, you wanna take this one first?
Sure, happy to. Thank you, Cayley, and thank you, Sam.
I'm honored to be on a panel with you, and honored to have been asked to be here.
I did not go into book publishing right out of the gate, but I did
the English and History degree at Western. And I thought, Okay, well, I'm gonna be a teacher or a lawyer, and I didn't get into teacher's college
and I couldn't face 4 more years of law school.
So actually, what happened was, at the time that I was there,
it was the 125th anniversary for Western and long story short, they, as part of their celebratory initiatives, created a community reads project, and they asked me to be the student and young alumni representative. In that process,
I always thought book publishing, as I think many people think, meant I'd have to be in editorial. Like both of you, voracious reader, but I knew I was way too extroverted/noisy to be an editor, and having done the community reads project at Western, somebody
came up to me and said, You were, you did a great job of that.
You could do what you just did. You could convince people to read what you love, and this light bulb went off. Publicity and marketing were not terms that were used
maybe as often, I think, marketing is usually colated with advertising.
The world has changed in 20 years. So I took the TMU,
then Ryerson, courses and got an internship, and was lucky enough to have spent the past 20 years in this incredible business.
How about you, Sam?
Amazing. Well, first of all, thank you both for being my co-panelists here. I'm very excited to be here.
I love talking about my job. I do it all the time,
whether people ask me for information or not. I kind of give them a full rundown of my origin story, as I like to call it. But I did a double major in English and French at McMaster.
I wasn't sure what I wanted to do after that so I was just kind of working in customer service.
Actually using the French half of my degree because it was a bilingual position.
But it wasn't what I really wanted to do, and one day I was just kind of scrolling through the Ryerson, or TMU website, and sort of stumbled upon the publicity program.
Not publicity, sorry, the publishing program, and that was just kind of the moment where I was like, oh, okay, well, this makes sense. I love books.
I love to talk about books. I love just being around books. So.
Yes, publishing makes a lot of sense for me. And Adria,
I think very similarly to what you were saying, I just assumed editorial was the path that I was going to take.
I did the TMU publishing certificate intensive program.
So it was 6 courses over the course of the summer.
A really great like mix of different departments, and really getting to know the people and, and things like that.
And I did 3 internships after that. So one was at HarperCollins in Sales; one was at Tundra Books, which was technically editorial, but I sort of wormed my way into the marketing side of things, too, just because I was so interested in it once I was there; and then
a marketing and publicity internship at Dundurn, and during the course of these internships Tundra just made sense.
It was where I wanted to be. I knew that eventually I was gonna make my way back there, even if it took a little while.
It did take a couple of years of working in retail before a position opened up, but as soon as it did, it was exactly what I wanted it to be.
It was Associate Publicist. I got to talk about books.
I got to read books early. I got to meet authors, and then, as I like to tell people, I'm basically paid to talk about reading, which is what I would do for free anyway.
So it's the dream.
Love it.
Amazing. You, you mentioned, Sam, that you kind of moved in, and you knew you wanted to get into, you know, that publicity role at Tundra?
Was it always publicity for you, Adria, or you know, do you kind of fall into it later?
It was, yeah, this like, very serendipitous opportunity
with this community reads project really answered that for me. And oh, over time, as you suggested in my introduction, I've actually started to touch some of the sales points and at Simon & Schuster, because we are, although, of course, one of the quote unquote Big 5, the company
with, that, that is considered a large press, we actually, in Canada are about 50 people.
So sometimes it means we touch a lot of different areas and have the opportunity to touch a lot of different areas from changing light bulbs to suggesting an editorial acquisition, and that, I think, has been really gratifying.
What about you, Cayley? Was it always publicity for you?
I, yeah, I think I kind of. I figured it out as I was studying.
I was like, Oh, yeah, I love reading. I would love to be an editor.
I have that keen eye for detail, but as I kind of, you know, thought about it a bit more, and learned about a bit more.
I was like what I love the best is, as Sam said, sharing my love of books and being like Oh, my God!
I just read this incredible book. You have to read it, and getting to work with authors.
I just like, you know, writing a book you're sitting at your computer for, like, you know, a year to 10, 20 years on your own writing this book.
And then all of a sudden, it's out into the world.
And that moment of seeing an author, like, see their book on the shelves, or do a reading to people and see them like respond.
It's just like, I just got goosebumps talking about it myself.
How ridiculous! But that is it, right, like I thought about that,
and I was like, Oh, my God! That's what I want.
I want to be there for authors. I want to be there for people, and I want to watch
that happen because that was so special to me, and it was something I kind of got to see working with Junction Reads.
Oh, like this is a really independent project that is now out and, and shared with the world, which I just thought was, like, the best.
So I think early on, I was like, Yeah, I could be an editor.
And then, of course, I was like, no way I gotta work with,
you know, I have to work with people. I need to be engaging with people all the time, not the editors don't do that, but they do it in a different way.
Yeah.
Great
Amazing. I mean, Cayley, you kind of touched on this already,
but what would you say are some skills and experiences that would be beneficial for a future book
publicist?
Yeah, I think, I mean, must love books, very like the movie Must Love Dogs, like, you know, kind of a, a given.
But I think, you know, a, a love of, as I said, that connection with people, because it is such a big part of the role. You don't necessarily have to be an extrovert.
Same.
I am a 100% an introvert. I, like, recharge on my own, but I love connecting with people, and that special moment is what just like sets my heart on fire.
And so I think just like an openness, and wanting to connect with people is, is so key for me, and I think that's really important.
But I know, Adria, you do a lot of hiring. What do you think?
What are some things that you look for, you know, when you're looking for a publicist?
Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest. So I hired Cayley, I'm proud to say, and Cayley's hiring a Publicity intern for those of you who aren't double toggling chats and things like that.
I'm currently hiring a Publicity Manager, and I think, depending on the level,
there are maybe different components that you're looking for.
But first and foremost, I think you touched on it very well, and I think everybody who comes to the table with an application, and who we interview with typically conveys their love of reading and their love of books, and that is really first and foremost what we're looking for. You'd be
amazed that sometimes we get cover letters, or even resumes and, and emails that don't convey at all that that's what they're interested in.
They're just throwing the, their, their hat in the ring, and could be, you know, potentially publicizing vacuum cleaners.
I think that some time, my advice often, when I get to a point in an interview or application process early on, is, people will say, like what would have given me the leg up?
What could I have done differently in this interview, or what would have made me stand out?
And I think a lot of it comes down to the idea that, you know, have you been to,
are, are you engaging in the community? Are you engaging on social media in this community?
Who are you following on social? Are you following some of these BookTokers?
Are you following? Are you reading reviews? Are you attending in-person events,
if you're comfortable? Are you attending webinars, or, or, or coming to things like this
exact opportunity? Like talk to me about that. Tell me about how you're trying to engage in the community and learn more about it
so that it's not just, I love reading. I think it's also publicists don't have to be extroverted.
Many of my favorite and most wildly successful publicists are not, but I think it is a keen eye to detail.
I actually think Cayley, your education in Human Rights and Conflict is sometimes quite apt because you're dealing with authors at their most vulnerable, and you're dealing,
we sometimes get applicants who are coming from brand publicity, and I find that that's a very different vibe than dealing with a person.
Sometimes I've heard the analogy that publicists are sort of midwife-ing books into the world, because the editorial process is done, and publicists are often the touch point in-house from there on in.
That's not to say they're not working with other departments, but we sort of become their trusted guardian angel, and as we midwife that in, we're dealing with a lot of vulnerability in the green room right before they hit the stage on The Social. We're dealing with
tears because they didn't meet the, hit the bestseller list, and they'd had these, you know, goals and, and vision boards and ideas that they might.
We're dealing with rave reviews and less than raves.
We're dealing with 5 people in an audience and a couple thousand.
So it can be a roller coaster and we're often the person who's right there beside them.
So you're looking for people who you think you would feel safe in that space with, and you would want publicizing your book.
What about you, Sam? I, what kinds of things, when you're thinking about the, your best colleagues, or, or when you're thinking about hiring, standout for you?
Yeah, that's a great question. I love the idea of calling us guardian angels.
I sometimes refer to us as almost therapists, but not quite.
Yeah, definitely.
For basically the same reason. Sometimes you really do have to be able to talk an author down because they will get upset.
And it's totally natural. And it's, you know, perfectly reasonable for them to feel upset
that a dream that they had for so long, maybe, isn't coming true exactly the way they wanted it to.
So you really do have to be someone who's kind of, kind of sensitive to those types of conversations.
You know, you're not going to react angrily, even if they're angry with you, you really have to find a way to be compassionate about it and sort of see it from their point of view.
They're not necessarily mad at you. They're mad at whatever circumstance has put them in this place as being able to kind of talk
those, those situations through in a as calm a manner as possible, even if you, if you yourself don't feel very calm at the time, being able to present that, you know, relaxed exterior is definitely a bonus.
Organization, of course, is a good thing, you know, my colleague, Evan Munday, is extremely organized every time he sends an email.
It's just like every single detail you could possibly need is in that email.
And I love it. I'm always kind of jealous.
My emails are not nearly as full as his are, but you know, stuff like that is great.
And this super helpful, you know, kind of nipping those questions in the bud before they can get to a point where people are confused or coming after you, and, and things like that.
So, yeah, I guess that's kind of my roundabout answer.
We did just hire a new publicist, and I had a little bit of a role in kind of vetting those resumes, and I think the one we ended up choosing had that perfect combination of, you know, being genuinely passionate about books, having PR experience
but from, like, a brand point of view, and just during her interview, you know, was thinking outside the box in ways that we were like, yeah, that does make sense we're so stuck in our ways.
Hmm.
But you're bringing this totally new perspective to what we do, because you're not used to being in, in the book industry.
So sometimes that helps to to have those completely fresh eyes that can take you somewhere
you never really considered before.
Definitely, agree.
Yeah, that's very, very true. And you know, we're kind of coming at this from the same job.
We do a lot of the same stuff, you know, kind of day-to-day.
We've got a Publicist, Senior Associate, Director of Publicity.
Or I imagine that we're, we're doing similar stuff.
But it, you know there's some range here. So how would you explain
like your day-to-day job to an alien? Maybe, Adria, you, if you want to start?
Good, an alien. I think we get this question a lot when we're interviewing in particular, and then even explaining it to my mother and my grandma.
I mean, they're like, what is it that you do?
I mean, I think at its most basic, we talk about the idea that like, Oh, I'm the person who does their best to try to help an author's voice be amplified, often that means radio, print, digital,
online events and things like that. So if you saw Stephen King in Canada, it might be because I had something to do with it or the company
I work for does. If you heard about that author in the New York Times last weekend, it might be because me or somebody on my team did a great job getting them out there. And then, I think, going back, you know, depending on how long they want to hear the answer, going sort of what you said, Sam,
is like, and they also play therapist and a little bit of waitress and a little bit of, you know, organizer and booker and travel agent.
And it's, like, I always say that the highs are really high and the lowest can be kind of low.
What about you, Cayley?
Yeah, I think you know, especially, it's funny you said, like, you know, explaining to your family like over the holidays.
Hmm.
It was like friends were in town, and they were like, so what is, what's your job?
I think, I like I leaned on, there's kind of, I find, 2 streams of the work that I'm working on in this day-to-day.
There is the reactive stream. So I'm getting emails into my inbox because I'm responding them.
People reach out to say, Hey, I heard about this, you know I'd love have this author in for an event, or you know, can I get a review copy or I'm responding to requests from other people. And then there's being proactive.
So then that's when I'm actively pitching to media. I'm reaching out to my contacts and saying, Hey, I know you love, loved Book X,
I'd love to send you Book Y. Or, you know, I'm reaching out to Ottawa person because I have an Ottawa author, and I think, you know, this would be a great fit. So there's kind of those 2 streams of, of work
that I'm going through, and both are super important, because, you know, we work closely with our marketing counterparts because that's how the reactive comes through as people heard about our book.
And how did they hear about it? They heard about it on BookTok.
They saw it somewhere else. It was on a most anticipated list, like they've heard of it somewhere, or they've heard about the author.
So, you know, it's, it's working in tandem with kind of those 2 streams and flows, and some days, like I don't get to be proactive.
Some days I'm only reactive because it's just, I'm responding to things and some things are a little more urgent than others.
And then other days, it's like, Oh, I actually can be really proactive today
and just send out, you know, a ton of pitches and do a lot of these things on my to do list, because maybe it's a bit quieter, or I just happen to have a day where I can do a little bit more proactive stuff.
So that's kind of my like day-to-day explanation.
I think, Sam, what do you think?
That's an amazing way of putting it. The proactive and reactive.
Normally when I tell people my day to day, I just say it's a lot of emails, because that's honestly what it feels like.
Sometimes in the best way. You know, I love answering emails, love sending out emails.
There's like no better feeling than when you send a pitch that you don't really think is gonna work.
And then somebody actually replies, and even if they're saying no, then you're still like oh, but I interested you enough that you responded to me, you didn't just ignore, delete, you like genuinely
read this whole pitch through, and, and decided against it, which is, I still count as a win, because you still had their attention. Exactly.
You're in their inbox. They know your name.
Yeah, who knows what can come out of that kind of situation?
Definitely a lot of emails. My favorite days are ones when I actually get one-on-one time with authors, whether it's, you know, phone calls now or Zoom calls
now. But before, when it was like physically meeting an author at a coffee shop, or something like that, just to chat M
and P, or taking them around to a TV show or radio, or whatever. Having that, like, actual connection, is my favorite part of my job.
So that's really great. Doesn't happen, of course, as often as I'd like it to.
But when it does it's always awesome. Yeah.
And I mean in my team we've changed a lot in the last year.
Otherwise like 6 months ago, I was also doing social media. So that was a totally different thing too where I was online
all the time. I was interacting with bloggers, Instagramers, influencers, which was a lot of fun.
Kind of used a different part of my brain like I, I turned on this sort of different voice with them that I wouldn't use pitching to CBC,
for example. So that was kind of fun. And yeah, it's a, it's a lot of emails.
But it's great.
It's true. It is a lot of emails, and sometimes a lot of Zoom.
So okay, you've been assigned a book and you're responsible for executing and supporting the publicity on a title and working with that author. Sam, can you break down for you what the life cycle of a book might be for you as a books, a book publicist, and I may
be more specifically calling out some of the things you might find, you suspect are different from children's publicity
and that division than adults.
Yeah, for sure. I mean the first thing I'll say about kids publicity.
I know publicity in general can be hard sometimes, because media is constantly changing, you know.
Maybe there's not enough space and newspapers as there used to be, and, and all that kind of stuff.
I do find kids publishing tricky in a different way than adults
publicity, publicity, for lack of a better phrase, just because there's even less options for us.
You know, some of the bigger newspapers, if they have to cut a section, it's going to be the kids books. It's not going to be, you know, the big ones that that everyone's excited for so that can be a little bit hard sometimes.
But generally I start talking to an author anywhere from about 6 months to almost a year ahead of the book, kind of depending on what the expectations are, what kind of personality they have.
There's a lot of debut authors. I'm sure you're both familiar with it too, debut authors who are super keen and have a thousand questions before the cover's even available.
So, you know, those people you kind of talk to well in advance, kind of putting on that therapist hat right away and soothing all those anxieties and talking things through.
And then from there, I, I always feel like there's a period of time where I'm not really in contact with the author that much, like I'm available if they need me.
But I'm not necessarily reaching out to them for anything, and then probably 2, 3 months before the book comes out, it just ramps up, and I always joke with them,
you're gonna get tired of seeing my name in your inbox because I'm gonna be asking you something.
Or telling you something else. Sometimes it'll be a great review, sometimes
not so great review, media opportunities, event opportunities, all that kind of thing. So that really, I think, picks up in the about 3 months before release.
In my experience at least, depending on the book, of course. But yeah.
And then I'm with them kind of forever after that. I still, I'm in touch with authors that I worked with at the start of my career.
They might not necessarily have a new book, but there's always opportunities that are popping up, especially in the kids spaces, you know.
Maybe the book that came out 5 years ago didn't quite land.
But now there's a new opportunity for it, or people are looking for that kind of book and picking up backlist because there's nothing new for them, or you know, things like that.
Yeah, I kind of got convoluted there with my answer.
But, but basically I'm, I'm there for a really long time with authors, which is great to really build up those, those relationships with them.
And kids publicity, I'm super biased because I find it, no offense, guys,
but I find it more fun. I feel like you can think a little bit outside the box with kids'
stuff. My example that I always give people is when we do like influencer mailings.
We can combine all sorts of weird things, because it's a kids book, and it just makes sense. Like there was a back-to-school campaign we did where it was like, here's 5 books and also some pencil crayons, and like a cute pencil case and like stickers. Or we just did
one over Halloween, where we partnered with Rockets candy.
Yeah.
My favorite.
So it was like, here's your book, and here's Rockets, which, who doesn't love popping those, right?
Your pretend pills, just to spend all day eating them.
A hundred percent.
Yeah. So things like that which I think are, are very different from the adult side of things.
But it just makes sense because we can be quirky and weird and a little bit out there. And it just makes sense, because that's the kids stuff that we're working with.
Yeah, I feel like, I kind of, I, I do a little bit of kids and adults.
So I kind of get like a little toe in, in each pool.
So you get, yeah, the exciting picture books and you get, you know, that kind of big kid energy.
But then you also, you know, have the kind of adult side, at least kind of in my role.
And yeah, similarly, like you said, you know, we're introduced to the author,
yeah, anywhere from, you know, 6 to 8 months before. But with S&S,
we also have, you know, kind of our own Canadian Publishing Division, but then we also work really closely with our U.S. colleagues.
So sometimes it's a matter of also, you know, reaching out to our U.S.
counterparts to be like, Hey, I noticed that we have a Canadian on,
you know, your list, I'd love to be introduced. And then, you know, getting that connection and we'll often have an author meeting where we'll sit down with the author again, usually via Zoom and, kind of, you know, walk them through our plans, so that if they are, a debut
author they kind of have a sense of, you know, what our work together is going to look like.
But also we get to kind of learn from them, and if they're like, Oh, my gosh!
I, I have all these connections, you know, from, I used to have a job at CTV. We're like, okay, amazing.
We're gonna reach out to CTV, you know. Or just, you know, don't know if you know this,
But I'm a, you know, Queens University alumni, and they have an alumni magazine and we're like, Okay, we're gonna reach out to them.
So I think, you know, that meeting can be so helpful to get to learn from them and for them to kind of be like, okay, I know what to expect, you know,
going, going into things. And then, yeah, as you said, there's that little bit of a lull, and then you're really ramping up in the 3 months, 4 months before, because if you want to get into a magazine, you know, they take ages to print you gotta get that in really early. If you
want something online that could be done kind of, you know, overnight.
It's not common, but it could be overnight. But if you want something printed, you know, that takes time, and you know, full color magazine spreads,
you gotta get those in early. So in those months before, and then kind of going back to the proactive/reactive, we're in that really proactive stage of, you know, reaching out to contacts and trying to see where there could be a good fit, and then, you know, the tail slowly, over time, you know,
drives down into a little bit more reactive. We're still putting them forward where it's, you know,
possible and necessary when people are looking for things. But we're moving a little bit more into kind of that
reactive space. Adria, what do you think?
No, I totally agree, and I do want to say that I think those author meetings are just like, they're so energizing.
And even if they're just by Zoom, unfortunately, in this space, they, I think, Zoom in many ways has allowed us to meet with authors earlier, and meet in this way
that does have a different feeling than just, Hey, I'm Adria.
I'm gonna be your Canadian person. I'll, you know,
here's the email and like, let's chat, it feels different to like, engage and talk and then be on a team where you're engaging and talking, and you all kind of get excited.
It's one of the right pieces of all this. So yeah, I think that's right.
And you know books catch you by surprise. We worked on Taylor Jenkins Reid's The 7 Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
probably 5 years ago, and we threw a really cool pre-publication event where we, you know, Taylor, was amazing.
But was not a name in Canada yet, and we conceptualized as a team an Oscar night.
We had like a, an event partner who had, they were like a, a ballgown rental company
that's now called Fitzroy, but was called Rent Frock Repeat.
They brought green dresses, and everyone could try them on. And we had all these little activations and different ways to engage with the author.
And hear about this book that we saw coming out in a few more months, and was going to be big, and it did perfectly well, and then Daisy Jones came out and like, took the world by storm, and now Evelyn Hugo is just killing it now. You know, you never know, so people still, come to
us for requests about Evelyn Hugo, and we like to say we did some work building that, but it, you know, takes some, some time.
I wanted to say that I'm seeing some really great questions in the Q&A
and I really appreciate everybody sending those over. I don't want to leave anybody out so, but I thought maybe we could answer a couple of those, and then, if we have a bit more time, we could address some of the things that we talked about
hitting. I think one of the big things sort of reludes to something I referred to early on, which is, do you really have to be in Toronto to kind of get into this industry?
Can you live elsewhere? So, I don't, again, we're, we're all in Toronto, and I'm colating a couple of different questions here.
But I will say that there's some really great publishing houses across the country, and increasingly, I'm finding publishers are starting to have divisions or publicists in particular
in other areas. We currently have a publicist in Ottawa.
I know HarperCollins just hired a great person in Vancouver. Random House,
Penguin Random House used to have a publicist in Vancouver.
They may still have that, I don't know. They, their Appetite cookbook division is based out of Vancouver.
Those are just the Big 5. There are so many great independent presses. Biblioasis, who is almost always on the Giller long list, if not shortlist, is based out of Windsor, Ontario, etc.
And then, when you talk about community, yes, there's lots of great writing communities, but don't underestimate the power of some of these incredible festivals.
That's a publicist's dream, in my opinion. You've got a couple of people who talked about Calgary and Vancouver. In Calgary alone,
you have Calgary Word Fest, which does magical things, and is always looking for volunteers, if not staff.
They do it through the year as well as in October.
Vancouver has Vancouver Writers Fest.
They have different speaking series going on at SFU at UBC.
And both of those cities have really great independent bookstores as well.
So those are just 2 examples. But I think your independent book publishers will, or, book, your independent book public, your independent bookstores will often know great partners, and so will your librarians.
So you know, just a quick Google about local
opportunities that exist within festivals and within bookstores, I think, could go a long way in terms of engaging in the community and meeting like-minded people.
Anything either one of you wanted to say in your experience with that?
I think you covered it.
Go ahead.
Yeah. Thank. I think you got it. I'm looking, and I see there's like a couple of questions asking kind of about, you know, social media and, and being online.
So one of the things I will say is for publicity,
some publishing houses, a little bit more kind of like, Sam. Sam works in kind of the marketing and publicity side of things.
So there's a little bit of both to that. Some houses,
it is not necessarily distinct. It's not like we don't work with each other,
but, for example, at Simon & Schuster, we have a publicity department, and we have a marketing department, and we work super closely with our marketing colleagues.
But they do a lot more of the social media. They're the ones that are making those gorgeous assets.
They're the ones that are setting up the Goodreads giveaways that are, you know, setting up all of those digital you know, events, and connecting with Bookstagrammers and BookTokers and, and stuff like that.
So again, there's kind of a flow to it where sometimes there's crossover.
But publicity, I would say publicity distinctly probably leans a little bit away from social media
specifically. But again, like in Sam's case, like there, there's a hybrid where you're like, not exclusively not doing socials or, or not doing that.
And then somewhere else in there, there was a question about, you know, if you have an author who has a huge following already, and that's always super helpful, and maybe I'll kind of pass off to Sam to talk a bit cause she does a bit more work in that marketing space but you know we can
lean on that following already, which is always handy. So I'll kind of pass off to Sam to chat about that one.
Sure. Yeah. So I mean the way my team operates, we kinda, despite being part of Penguin Random House Canada,
we kind of operate separately, almost like our own mini team, which is why I very much have that crossover marketing and publicity experience.
There was only 3 of us at one point. Now there's more of us, but you know it was very much sharing those responsibilities.
So I was taking care of social media for a long time, until we actually were able to hire a social media coordinator.
But I still kind of poke in there now and then, just because it was something that I really helped grow that particular platform.
Shamelessly promoting Penguin Teen CA.
But I was the one who was behind it for so long that I still can't quite let it go,
and still kinda poking around now and then. But with authors, I find, I mean, obviously, it's amazing if they have a huge following already.
I have an author who went viral at one point, and has, I can't even remember what number of followers they have,
but it's a, it's a giant number.
So that's absolutely helpful. When you tag them and stuff, and they can retweet and share and their own audience will see it, even if they don't know who that author's publisher is
they can still kind of see things as they pop up. But I also, I find, especially now, some authors are very, you know, worried that if they don't have social media, it's gonna really affect the way that we talk about their book.
And I don't think that's true at all.
I have lots of authors who are very shy, who aren't comfortable sharing online, who are maybe, not to like be ageist or anything,
but, you know, maybe a little bit older, and so just like it's not something that they ever really did so they don't feel the need to start a platform now, and that's also totally okay.
It just means that we do that work for them, and that's our job.
So that's fine, too, you know. We can still find ways to talk about them online without specifically tagging them or reaching out to,
you know, their followers. If people are interested in it, they'll find it somehow.
And that's why working with influencers is really great too.
Because the people that I can't reach out to, maybe an influencer
can. You know, somebody who has a much bigger following than we do, or someone who's very specialized in a certain type of book.
So people know to go to them for a sci-fi rec, for example, or romance, or whatever. Then you work with those people, and they can really, really help you get the word out in a much bigger way.
Yeah.
That's great. One question that I thought we could kind of colate into one sort of answer is a little bit of the brass tacks of publicity like, is this a 9 to 5 job?
How much traveling am I doing? Are there a lot of overtime hours? Is it all remote?
Can I do this remotely? And I think those are all really good questions, and I think in this, you know, post-Covid, "post-Covid" world,
we're still figuring that all out. It certainly didn't used to be. What I'll say, for instance, in the job postings that Cayley and I have been working with most recently at Simon & Schuster, and that we're seeing as being industry standard for the bigger houses in
Canada, is that you're strongly encouraged to be available for in-person participation.
And I think publicity first and foremost, does require that if you're gonna get an author onto a television show, you're probably going to be tagged in to take them to that green room and hold their hand and, I mean, holding their hand being proverbial.
But, you know, being a part of that process, walking them through, you know, giving them that "break a leg" right before they hit the stage, and then telling them how great they did afterwards, being a part of the in-person event, if that exists. Now, not every author does those and not every author, is a part
of that, and some authors really sort of dictate that.
But ultimately I think, the expectation for publicity, for the bigger houses so far, has been that we're starting to go back to trying to do that.
And if you want to be, for instance, a television show like The Social on CTV,
which has been very good to the book community as one of the only really big media book clubs we have in Canada for adult trade fiction and nonfiction is, you know, sort of requires that you're in studio now, you can't just do remote anymore.
So you can be the biggest author ever, they still are like, sorry unless you're coming in,
we're not gonna have you on. And then in terms of hours, yeah, for sure, it is a lot of evenings and some very early mornings, and sometimes weekends, you know, we have festivals on the weekends.
We have evening appearances. I think most, if not all, companies, are very sympathetic to the fact that there is very busy times, and we do sort of, it's not constantly like that. January,
we don't typically have a lot of events. If we do, they're during the day.
Here and there you might find a have a smattering. But the high season, if you will, in publicity, is typically March, April, maybe even a bit of May, building up to summer reading, a gift-buying season with Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc.
And then September, October, creeping into November. Starting in December,
there's no events. December is the quietest time for publicity ever. Everyone's burnt out.
The publicists are burnt out. The media don't want to hear from you.
The authors are done, and we're just crossing our fingers, that these books have been, have stood out enough that they are on everybody's,
you know, list to their gift, for their gift buying season. So it's not that you're constantly working like that, but there is the requirements in terms of travel. Every publisher is a little bit different.
Simon & Schuster does encourage their publicists to go out on the road.
I personally, as a director of a department, really think it informs how you create a schedule for your author to, for you to understand that like, yeah, you get off the airplane,
And then there's a lot, and then there's luggage, and then there's customs, and then there's a car service that didn't show up, and you, it says Pillar B,
but I'm not, what, and then you show up at the hotel, and they say you can't check until 3, and you're like it's 11 AM
and I've been on a flight all night from the UK,
what's going on? And all of those things. It makes you so much more sympathetic as a, as a publicist to your author trying to get inside their brains and trying to anticipate anything that might happen.
So for me, I think, going on the road is actually really advantageous, not just for networking, but also for really getting inside the shoes of the people you're putting out there.
So I, I invite Cayley and Sam to, to contribute to that in terms of the 9 to 5, and the, and the travel and things like that.
But I do think that it is one of the perks of the job in many ways, but it can also, you know, I have a 3 year-old at home. It's, it's onerous at times, yeah.
Yeah, I think, like speaking to kind of the like, extra hours and stuff.
I mean, I'm on a call right now with my manager, but I think especially in our department, like we're very much encouraged to, like, if you're working late
the night before, like you're not like 8:59, be online, like, you know.
Be gracious with yourself if you need that, you know, extra hour or whatever in the morning. If you're like, hey,
I've been at event, event, event, event, a week,
I'm gonna kind of quietly pull off a little bit early on Friday, you know, and take some kind of time.
So, I mean, again I think I'm very lucky in that, you know,
balance is key, and you really have to know yourself. So if you feel like you're like, you know what, that event took a lot out of me I'm really tired, it's just about communicating with your team to be like, hey, I'm gonna pull back, I'm gonna, you know, take a little bit of time
to maybe do a bit of reading, you know, you're still kind of engaging with work.
You're not actively working, because otherwise it's, you will just burn out,
I think, too quickly, because you will just be go, go, go, go, go for too long.
So, and there is, you know, some over time, because obviously, that's when people are doing events.
But I think you know, finding that balance is, is key.
What do you think? How do you feel, Sam?
Yeah, I definitely agree. I mean, it really helps having a manager who gets that.
And he was very open, and, you know, allows you to take that time off if you need to. My boss is like that, too, where, if, you know, I need to leave a little bit early, or I need to start late, for whatever reason, she's usually fine with it. And for us, on the kids side, I feel like a lot of our
events do tend to be on weekends. Just because that's when you have like story times and things like that.
So sometimes it can be a bit of a pain to, you know,
wake up early on a Saturday and get on the subway, or whatever.
But it's always fun to see those kids just being so stoked to meet their favorite authors.
So that kind of makes up for it. I don't actually travel with my authors.
So when I have a West Coast author that can be a little bit tricky with the time difference, and things like that.
So it really just means that I have my phone on for longer, just to make sure everything's okay.
Do they need me for something? It's, you know. Has something happened?
I learned that the hard way when I once turned off my phone while an author was traveling. Realized I had forgotten something,
so I turned my phone back on and was like, Oh, she's stuck in Toronto, and she's supposed to be in like Boston.
So then it to figure things out pretty late. But, you know, I learned, I learned from that experience for sure and definitely keep a closer eye on my emails
if an author is traveling somewhere, in case they need something
last minute. Yeah, it, but also in terms of traveling, I actually just got back from my first business trip.
That that's great.
So I felt like a real business person like getting on my, getting on the flight on Monday to come home, but we occasionally do
trade shows in the U.S. So we did one called Lib
Learn X which was in New Orleans this year. So again, my first time traveling for business, my first time in that particular city.
Hmm.
So that was really cool, and to make those connections with U.S. colleagues who I've only ever emailed before was really special, I think.
But yeah, those opportunities kind of come once in a while.
It's not super frequent or anything like that. But that is one of the perks of the job, I think, and even if I was living outside of Toronto, I think I still would have made it there, it just would have been a little bit harder, to coordinate all the travel and things like that
if I couldn't physically be in the office, because leading up to this, you know, I was in the office packing books and bookmarks and art cards and all those kinds of things.
So if I wasn't in Toronto it would have been a lot harder to kind of manage and make sure that everything got where it needed to go.
You make a good point about the telephone, where, like, I think, you know, with your iPhone or your Blackberry, or whatever, many companies, not all, give you a company phone when you're in a publicity position, and, I think, I hope, that most companies do say like, listen, under regular circumstances, boundaries.
You're not tethered, but when an author's traveling, you kind of are their
person. You are the person who booked it through the travel agent.
You're the person who has been dealing and liaising.
You're kind of, you've, you've created the schedule for them that they're reading off of and like you, I mean, I've made some mistakes in my 20 years.
I, I've booked the wrong, the flight for the wrong day, and it's been an expensive and consequential mistake.
These things happen, or storms, or you know things we can't control.
So, it's, there is a sense that you can be a bit tethered.
And now that we're going back to more and more in-person, I think there will be a lot of publicists who haven't had that opportunity to work in that space yet, and who will start to learn even more about those sorts of that, that amount of reliability that an author has on us.
Yeah, for sure. There's 2 questions that are side by side, that go kind of, or are the same question, or go well together.
And it's asking about whether you're assigned certain authors, or is it more kind of project or book based, and then kind of similarly that are they assigned to you, or do you actively select the authors that you work with? And I'll kind of say a little bit then I'll pass
it off to you. At least in my experience, often it's really important,
and I think handy for both the publicist and the author, to kind of build that relationship with the publicist. So often you might be assigned a book, but if they have a second book that comes out it's most likely that you're gonna continue to work with that author because you already have that connection and
you've learned a little bit about each other's personalities, and, and, you know, what, how, how your relationship works.
So sometimes it is kind of just, oh, you're gonna work on this book, and it might be a one book, but sometimes it is kind of the beginning of a relationship.
But maybe I'll pass off to Sam if you want to speak to your experience.
Yeah. For sure. Very similar. And like you were saying earlier, Cayley, I know you work with your U.S.
colleagues, too. So we do that as well, especially if U.S., one of our U.S. imprints is publishing a Canadian author, it's, they don't have to be Canadian, but for the most part that's the people that we talk to. So the way
it divides up is any imprint that falls under Penguin
Young Readers comes to me for anything publicity-based in Canada. Random House, Children's goes to my colleague Evan, and there's a couple of other clients that we work with, so like those ones are just automatic, you know, if it happens to be in this imprint then it's mine
or it's Evan's. And then for the titles originating from Tundra, I'm very much the same thing, you know.
If I've worked with an author once, there's a 99% chance that I'm going to keep working with them, unless for whatever reason we need to switch. Sometimes it can get a little bit confusing when we have, you know, an author that I've worked with and an illustrator Evan's
worked with, and then they like work together. Then we kind of have to figure out which one of us it falls under.
So sometimes it just comes down to like, you know, workload like, maybe I have a really big title that season
so Evan is going to take it. Or that's a topic that genuinely interests me,
so I'll take it on, and that kind of thing.
So my boss is also great about that where she'll kind of give us a choice to a certain extent, especially if it's a newer author to the list where it's like, well, I know you like this kind of thing.
So this is gonna go to you like, I'm the big YA fan
so I'm gonna take something that's YA.
We have a running joke that I'm the ghost publicist, because every book we've published about ghosts has somehow come to me so that's just kind of my thing
now.
That's funny. I'm the oxygenarian whisperer
because everybody over 80 is like, in my purview.
There you go. Yeah. So it's like, if it's a picture book about a ghost, it's automatically going to
Love it
Sam, doesn't matter who it is. It's just hers now, so that can be really fun, too,
when you kind of find those little like niche moments where it's just, you've done a couple of books that have that particular topic, and you're the expert so
it just makes sense to keep giving them to you.
That's really funny. I will say this, I, I, we're, I will tell the group that everybody, thank you all for participating, and for those of you who have stayed on until 7:50 to listen to us.
I hope that it's been informative. It's been really lovely to be on this panel with you, Cayley and Sam.
I, I think you're both incredible. And just to close to say that I got into book publishing when I started thinking, okay, like, I, again, I'm dating myself here,
but I, you know, I loved mystery,
I loved Margaret Atwood, and I started my internship at McClelland & Stewart, which is where they were published, and I thought, you know, oh, my gosh, Michael Ondaatje,
and all of these major literary talents. This was 2003. And I say that because then, when I sort of continued to grow in my role, they gave me a lot of really commercial offers as Penguin and Random House and everything started to go on and on and I was like, I don't know
who Diana Gabaldon is. That's, that's not,
I mean, this is pre-television show. But I didn't know.
And actually one of the most gratifying, you know, things that I've ever had a chance to do was be a part of a 10-city tour with her.
I traveled the country with this person, who would, she'd, by that time, only had, had, had 6 books, and they're big book, so I'd like read like a couple of them, and I was like trying to get the audio on CD. Dating myself.
And long story short like, that, the, there were, there were thousands of people at these events, and these people who I was kind of going like,
oh, this is not my thing, like it's not my kind of book,
I don't get it, you know, they were coming and standing beside her, and they were going like, your books really allowed me to escape a really hard time.
My chemo drip was in. I was going through a divorce.
I was, your book was the thing, or your book reinvigorated
our relationship. Things like that. And I was like, Oh, you can connect with books in different ways.
And I've been doing this snobby thing, thinking I could only work on books that I like, and that I believe in.
And I started to really have my mind opened up in commercial fiction, and, and in general more commercial books have become much more mainstream in Canada. The media has embraced them in a larger way.
Retailers have embraced them in a larger way.
I think we still have a lot of work to do. But just as an example, I thought I would only want to work on one kind of book, and then, when I was assigned things, it really just, that experience blew my mind.
And that may be something that other people don't see or, or get. But I just, I thought I'd say that as somebody who's assigning titles sometimes as the director, I, I try to challenge people to, you know, to, to encourage them to say, tell me the things you're most interested in, I
really want to try to reward you with being able to work on those things.
I also caution people and say you don't always want to work with your heroes. But I do think that stretching yourself and going like well, it's not really my thing, but like maybe I should try working on a hockey book, or maybe I should try working on a book that's
about science, or, or whatever your thing is, ghosts, like,
if you, you may, you may become the ghost publicist.
So I, I'm gonna use that as my closing remark.
But if you, anything else, you guys want to contribute to that.
Sam, anything you want to add before we go?
No, I think that's good. And Adria, I totally agree.
Sometimes you aren't expecting to love a book, and then you do, or you see how it's changed people's lives, or how it's affected them, and it just kind of becomes your thing
then. It's really great to have an open mind, and you know, not just kind of stick yourself in one corner all the time.
But that was a beautiful example.
Yeah, amazing. My kind of final remark is, and I think it will kind of touch on,
you know, something in the chat is, if you love books, get out there, go to book events, go to online Zoom
things, go to your local bookstore, ask your local, you know, bookshop bookseller, what is your favorite book right now?
Really lean in and engage with book people. Whether that's, you know, publishing events, whether that's bookseller events.
If you lean into that world, even if you don't have experience in the book world, or even if you don't really have any employment experience at all, because you've just graduated, that passion and that love of books will shine through, and you don't need to have a publishing
certificate in order to get into the industry. I know we all do so
that's kind of a bad example, but you don't have to.
You can lean into that knowledge and that experience and that passion in different ways.
So just kind of, I saw a couple in the chat.
It's, it's handy to have an understanding of the publishing industry as a whole.
But most of all like I said at the beginning, must love, must love books, and so just kind of lean into that in any way that you can.
And I think that that passion will, will shine through out of every corner.
And yeah, we are way over time. So I will kind of use this opportunity to say, Thank you to Adria and Sam for joining me this evening to talk about publicity.
Thank you to the CPC for hosting these events.
I think it's so important to get to connect to people in the industry again.
You can find me online, if you're there. I know there was a ton of questions we didn't get to address, so feel free to, you know, pass me online, and I'll engage, however, I can.
But it has been such a pleasure getting to chat with you all, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your evening.
Thank you. Everyone.
Thanks, all
Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Kaylee. Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Katrina.
HiBye.Hi