Marketing Your Book: How Authors Can Participate - Felicia Frazier, Shanta Newlin and Emily Romero

Felicia Frazier is the senior vice president and director of Sales for all of Penguin Random House Young Readers imprints.

Shanta Newlin is executive director of Publicity for Penguin Young Readers.

Emily Romero is vice president of Marketing for Penguin Young Readers.

Right to Left: Felicia Frazier, Shanta Newlin and Emily Romero

There's a ton shared in this session, as they walked us through the homework they give their authors, discussed Launch Meetings, and described the opportunities authors have to team with them on marketing, publicity and sales.

Some highlights:

You need to identify the audience for your book. What are the other books your audience are reading before they pick up yours?

Think about the two-sentence pitch. What's the essence of your book? That pitch can even help marketing come up with tag lines

Know your backstory - how can sales talk about you?

The session was full of great advice, including: 

Don't mimic other people's success. Play to your own strengths. Be authentic!

Do not contact media directly - better to tell them your contacts and suggestions and let them contact the media outlets for you.

Do not respond to negative reviews. Don't.


Ruta Sepetys, one of Penguin's authors, was in the audience, and was called on a few times as a "master" at publicity and marketing. (She demurred, saying she was there to learn. We can always learn more!) In particular, Ruta's author video for "Between Shades of Gray" (you can see it at Ruta's website here) was cited as a great example of what an author video - well done - can do.

Marketing and Sales Panel: Emily Romero

Emily Romero is the vice president of marketing for the Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Random House, where she has spent over fourteen years working on a wide range of children's literature, from picture books to young adult novels.

Children's books are permeating entertainment, TV, movies, etc. Emily thinks Stephen Colbert said it best.

"A young adult novel is a regular novel that people actually read."
-Stephen Colbert

Most book buyers actively discover books by asking friends, browsing in bookstores, and reading reviews online. This is the seed of what the marketing team does; they take word-of-mouth and build it.

Building support with booksellers is key.

Penguin still prints catalogs, they create F&Gs/ARCs, as well as create a catalog of their backlog. They do trade advertising, as well as special mailings.

Penguin attends Book Expo America (BEA), which give them a chance to put their best foot forward. "We represent our books and get support." Face-to-face opportunities where they as the publisher get to represent their books.

On getting their books notice: People have to find your book. Penguin works with their sales reps and get promotions (displays, posters, etc.) so that the book is noticed.

The teacher and librarian market is powerful because it gets books in the hands of readers. Penguin is sure to get their books on state list. They also attend conferences that teachers and librarians attend (like ALA), as well as provide teachers with material they need to use their books in the classroom.

Reaching consumers is now heavily done through social and digital means. They've invested in all the platforms to be certain they have a reach and build the many communities who might buy their books.

Advertising is done through print, digital/search, broadcast.

Sale. Marketing. Publicity. They all work together.

The Marketing and Sales Panel!

From Left to Right: Felicia Frazier, Emily Romero and Shanta Newlin

A slide showing how Sales (represented by Felicia), Marketing (represented by Emily) and Publicity (represented by Shanta) work together to connect your book to your audience.