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: Felicia Frazier

Felicia Frazier

Felicia Frazier is the senior vice president of children's sales at Penguin Random House, where she's worked in a variety of roles.

As she gave her overview of how sales works, she confessed she thinks it's the best job in the industry.

"I love sales. It's so much fun," she said. And her mantra with her team of sales reps, no matter how great a year they've had, is "We think we can do better."

Children's publishing is the growth segment of the industry. Penguin publishes 650 new titles a year, on top of a 5,000-title backlist.

Penguin Random House wants their books to sell more copies today than they did previously. And they're doing it. The unstoppable 13 REASONS WHY by Jay Asher has sold more copies this year than it did seven years ago, she said.

Thirty-five percent of their list is debut authors, so as much as they love their back list, they're also passionate about debuts.

The numbers look good for those of us in the industry, Felicia said. The top 100 children's books are selling three times the physical unit sales today that they were 10 years ago. And compared to 2013, which was a good year, 2014 is 14 points better. She thinks children's books will exceed $4 billion in 2014.

One great thing about kids: There are new ones born every year.

"Every year, the book is new to somebody," she said (an observation people really loved hearing because her delivery was so passionate).

Her job is making sure that their books are wherever there are cash registers. She has identified more than 50,000 places where she can sell books. "And I love my job." 

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.