Marketing and Publicity

I didn't expect to land in marketing and publicity, but once I found myself there, I realized that I really enjoy the work. I'm always learning something new, because in marketing, you rarely do the same thing twice. The tasks might be similar, but something is always changing because no two projects are exactly alike; each one requires fresh thinking. And marketing is both creative and analytical; the best campaigns utilize data, strategy, and creative, out-of-the-box thinking to create a plan to reach the audience or customer you're after.

Marketing and Publicity Testimonials

"I’ve been in publishing for over 30 years and I often found myself learning from Laurel. She knows books and loves them, like few I’ve met in my career. She also knows marketing and publicity. Her ability to develop messaging, strategy, and tactics to reach primary, secondary, and tertiary markets is what makes her stand out from other marketing execs I’ve worked with. And when it comes to publicity, Laurel has all the ingredients needed—creative writing, understanding the nuances of pitching to different targets, and the overall tenacity to go after something and to make it happen."
–Don Jacobson, President of D.C Jacobson & Associates Literary Agency and Publisher of Zeal Books

“Working with Laurel is simply a pleasure. Her creativity, readiness to innovate, and get-it-done attitude have helped me ground and strategize my own book promotion, and her well-read, industry-savvy attitude make for confidence that my work will connect with readers.”
–Paul J. Pastor, author of The Face of the Deep and The Listening Day

“I’m pleasantly surprised just about every week when Laurel has some sort of marketing plan or a new scheduled reading. I would go to meetings with [the team working on my book] and find that they all loved the book and had a ton of ideas. They were enthusiastic and wanted to make the book great, and in my opinion they did.”
–Sean Davis, author of The Wax Bullet War

Space at the Table Marketing

Space at the Table: Conversations Between an Evangelical Theologian and His Gay Son was the first title released by new publisher Zeal Books. For this book, we used traditional book marketing tactics—things like publicity outreach to online and print media, digital advertisements, giveaways, and direct mail and email campaigns—as well as a few less traditional strategies. We ran a Kickstarter campaign, both to raise money to cover our first print run (effectively using the crowdfunding platform as a way to take pre-orders), and to engage the target audience in a way that gave them a stake in the success of the book. (Kickstarter campaigns are an all-or-nothing game, so if backers want the product they pledged for, they have a vested interest in sharing the project so that it reaches its goal.) Our project was successfully funded and raised over $31,000 in a matter of weeks. You can check out the project's Kickstarter page, including all of our updates, here.

Space at the Table also received some fantastic media, including a feature article, excerpt, and follow-up article that I placed in the Oregonian:

You can also see the tip sheet I created for our more traditional sales efforts.

Sales Kit

I assembled this sales kit for Sean Davis's memoir, The Wax Bullet War. The kit was sent to our sales reps at Ingram Publisher Services and contained four key pieces:

Sample chapters (not included here)
A tip sheet
An Ooligan Press info sheet (a standard document used at the press)
The Wax Bullet War marketing plan

These documents were packaged in a folder, which I designed to resemble a military personnel file. You can click the image to the left to view the entire package, or click the links listed above to see individual documents.

Press Kit

These are materials I assembled to send to bookstores, event coordinators, and media outlets as part of our promotional efforts for The Wax Bullet War. The press kit included:

Transmedia Marketing Plan

"Transmedia is storytelling across multiple platforms of media, with each element making distinctive contributions to a viewer, user, or player’s understanding of the story world. By using different media formats, it attempts to create entry-points through which consumers can become immersed in a storytelling world." —Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins

This is a transmedia marketing plan for Ooligan Press’s YA title The Ninth Day. Ooligan is a small, nonprofit trade press with a very small marketing budget, so I focused on free or low-cost options that would utilize social media to create and distribute creative extensions and additions to the fictional world of the book. This marketing plan is meant to supplement (rather than replace) the book’s traditional marketing plan, which focuses on things like reviews, blurbs, giveaways, promotional collateral, and events and readings.

Events

I have booked author events at Powell's Books, Busboys and Poets, Portland Book Festival (formerly Wordstock), the Fenimore Museum, Napa Bookmine, A Children's Place, and others. I also helped plan Transmit Culture, a public, publishing-related lecture series put on by Ooligan Press and Portland State University's Graduate Publishing Program.

Other Marketing Samples

A pitch to bloggers (written while interning at HarperCollins).