Event Recording

Members Only

Preparing for Publication Day (Authors Guild Launchpad Webinar #2)

Marketing & Publicity

September 21, 2023

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Authors share lessons from book launches—what went well, what they wish they’d known, and how to emotionally prepare for publication day. Published by a range of publishers, the panelists will discuss the following:

• Differences between publicity and marketing
• When, how, and why to hire a freelancer
• Advice for working well in-and-out of house
• Actions authors can take on their own
• Current challenges in the media landscape
• How much social media and “platforms” matter
• Whether readings and events have an impact
• Different ways to think about success

From logistics to choices to emotions, panelists will move through what the publication process looked like for each of them and what it meant to help bring their books out in the world.

Panelists

Author of the award-winning debut food narrative memoir, KHABAAR: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory and Family (University of Iowa Press, 2022), Madhushree Ghosh is a 2023 TEDx San Diego Seeds of Change speaker highlighting food, immigration, social justice and community in her talk What We Talk About When We Talk About Food. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays in Food Writing (2023), Pushcart-nominated,  an Independent Publishers Book Awards (IPPY) Gold in memoir/family legacy/travel category, and published in The New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Vogue India, Longreads, BOMB, The Rumpus, Guernica and others. San Diego-based Madhushree works in oncology diagnostics, and can be reached at @writemadhushree or her website. Photo credit: Natalie Joy MItchell Photography.

Alejandra Oliva is an essayist, embroiderer and translator.  Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Catapult, and Best American Travel Writing 2020.  Her book, Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith and Migration, was published by Astra House, and received a Whiting Nonfiction Grant. She was the Yale Whitney Humanities Center Franke Visiting Fellow in Spring 2022. Photo credit: Anna Longworth.

Patricia Park is the author of the YA novel, Imposter Syndrome & Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim, named NPR’s Best Book of the Day; and the forthcoming What’s Eating Jackie Oh? She is a tenured professor of creative writing at American University, a former Fulbright Scholar and Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence, and author of the acclaimed adult novel, Re Jane, a modern retelling of Brontë’s Jane Eyre. She’s written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Guardian, and others. Patriciapark.com, Twitter/IG/Tiktok: @patriciapark718.

Moderator: Born and raised in Malaysia, May-Zhee Lim is a writer and freelance publicist living in New York. During her time with Riverhead Books, she helped launch the careers of debut authors and expand the readership of prize-winning ones such as Pulitzer winner Hernan Diaz and Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk. In 2021, she made the Publishers Weekly Star Honoree list for her creative, out-of-the-box publicity ideas, including a short story printed on cake wrapping and a pop-up reading room series around the city. Before joining book publishing, she was an executive assistant at PEN America. Currently, May-Zhee is at work on her first novel. Photo credit: Juliana Sohn.