How to Pitch: Kelly Gallucci, Executive Editor of Bookish.com

Kelly Gallucci is the Executive Editor of Bookish.com, where she oversees Bookish’s editorial content, offers book recommendations, and interviews authors like Colleen Hoover, Leigh Bardugo, V.E. Schwab, and Julie C. Dao.

As the editor of this popular site, she gets pitched a lot of books to consider for features, interviews, inclusion in lists, and the like. Below, she shares some tips about how to approach pitches, based on her experience receiving them.

Give us a sense of the volume of pitch emails you receive. How do these fit into your overall workflow and help you build your editorial calendar?

My inbox is my personal Everest. I’d estimate that I receive roughly 100 emails a day, give or take, though not all of those are pitches. There’s definitely an ebb and flow depending on the day of the week and the season of the year.

Our editorial calendar is first shaped by recurring features (such as our book club recommendations, monthly Bookish bingo, and our seasonal roundups). The next step is to fill in any features that our team wants to work on. While writing those in, we leave room for articles inspired by publicity pitches, such as interviews and author guest posts.

Sometimes books pitched to us will fit into features we’re already crafting (a romance book pitched while we’re writing a holiday romance listicle), or they’ll inspire features we want to work on in the future. I also like to leave room for author guest posts, where authors share a short essay or a list of book recommendations. This gives our readers more insight into the author and their work, and lets us profile their book more directly.

What are the most successful ways that people have contacted you with a pitch? What are pitfalls that might make a pitch less successful with you? Feel free to include specifics.

The best pitch emails are the ones where a publicist shares an idea for an author guest post or predicts the kind of content the book would be best suited for. This makes it easier to envision where the article would fit into our calendar.

As for pitfalls, the big one is pitching us for content we don’t feature. For example, I receive a lot of pitches asking for us to review a book, but we don’t do book reviews on Bookish. Similarly, I receive a lot of requests for interviews. Interviewing authors is one of my personal favorite parts of my job, but they can be tricky for our audience. You have to work twice as hard to motivate a reader to click into an interview with an author they’re unfamiliar with. If an author has a strong online community, we can tap into that. If not, I’ll often see if the author is available for a different type of feature instead. A lot of this depends on the author’s availability, but I always appreciate publicists who are willing to think outside of the box with me when it comes to how to feature books.

Describe the relationships you have built with publicists and authors who regularly pitch you. How have publicists been able to earn your ear and your trust?

I’ve had the pleasure of working with so many brilliant and talented publicists over the years. Their creativity and drive never cease to amaze me.

The ones I rely on most are the ones who take the time to truly understand Bookish. They read our articles. They know the content we do and do not cover. They pay attention to the genres we feature most frequently. Basically, they do their homework. As a result, their pitches are refined and reflective of the content that does well for Bookish. When I see an email from them in my inbox, I know the book they’re pitching will be a good fit for us.

I also always appreciate the publicists who ask questions, especially if we haven’t had the opportunity to work together for long. I’m always happy to hop on the phone or fire off an email that can explore in detail the kind of content we cover, what does and doesn’t perform well, who our audience is, and more. When I receive a pitch, I’m never just thinking about the book. I’m considering all of those other factors too.

When digging through your inbox, what kinds of subject lines catch your eye? What details are important right up front?

I think the best subject lines are concise and direct. In my inbox right now, there’s an email with the subject “Cover Reveal for Bookish.” That’s excellent. I know exactly what I’m clicking into, and it alerts me to the fact that this is a more time-sensitive email. Another one I’ve spotted is “February’s Most-Anticipated Read” followed by the book title and author name. I now know the book, the time frame, and the angle.

On the other hand, I see a lot of emails that try to offer too much information upfront. An example from my inbox at the moment would be “New Standalone Novel From NYT Bestselling Historical Fiction Author” and the rest of the subject (the book title, author’s name) are cut off. The lede is buried here, and at first glance all I really know is the genre.

How do you feel about follow-ups from publicists? Is there a timeframe that works well for you if they haven’t heard back? What is important to you in a follow-up from a publicist?

My inbox is a dragon and it hoards emails like they’re gold. Follow-ups often work really well for me because they help to bring the email back to the top of my inbox.

The ideal timing varies. I don’t mind if a publicist follows up on a time-sensitive email the following day. For general pitches, following up a week or even weeks later is helpful, particularly if the pub date is still a healthy distance away.

A longer time between follow-ups also means that there’s more potential for new information to have come out, and that’s something I’m always looking for in those emails. Has anything changed since the first pitch (news, reviews, blurbs, etc.)?

What is one pet peeve (or pet pleasure!) that you have about pitch emails?

My pet peeve is definitely when emails don’t contain enough information. It’s most helpful for me when the author, book title, genre, and pub date are as up-front and clear as possible.

I’ll also add, and this isn’t related to pitches, that it’s extremely helpful when authors list their publicist on their website. It’s one of the places we check if we’re looking to contact a publicist we haven’t worked with before, but most authors only list an agent.

As for pet pleasure, it’s always a joy to open an email where a publicist references projects we’ve worked on in the past, books I’ve enjoyed from them, and other personal touches. To be clear, I’m all for form emails. Publicists are juggling multiple books and authors, and I support anything that makes their lives a bit easier. But personal touches at the beginning of those emails are always just a nice thing to see during my day.

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How To Pitch: Sarah Miniaci, Senior Account Executive at Smith Publicity

Finding placement in relevant media channels is integral to a book’s success. After all, nobody will read or buy a book if they’ve never heard of it! Securing those crucial placements requires pitching. In our How to Pitch series, we hear from some of the publicists who use NetGalley to learn more about their strategies and successes.

We’re thrilled to kick off this series with Sarah Miniaci, Senior Account Executive at Smith Publicity.

We know that pitching books to important media is just one part of what you do. How do crafting the right message, finding the right person to contact, and other pitching-related projects this fit into your workflow?

You’re absolutely right that pitching books to important media is just one of the many initiatives a book publicist undertakes – but, it’s an incredibly important one, and it is the effort we spend the most time on by far in any given week. The many factors we take into account in crafting a pitch – and then identifying the right contact to send it to – include but aren’t limited to: the book’s plot, themes, timely topics, geographic tie-in’s, and key messages, the author’s background, talking points in relation to the book, local market hooks, and past media credentials and/or existing media relationships, what’s going on in the news, what’s trending in the entertainment publishing industry (and/or genre landscape) at large, and what changes are afoot in the media (from contact role updates to new outlets opening to other outlets shuttering their doors or changing focus, establishing new sections, etc.). So, it’s a lot of work – a full-time job, truly! – but work that is very much worth it when it results in the right coverage placement for the right book at the right time.

How do you determine the right people to pitch? Do you have certain contacts that you send every book to, or is the decision really based on each particular book?

As full-time book publicists we have a great benefit when it comes to developing our pitch lists, which is that we spend all day every day immersed in the literary media landscape – and so we are able to develop a strong gauge on which books are suitable for (and appealing to) which contacts. That said, there is no single contact to whom I would send each and every book. A self-published romance novel is not going to be relevant to the same media contacts to whom we pitch high-profile business non-fiction. For that matter, there can be great discrepancies even within the same genre landscape – two separate thrillers novels, both with October 2018 publication dates, can and will usually have very different publicity plans. To establish our pitch targets, we’re really looking in-depth at the book and author, and from there determining how and who we’re going to present them to as a good candidate for coverage. Does the book have a complex female protagonist or is the narrator a young African-American man? Is it set in modern-day New York City or rural Missouri at the turn of the century? Is the author’s voice gritty and hyper-realistic or breezy and family-friendly? Every pitch list we create for every book we work on is painstakingly crafted and highly personalized, taking all of these factors and more into account.

What strategies do you use to make your pitch emails stand out?

Every publicist has their own quirks and executes their pitching a little differently, but the majority of pitching these days is conducted over email – at least as a first point of contact, and for print and online media almost exclusively. Some contacts for broadcast outlets, like radio and television, still like a good phone pitch. As professional publicists, it’s our job to know who likes to be pitched in what ways and act accordingly. Some contacts also like being pitched over social media – but, I will warn, most do not, and certainly not over Facebook (it’s a very personal platform and faux pas to get in touch this way unless otherwise explicitly stated!).

In terms of standing out with your pitch, it’s my sincere belief that if you’ve taken the time to identify the right contact to pitch, you won’t find it hard to stand out and get a response. You need to be confident that this kind of book from this kind of author is precisely the kind of thing that this contact has a demonstrated interest and solid background of editorial coverage in. It’s really important to be cognizant of the fact that the media and reviewers you are pitching don’t actually want to say “no” to the pitches they’re receiving. They love nothing better than a good pitch they can actually do something with. The more thoughtful, targeted, and helpful you can be to the media, the much better your chances of success become. Remember: media contacts and reviewers have jobs to do, too – be of value and you’ll find a lot of open doors and great relationships await!

What resources do you use to sharpen your skills for crafting just the right message in your pitch?

It may sound obvious, but the very best way to sharpen one’s pitching skills is, in my view, by reading and consuming media! To keep up with the magazine landscape, I personally love the Texture app. Twitter is a great way to stay engaged with outlets and media contacts and get a feel for what they’re covering. With newspapers, Twitter can also be helpful (you can follow not only publications but in many cases specific sections, too, such as @nytimesbooks, @globebooks, @latimesbooks, and the list goes on). I also like subscribing to the weekend editions of a couple of print newspapers. Not only is it a nice way to spend a Sunday morning with a little breakfast and pot of coffee, it’s also valuable in gaining a genuine understanding of the media coverage landscape for books. I’m a public radio junkie (as a Canadian, I can’t get enough of the CBC, but I love and often live-stream NPR and the BBC at my desk, too!) and love following #Bookstagram influencers and other media contacts I interact with a lot on Instagram. It really all goes back to the idea of getting to know the people and outlets you’re pitching. Once you get that, everything else really does fall into place.

What do you do if you don’t get a response? 

In this day and age, we all have over-stuffed inboxes and it is completely understandable that not every email you send out is going to receive – or even warrant – an immediate response. That said, if I’m reaching out to a contact with a book that I genuinely believe is going to be a perfect fit for them, I don’t hesitate to follow up about a week after my initial pitch send – it’s always possible that they were on vacation, on deadline, or just otherwise distracted when the first one came through, but interested and grateful for the follow-up! Otherwise, if you’ve done your research and are confident that this contact should, in fact, be receiving your pitch (I keep stressing this because it really is the most important part), keep following up with new angles, story ideas, subject lines. Media contacts often get back to us weeks, months, and sometimes even years after the initial pitch was sent!

Give us your top tip for publicists!

Do your homework, read/listen to/watch media voraciously, and always remember: the person you’re pitching doesn’t want to have to say no, so make it easy for them to say yes!

NetGalley Insights tip: Authors, whether or not they are working with publicists, should also be thinking about these strategies. Authors can help their publicist, or use these strategies to pitch their own titles. Authors should be thinking about how to tie their books to media outlets, influencers, regional opportunities, and more. Authors should be consuming relevant media to learn more about how titles are being positioned, and who is talking about what.  

 

Sarah Miniaci is a Senior Account Executive and Business Development Associate at Smith Publicity – one of the leading book publicity agencies in the world, with offices in Toronto and New Jersey. Founded in 1997, Smith Publicity has worked with more than 3,000 authors and publishers, from New York Times bestsellers to first time, self-published authors.

To connect with Sarah or another publicist at Smith Publicity, contact them at www.SmithPublicity.com or find them on social media @SmithPublicity on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

*Interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

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