Episode 418: Cookbook Publicity Secrets: What Top PR Agents Want Cookbook Authors to Know

So the publicists that I have spoken to on the show over the years have worked with incredible names.

Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Ina Garden, and publicity agents who specialize in helping first time authors build their online presence from scratch.

So when I sat down and looked at all the advice side by side, there was a lot of overlap.

And there were different practices, different client rosters, but they kept coming back to the same core principles.

So before I dive into their publicity secrets, I want to let you know, first of all, that talk about a little bit about the difference between publicity and marketing.

So publicity is media that is earned and it is organic.

And an editor or a producer or a reviewer decides on their own whether you or your book is worth covering.

So a perfect example of this is anytime a cookbook author comes on my show, the Cookbook Love podcast, that is a decision that I make to invite them to the show.

Their publicity agent or their PR agent at the publisher or a private PR agent that they have hired reaches out to me and pitches the show to me, but I'm the one that makes the decision about whether or not I want people to come on the show.

I get pitched authors all the time.

I get books sent to me all the time.

I only have a limited number of spaces for interviews, so I get to make the final decision.

They don't pay me for that.

That is free publicity for them, but I'm the one that controls whether or not they get to come on the show.

So the author might be paying the publicist to get them placement on podcasts, on news shows, on the Today Show, but the author does not do the reaching out.

The PR agent does.

Now with marketing then, the real distinction is that marketing isn't just paid, it's also free.

But the marketing message is controlled by the author or the PR agent.

With marketing, whether or not you're paying for marketing, You control the content or your PR agent controls the content.

And the easiest type of marketing that's the clearest example to think about is advertising or what you put on your website or your email list or your social content.

If you do a giveaway or a cross promotion with another author, all of that is marketing too.

Not all of it is paid for, but the locus of control is on your end.

your headlines, your texts, what you say on your website, what emails you write, that's all completely up to you.

So why should a cookbook author care then about the difference? Because you probably need a little bit of both when you're promoting a book and they do different jobs.

Marketing gets your message out on your terms and publicity gets your book covered on someone else's terms.