Debunking myths for thought leadership practitioners interested in publishing | Lucinda Halpern

Peter Winick

Debunking myths for thought leadership practitioners interested in publishing | Lucinda Halpern | 374

Getting answers to common questions about publishing and publicists.

An interview with Lucinda Halpern about Lucinda Literary LLC, and how she is helping authors shine in the publishing world.

There are a lot of myths that first-time authors have about publishing: Having a literary agent guarantees you a book deal; book contracts are too complicated for a normal person to understand; authors need huge social media numbers to get published. Getting published can be a complicated process, but it doesn’t have to be a confusing one!

To help us debunk these myths, we invited Lucinda Halpern to join us for a conversation. Linda is the president of Lucinda Literary LLC, a literary management firm that champions leading thinkers and emerging voices. As President of the organization, Lucinda relies on her deep knowledge of the industry, and decades of experience guiding authors to break-out success and long-lasting careers.

We start our myth-busting by talking about book agents, and what happens during the lead time before a book hits the shelf. Lucinda explains that engaging a literary agent can help understand publishers’ needs, and add an additional level of polish to your manuscript – but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll find a publishing deal. While thought leaders often want their book published immediately, Lucinda explains that it can take 12 to 18 months for the publishing process, even after your manuscript is written.

Next, we shine a light on the myths of platform and marketing. While publishers still require fantastic content, Lucinda shares the importance of creating a visible author presence. We get a brief overview of ways that publishers review a potential author’s platform and reach, and where an aspiring author might focus in order to improve their chances of becoming published. In addition to publishing their manuscript, authors need to think about the long-term business plan for their book. Lucinda gives us insights into the long-view of business books, why lower than expected sales do not equate to failure, and how lead generation is the place to make real profit.

We wrap up our conversation by discussing the frustrations that can arise when dealing with publicists. Lucinda helps us understand the steps an author should take to screen a potential PR company, the questions that need to be asked, and the routes you can take – depending on your budget.

This conversation is a deep dive into what authors need to know and understand – from the moment they seek an agent, to the years following the publication of their book.

Three Key Takeaways:

Thought Leaders should work with a literary agent, to polish their manuscript and shop it to publishers.
Authors need to look at publishing a book as a long-term investment in their thought leadership; books are best thought of as lead generation tools for speaking and workshops.
If you are not interested in being part of marketing your thought leadership book, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. Find a platform that allows you to shine.

If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. In addition, we can help you implement marketing, research, and sales. Let us help you so you can devote yourself to what you do best.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. It’s Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. So today is going to be fun. I have Lucinda Halpern here, who is the founder and president of Lucinda Literary. She’s been over 15 years of experience in the corporate and agency publishing side, and she’s worked on a couple of little books you might have heard of, like Freakonomics. Another little author you might have heard of, Gretchen Rubin. And she also does a lot of stuff in this other universe that I know very little about in this stage of my life, which is literary representation. I’m sort of a one trick pony on the nonfiction side, But, you know, you spend a lot of time teaching, teaching writers and authors and all that of all stages. So anyway, let’s dive in and welcome aboard today. Listen to how you do it.

Lucinda Halpern Hey, thanks so much, Peter. Great.

Peter Winick So I thought what might be fun and from a lazy perspective might save me a lot of time down the road where I can just send people links to this is help me debunk a couple myths because I get clients talking to me all the time. They’ve got this barely sketched out idea in their head for some time and it’s great. I’m going to publish a book. What are you going to do? I’m going to get an agent New York. They’re going to give me a publisher and I’ll live happily ever after. And I will feel like the bad guy saying, Listen, Rapunzel, it doesn’t work like that. So.

Lucinda Halpern Exactly, exactly.

Peter Winick How can you be so sure? So I’m not always.

Lucinda Halpern Yeah, so I’ve got I’ve got so many myths come to mind. And my whole mission, at least later, is, is debunking those myths for writers. Right. So the first one is if you get an agent, doesn’t necessarily mean you get a book deal. Right? It’s a great step in the right direction because agents are presumably well connected with publishers and they’re aware of what the market wants at any given moment. But like writers, we have to work on spec to develop that proposal or manuscript with you, and then we take it out to publishers. And, you know, more often than not it sells and sometimes it doesn’t. So I think that’s the first thing to sort of know for, for any writer at any stage and.

Peter Winick Touch on the time. Yeah. Because I think the other. Yeah, I’ll keep poking at that you know so it feels like calls that I’m on all day with certain folks right and that happens in six months right So here’s my manuscript. It will be out in the spring.

Lucinda Halpern So as you can imagine, Peter, because you work with this kind of person as well, most thought leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, one thing about yesterday, it is so relevant. It is so burning for them to get out to their audience. The way book publishing works is not known for its speed, not known for being nimble.

Peter Winick So it hashtag understatement. Right?

Lucinda Halpern Right. Exactly. So it typically takes a year, at least from the time that you deliver that finished manuscript to the editing design production and sort of building of you as an author with booksellers to get that book on shelves. So that’s delivery to Bookshelf. Before that process, you’ve got to sell the book and you might take an agent to finish what you think of as a finished manuscript or proposal. Guess what? That agent is going to develop it with you even more, and that can take several months. You know, that could take a lot of time. And then the agent’s got to sell the thing. So, you know, I would suggest that you bake a lot of time into envisioning when your book is going to go on sale. The good news is that the time or the lead time is important. It allows for publishers to really build you as a first time author, and it allows you to ramp up your platform. So you really have a most robust audience when your book comes to market.

Peter Winick Got it. So going down this myth busting truth. So the next step is all I have to do is write the book and then the publisher does everything right. They marketing anything.

Lucinda Halpern So, again, as I’m sure you know, so much is author generated these days and it’s a chicken and egg, right. There are so many aspiring authors who are still looking for publishers to do all of that marketing work for them. The publisher looks at the author as a business investment and says, Well, what do you bring to the table? Right? Besides your great idea or your beautiful novel? What’s your existing audience? How are we sure we’re going to make our money back on this book? So, so much of it is about the audience that the authors already built.

Peter Winick So there is the chicken and egg, because I would argue and there are clearly exceptions to this, that that’s not what gets most authors out of bed every day is great. I’m going to build my Twitter following or LinkedIn or whatever. Like that kind of gives them a headache, right? They’re probably a little more introverted. They’ve got ideas they want to play with. But part of I would say that I don’t know, ten, 12 years ago, maybe eight years ago, when a publisher was making a decision, it was probably 70% content and 30% sort of following. And I would argue that might be flipped today.

Lucinda Halpern Yeah. I mean I could go through so I could go through all of the gradations of how platform is evaluated. You know, very briefly, if you are a Ph.D. or an M.D. or bring that sort of. Sure you don’t need to have the major Twitter following, right? It’s a plus if you do it. Likewise, if your CEO is running a company, have you really been spending your time on YouTube? Unlike offline? So. Right. So people are not always gauging you in that way. And so there are different ways that that we look at platform for journalists, for instance. Yeah, it would be great to have a Twitter following and some sort of online presence. I mean, writers do need to keep in mind that the first thing an agent or publisher does when seriously considering you is Google you. And if there’s no presence and no visibility, how do we have any sense this person’s going to have an audience to bring to the table? So, you know, those are a few ways to think about platform. I would say that a superpower of mine or of our agencies is getting authors excited about marketing. So you right the majority. So I’ve got two I’ve got two kinds of authors. The ones that come to us and say, I have zero interest in social media and marketing and the kinds that come to me and say, before I’ve even read this book, I want a New York Times bestseller and I’m ready to market. So yeah, so it’s two.

Peter Winick And everything in between.

Lucinda Halpern Right, right, right. But I think what our gift is, what we love to do is talk to an author about where exactly they’re going to shine. So is it going to be YouTube? Is it going to be Twitter? Is it going to be simply placing articles like writing offers of placing articles with the right notable media publications? Is it going to be speaking? Is it going to be your network? So there’s a lot of different ways to skin the proverbial cat. Pardon the expression. I mean, it doesn’t need to be all about huge online numbers, which is which is a big mess, a big myth. I like to bust for writers.

Peter Winick So I’ve got a bunch of other. But this is fun now. So let’s talk a little bit about business models, because again, most authors and I’m painting with the broad brush here, don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, when they walk by a big publisher’s office in Europe, like, wow, how did they pay the rent? How do they keep the lights on? How do they pay all their employees? Right. It’s been a little bit of this sort of East Coast elitist. And by the way, I’m a New Yorker. Right? So I like whatever. Yeah. Kind of thing. Right. This little secret handshake club. But I think there used to be a stigma that if you weren’t published by one of the big I guess we’re almost down to the big one now. But whatever, you know, but one of the big five or whatever, whatever the that is, it meant you were less than lesser than you know, it’s almost like if you didn’t get into the Ivies and you went to, you know, Podunk state, whatever, But I for one, don’t believe that. I’ll tell you what I think at least, you know, hash it out a little bit is part of the decision that an author needs to make is a business model decision as it relates and I’m not talking about literally because I don’t know anything about that other than I’ve read a lot. Right. But from a business standpoint, what are the underlying business model? And if speed is really important because you’re writing on something topical, you might need to go self or hybrid or something in the middle, right? If the prestige of the brand is important, that’s one thing. If it’s an academic imprint that you’re looking for, you know? So there’s lots of other variables. And it’s not just, you know, it’s not this binary thing anymore. And part of what I’m seeing in the market, which is really interesting to me, is I call them the worst of both worlds contracts, where an author gets a deal from a big house and there’s no advance. Okay. Because the author thought they’re going to get a zillion dollar advance because they’re fabulous and the author is basically burning all the risk by guaranteeing X number of buys wholesale of the book, which is in essence offsetting the initial investment. So I just it was a sense of that I’m throwing a lot at you, but maybe.

Lucinda Halpern Yeah, sure.

Peter Winick The business models.

Lucinda Halpern It’s interesting the kind of contract you’re talking about. I have a publisher who comes to me that won’t be named an independent publisher that requires that kind of book buy from an author and doesn’t pay in advance. Really rare to find in my world, right? Like, I’m not even sure. I think I’ve seen one contract like that in my time, so it’s not something I recommend authors step into. There’s got to be an advance and there’s got to be or the profit share agreements got to be really sensational. There’s not going to be a book by on top of that in terms of getting into the Ivies versus those independent self-publishing, you’re absolutely right that it’s got to make sense for the business. So for a lot of these thought leaders that you and I work with, Peter, it’s Allegiant for the real money to be made this is the speaking and on the back end with courses with funnels.

Peter Winick If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcasts, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple podcast and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Peter Winick So stay there for a minute because I’m sure this is this is the to me the biggest issue is that publishing is a really simple business, quite frankly. Publishers make money based on number of units sold period. Full stop. Right. The more units that go out the door, the more money they make. Author, speakers, thought leaders. Consultants. Academics. Typically, the amount of money they’re making from a royalty, you know, straight profits, if you will, from a book is usually no more than 5%, 10% if that of their gross revenue. So they have all these other things that the that the publishers don’t participate in.

Lucinda Halpern Exactly.

Peter Winick You know, I call it like an eclipse. There’s a point in time where everybody is aligned for about 90 days. Let’s sell books. Let’s all books, let’s open. And then we all sort of go our separate ways.

Lucinda Halpern Yes. Yes. And it’s a domino effect. I mean, the book is is often not the first thing that will happen in your career. Right. Like, you’ve got to build the expertise of the audience. But midway through your career makes sense to have a book on what you’re an expert in. And then it’s the domino effect of the book is your authority tool, and then you get the speaking gig and then you, you know, you’re landing the media and then you’re gaining more of an audience than you had exponentially. It’s a long tail. Authors that we work with should be thinking about it that way. And unlike the reputation or the myth that a publisher is out to just like, grab everything and own everything that you do, that’s actually very, very. Yeah, very different from the case. Right. And an agent is there to protect those rights that you have and to make sure that your book isn’t cannibalizing your course. You know, and.

Peter Winick I think that’s really about transparency because I don’t believe that publishers are evil and they all they want to write right off to make money and sell books. Right? Exactly. And write some things that have no benefit to them.

Lucinda Halpern Exactly.

Peter Winick You mentioned the short term, short term and the long term. And I find that’s another point of contention or conflict between authors and publishers in that just by the design of the business, publishers tend to think in, you know, seasonal waves. We have our spring releases, we have our fall releases, whatever. They’ll put a lot of love and attention into it, and then they have to move on because there’s more stuff in the factory. You know, it’s like Lucy with the chocolates, right? There’s more coming off the line. If you if you’re under a certain age, Google it, you know. But it’s like, you know, the next one’s coming out. I always tell my clients, not always, but most of the time, like, listen, hey, if you’re making this investment in the book, be at time, be money, be it energy, be an opportunity cost, you should, for the most part, be thinking about that along the 5 to 7 year amateur relationship. Right. Like. Like I always argue unless you’re like, you know. Right. You know, you’re Michael Wolff and you’re writing about, you know, something so topical or seasonal that it’s going to be less important that, you know, if you’ve got the right book in the right person’s hand, whether it’s today, a year from now or three years from now, the light bulb is going to go off. And I think sometimes authors don’t, you know, they feel this sense of rush and then they get the depression, you know, 90 days out and there, you know, my God, I only sold 3222 books. Okay. Okay.

Lucinda Halpern Right. All I got were the worst, which I get all the time, was I didn’t hit the New York Times list, so I’m a failure, you know? And that’s just not how it happened. And again, concentrating on business books, because that’s your audience, I think, of, you know, it might take years for that executive at LinkedIn or Microsoft to discover the book and say, This changed my life and I’m going to recommend it internally to everyone. And that it’s like Eric recently, you know, we started it. So the hard thing about hard things, I mean, how many times are we going to hear about these books kind of just been changing the holes, I guess, or creating it so. So I think that that’s we have to keep the long road in mind, right, as authors and agents. But you’re absolutely right about the publisher and specifically the publicist is let’s move on to the next. We’re now a month out and you’re only.

Peter Winick So I want to unpack one thing and then go, yeah, go back to the to the publicist piece. The data that I see is telling me, again, not nonfiction. Right. Most nonfiction books today are selling more units year two than year one. Which makes a lot of sense, right? Because like you said, somebody reads the book and then they tell it to their, you know, tell about their colleagues, their friends, whatever, and then they grab hold of it. And it’s not this, you know, you know, there used to be everybody playing games to get on the list, get on the list, get on the list. And that was sort of, yeah, basically manipulation and whatever. Yeah. For a book to organically connect, you know, you mentioned Lean Startup. I mean, that’s six, eight, ten years old or something like that. Yeah. There are people opening that today for the very first time that it will be transformative to them. Exactly. In search of excellence. 40 years old. Like I said, that book to people all the time that haven’t heard it yet.

Lucinda Halpern Yeah, I think you’re so right about that. That’s interesting about your data about your too. I mean, also maybe that has to do with books typically going into paperback a year after release. So now you’re at a more accessible price point. But you’re absolutely right, that word of mouth can be slow. You know, it’s not just cocktail party chatter or like boardroom chatter, coffee, you know, coffee chatter. It’s social proof. It’s I just saw this recommended on my friend’s Facebook or I just saw all.

Peter Winick Those 50 podcast you did a year ago, people on the.

Lucinda Halpern Now air.

Peter Winick Yes or no? Air to air. You know, my download list on my podcast is like I’m listening to stuff that’s four months old, downloaded four months ago, seven of the time. Right. Right. And I think that’s unusual. I want to stay a little bit on air because I have been really, I don’t know, disappointed, aggravated, frustrated when I hear from clients, really wicked smart people, CEOs and people who’ve been incredibly successful and they tell you the story of okay. And then, you know, 90 days later I spent $100,000 and it just didn’t work. And I asked them a couple of questions upfront like, okay, were you clear about the objectives? Did you understand the jargony thing.

Lucinda Halpern The risk.

Peter Winick You did you understand the risks? And they’re like, No, but I used this, you know, elite PR firm that everybody else uses or one of ten or whatever. And they were recommended by somebody else smart. But they look at it and they go, Yeah, that was really disappointing. Or maybe I did something wrong. So I think, you know, I have a big issue with PR firms that don’t own the responsibility to tell the client, Let me tell you the good, the bad and the ugly, and then we can decide if this is for you. And I get, yeah, big selling and it’s a short-term transaction, but what are your thoughts of if I was an author, what would I be? How would I. Yeah, a publicist.

Lucinda Halpern Sure. I mean, I have solutions for what they can do. Yes, I think sorry. In terms of screening a publicist, you want to ask for referrals like anything else, maybe recommendation references, rather So you want to say who are three clients report with? Let me get on the phone with them because it is such a massive investment, as you’ve said. We all know that media doesn’t track to sales all the time. Sometimes none, none of the time.

Peter Winick Say that one weekly, because I think that is.

Lucinda Halpern Media does not track to sale so I got an author was on the Today show fantastic everyone’s over the moon were popping champagne and then how much do that really sells book you know 5000 copies for major national hit like that you would have expected 20,000 copies. So that’s a combination of how was the book tight end? Well, media is more news driven than ever before, so it’s not book review driven. That space has shrunk. So they want to pull a book or an expert into a news topic they’re talking about. Does that really serve a book? Not necessarily. So. A good publicist should be talking to you through all of this. Nuances. They should never be making guarantees. They should also have a really strong sense of the changing market with the pandemic. You’re not reaching people in their offices anymore. You’re not mailing galleys to them. So do these publicists have text relationships? Do they know how to write good email? You know, I this these are the thing.

Peter Winick I have a client that’s a, you know, a former CEO. And someone went into her, you know, obviously closed office and there were like 25 galleys sitting there for the last year and a half. I’m like, what idiot thought that? I mean, you know, nobody’s going to help. It’s like, what are you doing?

Lucinda Halpern It’s just Exactly, exactly. So for the hot so for the higher budget author, I would I would do all I would ask all the right questions. I’d interview, you know, several firms. It is an insurance policy. So let me be really clear, Peter, that I don’t recommend authors go into large without one without a policy, for it’s their insurance policy for the best thing they can be doing is keeping an eye, you know, have someone on their team reading the pitches, orchestrating the show, see what the in-house person is doing, see what the outhouse person is doing to upturn every stone. So you do need that publicity from for alters on a lower budget. Think about curating the best team. So do I actually need a digital marketing person and a podcast only publicist maybe. Right? Maybe I don’t care about the New York Times Book Review and GMA for my book. So I think that’s really about it. Put the best people together on the team at the budget that works for you and make sure you have oversight.

Peter Winick When you mention the podcast piece there. So I just want to I want to we’ll probably wrap up with this. So one of the things that I see there, given we’ve got a podcast, but I mean, that in and of itself doesn’t mean much, is that people are paying all sorts of either publicist or these specialty podcast guest agencies. There’s a whole cottage industry going on to get them on the podcast, which is a good fit, right? However, where I see it being a little silly is, you know, I as a podcast host, I’m getting pitched for things and if anybody spent 30s looking at my stuff, they know we don’t do fudge brownies we don’t like. There’s a huge list of things that I’m like the level of sloppiness and laziness and I feel bad for the person paying for this, right? Because they might not know that. Maybe somebody will say yes to them. And I’m like, okay, you know, the purpose of getting on a podcast is, hey, there’s you know, there’s tiers. There’s, you know, the Good Morning America level, whatever. But even the smaller ones, if they’ve curated an audience that aligns with your market, you’re thinking not about the big numbers. There’s somebody who’s got 3000 boards of directors. That’s an incredibly valuable audience to people looking to speak to that community.

Lucinda Halpern You’re so right. No, you’re absolutely right. And I’ve way too many authors. It’s sort of like the New York Times bestseller conundrum. They’re after the Big Fish, like The Art of Charmin. Yeah. You know, entrepreneurs are far and rich role. It’s like, okay, that’s great. When people scroll through those podcasts, they’re going to be looking for celebrity names. They. Those authors that have been out for five years with perennial bestsellers, they’re not looking for four years with the first book out. So, yes, to go to your audience. And by the way, that’s also going back to how you get a publisher, an agent’s attention. Something to think about in your marketing section and your material is not. I have all this broad reach social if you don’t. But I’ve got a list of 5000 engaged CEOs in the technology space. You know, that’s impressive. That’s impressive data to a publisher, so.

Peter Winick Exactly. Well, this is great. We could. We could chat for.

Lucinda Halpern We could talk. We could talk all day. This is so much fun. Thank you for having me.

Peter Winick Thank you. Thank you for your time. This has been great. Listen, thanks so much. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. To reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.