Getting Candid on Trying to Have a Breakout Book

Plus Witches of Honeysuckle House ARC giveaway!

Welcome to my substack / newsletter! 🫶🏻 This is where you can find updates on my life, my upcoming novels, and my special interests (which are wide and varied though mostly witchy, probably because I have a Gemini stellium and ADHD). Things like writing, publishing, herbalism, astrology, tarot, witchcraft, reading recommendations, cozy games, and more.

If you’re looking for more info on my books, you can find them all here on my website. I also created a bunch of free herb profiles as a part of my work as an herbalist. You can find those here!

Alright, let’s get to it. ✍🏻

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My friends!!!! This week’s newsletter is focused on Witches of Honeysuckle House (my upcoming witchy novel about sisters who are cursed to lose someone they love every 13 years—think Practical Magic but a little darker and the house is alive). Here’s what you can expect to find:

• Me freaking out about my ARCs (including on video)

• A physical ARC giveaway!!!

• The importance of preorders

• Sneak peek into what to expect from the preorder campaign

• Me talking about working with an outside publicist for the first time

  • A little astrology tangent

Of course, the number one thing that will make this book succeed is you! If you haven’t already, please consider preordering Witches of Honeysuckle House. This makes a huge difference to authors (more on that below).

Witches of Honeysuckle House ARCs are here!

I received my physical ARCs earlier this month. For those of you who are new here or new to reading posts from authors, ARCs are advanced reader copies. It’s always the weirdest feeling holding a physical copy of my book in my hands for the first time. This is my third time doing it, and it didn’t feel any less special or momentous or emotional. You can watch my unboxing in the video below.

To celebrate, I’m giving away one signed ARC over on Instagram! You’ll get a bonus entry if you comment on this post telling me your favorite witchy book and include your Instagram username (so that I can DM you over there if you win).

Witches of Honeysuckle House Preorder campaign!

Let’s talk a little bit about preorders. If you’re interested in a book, and you’re able to, preordering it can make a huge difference for authors—especially if you get it from your local independent bookstore. By ordering from your indie, it makes them aware of the book which makes them more likely to stock it.

Not only that, preorders tell publishers people are interested in an author’s work beyond the book they’re purchasing. In my case, I have another witchy book idea that I am very excited about. It’s a little more light-hearted than my previous books, but still very witchy—very big on found family. Here’s a Pinterest board I made for it.

I can’t tell you anything else about it yet because my publisher isn’t ready to say “yes” until they have a better idea of what kind of preorders Witches of Honeysuckle House is going to pull in and ultimately what the sales numbers look like. Because of my option clause, my publisher gets to have my option material for quite a while longer than some of my previous contracts before my agent can take it out broadly to other editors. While I’m not saying I’m wanting to change publishers, I would like to have another book under contract. So basically I can’t sell any other witchy women’s fiction books like this one for…a while.

What this means: If you want more books from me, and if you want them sooner, preordering Witches of Honeysuckle House can help make that happen, which brings me to…

The preorder campaign!

Submit proof of preorder to get a signed bookplate designed by yours truly.

I haven’t officially launched the campaign yet, but I’ve been working on some fun things for all of you! If you preorder the book and submit proof of purchase here by October 7 (two weeks before the book comes out), you’ll receive:

• A signed bookplate

• Three custom tarot cards (designed by my very talented cousin Shelby Cook), that are featured in the novel

• A postcard with a tarot spread that I designed

• An unpublished prologue to the novel (your choice if you wait to read it until after you read the book or before 😉)

The physical items are U.S. / Canada only, but anyone who preorders internationally (if you’re able to get your hands on it—it’s only being published in the U.S. / Canada right now as far as I know), you can still get the prologue! (Note, you need a gmail account to access the form—but you can create a dummy account if your actual email address is through a different provider).

So, I’ve hired a publicist.

I recently waxed poetic about why I launched my Substack during Gemini season—at the end of the day it was for one specific reason: I’m wanting Witches of Honeysuckle House to be my breakout novel. So, I’m doing everything in my power that I can to do that:

• Starting a substack.

• Posting on TikTok at least once a day (though my goal is four times. Is it a lot? Yes. Do I occasionally repost videos I already posted there? Also yes, because they always reach new people).

• Posting on Instagram once a day.

• And hiring an outside publicist.

Let me start by saying that I know not every author has the privilege and funds to hire outside publicity. But after having published two books and not seeing those books get a lot of media (and the majority of the media they did get outside of trade reviews being the result of my connections) I wanted a little bit more power around what media outlets my book ends up in front of and how those pitches look. I worked in PR in my early 20s, so I’m familiar with the discipline, though book publicity was not my industry. But more than that, I wanted to know someone was dedicated to pitching my book by itself, not as a part of a larger seasonal catalogue for a publisher.

Hiring a publicist is no guarantee that you’ll break out, but having someone with the right media contacts who is dedicated to getting your book in front of those contacts and who also has the contacts to get your book in front of influencers? Well, I do know of many authors who found this really made a difference for them.

So earlier this year I did a lot of research looking for publicists. The first thing I learned was that you need to reach out early. I started contacting publicists on January 27^th (my book doesn’t come out until October 21^st), and several of the people I emailed wrote back to tell me they were already booked.

Eventually I narrowed it down to two publicists. I ultimately signed with Books Forward for three reasons: they had more clients on their roster whose work I recognized; I DM’d a few of those authors to ask about their experience, and heard back only positive things; and they offered both publicity and marketing (influencers, some advertising campaigns). There are a lot of publicists out there that only offer PR (meaning they’re only reaching out to media). While I do respect people being experts at one specific thing—and sometimes that one thing is all you need—the fact that Books Forward had success with both media and influencers was a win for me because it cut down the number of people I needed to contract.

My work with them officially started on June 9th.

Mini tangent on that astrology: Jupiter moved into Cancer on June 9th. Cancer is in my 11^th house, which is the part of my astrological chart that focuses on community, friendship, and audience. It’s also the house of good fortune. Jupiter is the planet of abundance and good fortune, and it’s exalted in Cancer, so it’s at its most auspicious when it’s in Cancer.

TLDR: On June 9^th, the planet of good fortune moved into my house of good fortune in its most auspicious sign. This is very, very good for expanding an audience, something that is essential to breaking out a book.

Anyway, I’ll be sharing about my journey of working with an outside publicist leading up to my book lunch on October 21. If you have any questions as I start this process, please feel free to leave them in the comments!

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Until next time…

If you made it all the way to the end of this post, hello! Thank you for reading. Here’s a link to a video book review I recently posted about Sarah Wynn-Williams’ book Careless People (a must read). Here’s a link to all of my books, and here’s a link to my Spotify playlists for all my books. If you want to hear from me more often, I'm always on Instagram and TikTok, frequently on Threads, slowly migrating to BlueSky, and I share all my plant and herb content on Pinterest.

Wishing you healing wherever you may need it.

xo

Liz