127. An Interview with Erin Galloway

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 127 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Erin Galloway who is the associate director of publicity and marketing for Berkley/NAL.  We’ve had Erin as a guest before, and it’s a lot of fun because she is genuinely passionate about the books she reads.  Not just the books that’s she reading for her job as a publicist and marketing professional but also the romances that she reads because she loves the genre.  So we talk about what she’s working on, a potentially controversial book that’s coming out in June.  We talk about cover art, what she’s reading, and some recommendations for romantic suspense and male/male contemporary.

This podcast is brought to you by Berkley, publisher of The Raven, the first in a brand-new series from New York Times bestselling author of the Gabriel trilogy, Sylvain Reynard.

Now, before we get into the podcast, I do have one more thing I want to ask for.  If you or someone you know knows about the history of libraries, specifically public libraries in America, if you could email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com, I have a question from a listener that I don’t know the answer to, and my research is proving elusive.  So if you know about the history or the founding of public libraries in America, I would really like to ask you some questions, because, well, this question that I’ve received has stumped me and created several more.

But now, on with the podcast with Erin Galloway!

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Sarah:  It has been about two years or so since you’ve been on the podcast, so even though I know who you are and you know who you are, would you introduce yourself and tell us who you are, and you work for a new company, right?

Erin Galloway:  Yes.

Sarah:  It’s the same one, sort of kind of?

Erin:  [Laughs] That’s right.  I can’t believe it’s been that long.

Sarah:  I know!

Erin:  So, I work for the newly minted Penguin Random House.  I work for the Berkley and NAL imprints.  I’m the associate director of publicity, specifically focused on romance, so that is my whole job, is figuring out the best way to publicize and promote our romance novels.  Everything from hardcovers to trade paperbacks to mass markets, right down to digital originals, I pretty much do it all.

Sarah:  So that’s a relatively small job that takes about an hour a day.

Erin:  Pfft, I almost do no work at all.  You have no idea.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Well, I notice now that since the merger of Penguin and Random House that I hear from more publicists.  There’s more blogger outreach.  Am I mistaking that, or am I just paying better attention?

Erin:  No, I think that that could be very likely, especially because now that we are, you know, officially merged – I mean, granted, everyone still certainly works independently.

Sarah:  Right.

Erin:  Every department is still independent, you know, just like it, it was originally with kind of all of the Penguin publicity department sort of working autonomously, and the same thing uptown at Random House, but we are slowly integrating more communication between ourselves –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Erin:  – and I’m excited about that because there are so many more opportunities to learn from each other, and whereas, you know, for my very specific track there were not many other publicity departments within the company where I could talk about the work on romance that I did because most other departments, that’s really not a focus for them.  So, Random House, that’s not the case.  There are other folks that work on romance within Ballantine, Loveswept, you know, the Random House publishing group.  It’s very exciting to have colleagues that I can, you know, share knowledge and experiences with and, you know, just talk about similar challenges that we face and hear interesting ideas from them, and you know, of course I think that romance at Random has always been receptive to ideas from, you know, other publishing companies and authors, but it’s really fun now because now that we’re all one company, you know, I just feel like we can have an ongoing dialogue about different books that we’re excited about, and it’s become so much more natural to get in touch with these folks on a regular basis, so to develop a bit of a shorthand and share excitement over, you know, books that kind of, you know, we’re all publishing together or we have, like, a sister relationship with is really kind of fun.  The only challenge that I have found is that now any blogger or reviewer that I work with that knows a books is published by either Penguin or, you know, kind of what, what we would say as legacy Penguin or legacy Random House, they will come to me for a book – so can you get me – ?  And then I think to myself, I’ve never heard of this book before.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  Right?  So I have to, you know, I look it up in our system, and I’m like, why am I not finding this?  And then I look it up online and go, oh, because it’s published by, you know, some division of Random House, and I have to, you know, sort of sheepishly go back and say, I actually don’t know anyone that works in this department or division, but I’d be happy to forward your email, you know, on to this person and see if they can track the right person down.  You know, maybe eventually we will have, you know, even more open contact with other departments, but right now, you know, I, I confess that we are all sort of still figuring it out.

Sarah:  I have this image of you and the publicist at Penguin, and then at the other end of a very long hallway, the publicist in romance for Random House, and you’re just sort of running towards each other with arms outstretched, and the music is swelling, and it transforms into a field, and you all embrace each other.  Like, finally, other romance people, yay!  That must be so nice.

Erin:  It is definitely awesome to feel like we have, you know, some other colleagues that work on, you know, our type of fiction and that are similarly passionate about it.  You know, it’s absolutely great to have that, for sure.

Sarah:  So, tell me, ‘cause I’m always nosy, what are the books that you are excited about working on right now?

Erin:  Oh, so many.  I know I always struggle to boil it down to just a couple when I feel like there are a million titles that I’m really, really excited about.  One in particular is coming out in June, and I’m only going to give a little info on it now.  It’s called Asking for It.

Sarah:  I have heard –

Erin:  Yes.

Sarah:  – from many different places – including you! – about this book.

Erin:  It releases in June, and it’s called Asking for It, and it’s by an author that writes under another name, but she’ll be writing under a pseudonym for us, and this book, I want to be really honest, it’s going to have triggers for some readers, but there is something about it that I fell in love with right away, and the fantasy that it addresses is a heroine that wants to have a sexual experience where she sets up very specific parameters, but that she is taken within this scene.  She is, you know, overtaken by a very dominant male, and though the sex is consensual and she has agreed to it in advance and what’s going to happen and that she has her hard limits established, there will be elements that will involve, you know, surprise, and it will be really, really intense.  I want to be really clear that this is not a violent rape fantasy.  That’s not what happens, and I want to be clear on that because I don’t want anybody to think that that’s what they would expect out of this book, that they need to fear for a woman’s physical safety, because that’s not what’s occurring.  It is really exciting.  When the editor came to me, she was, you know, in the acquisition process, and she said, Erin, there’s a book that I’m really excited about it.  You have to read it.  And I trust her, you know, opinion, just with no qualms, so I said, okay.  You know, send it over to me.  And I read it, and I went, well, where’s the rest?  I didn’t realize that it was only the first three chapters, so I got to the end of those three chapters and went, I don’t understand; where’s the rest of it?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  She goes, well, Erin, it hasn’t been written yet, and I was like, that is not an acceptable answer!  You know, I need this now.  It is definitely a book that is provocative and I think will cause a lot of conversation.  It is a romance.  It is the first in a duology about a couple, and they both have traumas and challenges to deal with, and I think that it will certainly be a trigger book for some people.  You know, we’re aware of that, the author’s aware of that, and that’s okay.

Sarah:  So, here’s a question:  we’ve talked a lot about trigger warnings, and a little while back we had an email from a reader named Sage who was actually wondering if there was a way to identify books that are rape triggers, because she cannot welcome that into her imagination, where other readers can and, and actively seek out stories that involve sexual assault that end happily.  There –

Erin:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – like you said, everybody, everybody likes different things.

Erin:  Yes.

Sarah:  How are you going to – ?  ‘Cause this book sounds like way over the edge of what people are expecting in terms of romance, because you’re talking about consensual but potentially violent rape fantasies, and you’re talking about exploring what consent means for two people who have –

Erin:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  I mean, this sounds like a whole, big pile of things to talk about.  How are you going to communicate to readers, heads up, this book is potentially awesome and also potentially dangerous, depending on who you are?  ‘Cause it’s hard to market something by saying –

Erin:  Sure!

Sarah:  – listen, this might not be for you.

Erin:  Sure, and that will be identified, both in the cover copy and in the way that I do our publicity outreach.  I also want to be really clear that this is, she does not, as the character, does not have violent rape fantasies.

Sarah:  Ah, good, thank you for clarifying.  I must have misunderstood.  Sorry!

Erin:  I, and, and – no! – and I, I appreciate that you brought it up, because having read the book myself, I, I, I know exactly what I’m talking about, ‘cause I’ve already read it –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  – but not everyone else has, so I definitely want to clear that up, and, and I also – you know, I struggle with how to articulate this because so much of it is in the read itself, but when I read the book, to me, it never read like she was being raped or assaulted.  This was a consensual sex act that she was engaging in very much intentionally and with very explosive and, you know, pleasurable results for her – and certainly him – but that it was a fantasy where she wanted to completely give up control in the moment, though –

Sarah:  Right.

Erin:  – she had agreed to very specific parameters –

Sarah:  Right.

Erin:  – in advance.  Parameters that had to do with her physical safety, how things would play out, things that she wasn’t interested in or attracted to, and he did as well.  One of the moments that I thought was really interesting and well done was the heroine saying, you know, almost as a toss-away question, well, do you have any, you know, parameters or, or any kind of hard limits?  And when the hero says, well, yes, I do.  And she’s a little surprised, because to her, she’s the one giving up control.  She’s got all the limits.  What could his limits possibly be?

Sarah:  Right.

Erin:  And his limits, to my mind, were very logical and understandable, and, and very, I think, revealing of him and who he is –

Sarah:  Right.

Erin:  – as a person, and I, I fell in love with him immediately, not only because he’s sex on a stick, but –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  – because he is so interesting and emotionally enigmatic, and that plays out over the course of the book, and as you come to the end of the book, you realize how emotionally he has invested in this relationship and this woman and all of the struggles that he feels about the sexual fantasies that he has and sort of what they mean about him as a person and, you know, as a, a partner and lover, and like I said, it’s, it’s absolutely a book that I think people will want to discuss afterward, will have a million opinions on, and I felt compelled immediately to chat with other readers and colleagues, having read the book, ‘cause I just wanted to discuss so many different aspects of it, you know, particularly the idea of how do we feel when other people don’t understand or respect our fantasies, and what does it feel like to be ashamed of them, and how do we safely and effectively communicate those with a partner?  You know, that’s part of the reason that the heroine has had so many struggles in the past, because she has not had receptive partners, and she’s just had so much shame about what she’s, you know, wanting to try.

Sarah:  I’m, I think that’s one of the best results of having a still-growing review community online is that other readers are now connected to one another and understand the, oh, my God, I have all these thoughts, and I need to discuss this with someone, anyone.  Did you read this?  And the knowledge that you’re not alone in having all of these ideas and you want to discuss the books that you read is – it’s, it’s not, it’s not a new idea, but knowing that you have a community waiting to discuss them with you is wonderful.

Erin:  Absolutely.  It’s one of the things that I love.  I mean, there are many times that I just have to talk to somebody about the book that I just read, and knowing that there’s a place online to do that and a community of people that you can reach out to is so satisfying.

Sarah:  Oh, yes.

Erin:  I think that’s why so many people start reviewing and blogging, because they’re like, have something that I desperately need to talk to other people about, you know?

Sarah:  Yes, absolutely, and the, the lovely thing is that there are now so many book discussion areas that no matter what it is that you’re into, someone’s going to want to talk about it with you.  And it’s –

Erin:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – and when you find the people who have the same taste as you, then you’re just like, that’s the best thing ever.  So, when does this book come out?

Erin:  Yeah, it is a June release, so it’ll be out on the first Tuesday of June, and like I said, I’m really excited about it, and, you know, I’ll be making it available to a variety of different bloggers and, you know, promoting it in a couple of different ways, so anybody that’s interested, you know, stayed tune, and if it’s not for you, that’s totally cool, but I really hope people will, you know, come to it with an open mind if they feel like it’s something that they could potentially be interested in.

Sarah:  It’s not listed online anywhere is, yet, is it?

Erin:  We have not put all of the information out publicly yet, ‘cause we have been working on the book cover.  As you might imagine, this is one where we are trying to finesse a really great book cover.

Sarah:  You don’t say.

Erin:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  It, it’s, you know, I spend a lot of my time going, what the, what, what, why does this, why did this cover happen?  Did this cover really have to happen?  And I understand now, having looked at so many, that it is very, very difficult to communicate a book with an image quickly.  You have such a hard job with that cover – not you personally; I mean, I know all, I know all decisions hinge on your opinion, of course – but –

Erin:  I wish.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Y’all at Penguin, that’s a really difficult cover to come up with.

Erin:  It is, and that’s true for pretty much any book that we do.  Like you said, trying to convey in one single image the emotional content and feeling of a book, that is not something that I envy when it comes to cover designers and, you know, photographers, and cover models.

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:  That is not an easy thing to do.

Sarah:  No.

Erin:  I, in some ways I think people were probably excited when we had that rise of the object-focused cover because oh, okay, at least it’s something, you know, different, and we can try and evoke, like, you know, something new with those covers, but eventually you do run out of objects.

Sarah:  And images.

Erin:  And images, yes.

Sarah:  And stock images.  I have a lot of readers sending me different shots from the same photo shoot –

Erin:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – so that slightly different positioning of the same model being used on three or four different books.  Like, I keep seeing this one red dress everywhere, and I found it on four different books, look!  And I’m like, yep, that’s one photo shot with two attractive people and a good photographer, and of course there’s not that many great pieces of stock imagery available that make for good book covers.  And even less featuring people of color.

Erin:  Yes, that is absolutely true.  So –

Sarah:  What do you guys do?  Do you know what the, I mean, I know you work in publicity, and you don’t work in the art department, but I, I know a lot of authors have been struggling with the idea that it’s so difficult to find images of people of color for book covers in, especially, romance.  What do you guys do?  Do you do photo shoots?

Erin:  We do pretty much all of the above.  We do everything from our own photo shoots, and that’s both with people and with objects, you know, depending on the, the book itself.  So we will do some photo shoots, but then we also do, you know, stock art and then build based on particular stock art.

Sarah:  Mm.

Erin:  So it’s very rare that we will have one stock art image that is just the cover of a book, because that’s completely untreated; there’s nothing stylized about it.  Very often additional either images or pieces of art, lighting, shading, other colors need to be added, obviously fonts and, and that sort of thing, but even if you take one stock art image, many additional things need to be done and manipulated on top of that –

Sarah:  Oh, yes.

Erin:  – and you know, on a book, sometimes a stock art image will indeed be the, the kernel of an idea, or it evokes the right tone, but not on its own.

Sarah:  Right.

Erin:  You need to add a bunch of other elements, whatever those may be, and sometimes I find those to be extraordinarily compelling, you know, particularly when they’re the right fit –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Erin:  – for, you know, a book, but then other times, it’s a photo shoot that’s needed, and you know, certainly, there are only so many romance cover models that live here in New York, sadly, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  – there, there are only so many studios where photos can be shot here in New York, but in general, this is where most of them are done, and if you get a particularly, you know, gorgeous model and scene set up and great photos, then it’s no surprise that, you know, we would want to use more than one of those.  Back when one of my personal favorites, Nathan, was still modeling, he used to go in and shoot, you know, several shoots in one afternoon.  You know, he might start out as a sheik and wind up as a Native American chief.  You just never knew.

Sarah:  Yep.  I have, from long, long ago – I used it as the backdrop in all of the pictures of the prizes for our tenth anniversary – I have one of the original art boards for a cover from Kensington Zebra that includes John DeSalvo in a hot pink gladiator uniform –

Erin:  Oh, that’s truly spectacular.

Sarah:  – and it’s, it’s, like, you know, three feet high by two feet wide, it’s a huge board, but it’s a painting.  Like it, like, back in the day –

Erin:  Yes!

Sarah:  – those were hand painted, and I, and it’s, it’s always sort of amazing to me that in thirty years, or maybe a little bit longer, we’ve gone from individual artists painting a painting for the cover of each book –

Erin:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – to a photo shoot with five different, six different costume arrangements for one model to do, like, twelve different books.

Erin:  Oh, absolutely.  I mean, some of my favorite romance covers, you know, from my own personal collection of books are by Pino and –

Sarah:  Oh, Pino.

Erin:  – Renato from, you know, back in the late ‘80s –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Erin:  – early ‘90s, and those were based on gorgeous oil paintings –

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:  – that, you know, these two artists did, and you know, granted, Pino did a huge amount of Native American romance covers, but he also did others and, you know, Renato the same, but they are some long-term favorites of mine, and I always wonder where those oil paintings wound up.  I don’t know if they’re in someone’s personal collection somewhere.  You know, I don’t know where you would find them, but it would be sort of neat to be able to, you know, do a, a display at some point in a gallery.

Sarah:  Oh, wouldn’t it be?  Every now and again you’ll find them on eBay.  I used to have a search saved of, you know, romance cover art, and what you, most of what would come up were smaller images that were used for the, the center medallion of older Harlequins that were just a circle?  So –

Erin:  Oh, yes.

Sarah:  – the, the picture didn’t need to be that big, but when you were doing a full cover where the front was the cup, cover, and then there was an image for the spine, and then there was a whole other image for the back that was one big piece?

Erin:  Yeah.

Sarah:  From what I understand, some editors kept them, sometimes they just got tossed, sometimes they got lost, sometimes they were put in a storage closet and then discarded when the office moved.  I know that the one that I have was sent to me by Kate Duffy when Kensington moved offices.

Erin:  Yep.

Sarah:  And so she was like, I got too many of these, do you want one?  And I was like, yes!  Please!  Hot pink gladiator toga?  You must give me now!  I mean, I love this thing; it is my, one of my prized possessions that John DeSalvo’s man-titty looks over me as I work.  I did an interview once with an artist who found my site because he had been Googling some of the covers that he had illustrated and found me making fun of one where the same guy had – you know that sort of ‘80s Olen Mills pose where you have your chin on your thumb and your index finger is next to your mouth –

Erin:  Yes!

Sarah:  – and you’re, and, like, every cover had that guy in that position.

Erin:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  When the artist emailed me, he’s like, I totally painted that, and I painted that pose 100,000 times.  That’s hilarious!  So I emailed him, and I’m like, can I do an interview and be really nosy, ‘cause I’m terribly nosy?  So it turns out that that’s actually an art form, like a very specific trained art form called photorealism where you, where you paint something so realistic it looks like a photo, and a lot of the Harlequin covers from that era and then moving forward were photorealism.  So this guy’s job now is so cool.  He paints clouds for Pixar!

Erin:  Wow!

Sarah:  So, like, when Toothless and Hiccup are flying through the air through clouds that look incredibly real, that was painted by this guy or one of his team because they specialize in photorealism, and a lot of them worked on book covers.  How cool is that?  It’s like a lost art!  ‘Cause no one does that anymore!

Erin:  That is crazy!  How neat!  I love connections like that.

Sarah:  Isn’t that so cool?  I mean, that’s, that’s not something that happens.  I don’t – I mean, are there any publishers or anyone who’s hiring an artist to do an oil painting cover?  Like, does that even happen anymore?

Erin:  Not that I personally am aware of.  I suppose it’s possible, but for the most part, I cannot think of anyone that’s still doing covers based on oil paintings.

Sarah:  I mean, that’s just, that’s just amazing to me that that was, like, the standard.

Erin:  Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah:  So, let me ask you another question.  What books are you telling everyone about that aren’t Penguin and Berkley books?  Or are there other Penguin books that you want to talk about aside from Asking for It?

Erin:  Oh, gosh.  I always feel like I come in here with too many books to talk about all at once.

Sarah:  There’s no such thing.

Erin:  Okay.  Very quickly, books that I’m excited that we have coming up.  The next book – I’ll just name drop a couple of – in Lorelei James’s Mastered series, which I’m really excited about; Tara Sue Me’s next Submissive books; Jaci Burton just had her most recent come out, Quarterback Draw, and then she’s got another great book in the Hope series coming up in April; Christine Feehan over the summer; and I, like I said, way too many to name, and we’ll have more Maya Banks later in the fall.  Oh, and how could I forget, Joanna Wylde that we have coming up in April, and it’s the first in a new series from Joanna, set in the Silver Valley area, and the first book, it will be about a new motorcycle club.  We’ve met them before, the Silver Bastards, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  Yes.  Oh, there is –

Sarah:  I’m sorry!  We’ve met them before, the Silver Bastards.  Oookay, I’m sorry.  [Laughs]

Erin:  Well, and I have to say that they are based on a community that has the Silver Valley mine, so it is appropriate.  In fact, their club seal has a skeleton, like, in a hard hat with, you know, like, a, a pickax, you know, ‘cause this is, you know, very much kind of a, a working class motorcycle crew, and it’s a lot of fun.  I’ve read the book, and it’s just everything that Joanna does beautifully, and we’ll release in pretty rapid succession the next two books from her in the fall months, so I’m looking forward to that.  But that kind of, you know, sums up a very brief peek at things I’m excited about that we’re doing in the near future.  And books that, you know, we’re not publishing that I’m excited about, there are always a lot of those too, and one series that I am blazing through at the moment is Marie Force’s Fatal series.  Now, Sarah, I know you are not a romantic suspense fan, so –

Sarah:  That is true.

Erin:  – this is not going to be for you, but anybody that does love romantic suspense, I am so loving this new series.  It’s a continuing character romantic suspense series, the same couple, and that’s always a trope that I enjoy, if you get the same couple over more than one book, ‘cause I just have so much fun revisiting the lives and the world and the expanding cast of characters that I love and their sort of daily problems and the triumphs that they have and, you know, the trials and tribulations that they go through, and there’s a lot of humor in this series as well.  Definitely people in jeopardy, so be aware, but a lot of humor that I really enjoy, a great cast of characters.  So I love that stuff, and she’s definitely got me hooked.  I’m, I just started, it’ll be the fourth full-length book in the series, but there’s a novella in between as well, so I’m really enjoying those.

And I recently read – ‘cause I think you know, I tend to read quite a bit of male/male romance, and I recently read some excellent self-published books by author Riley Hart, and a blogger I know had recommended the first book in – and I’m, I’m going to blank on the name of the series, but the books that I read by Riley were Stay and Collide, and they are part of a particular series.  In fact, the third book just came out, and I actually just bought it, so I need to read it.  And they’re really great male/male romances in that, you know, they really focus on this small town, fairly small group of characters, you know, that are friendly and know each other and have this wonderful close-knit element and, you know, cover family and friendships and are still a really beautiful romance, many of which, you know, many of the issues that they address are real-life challenges that any couple would face, whether, you know, two men, two women, man and a woman, and I really enjoy that about them.  The author also does sex scenes very nicely, which I enjoy.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  But I would definitely recommend those, and another male/male author that I love – I don’t believe she has released anything in about the last year – is J. L. Langley, and if you’re a male/male reader, you should definitely check her out.  She writes fantastic male/male romances.  One series that I love, the Sci-Regency series, is, you know, set in this sort of alternate Regency universe, but it’s got this cool sci-fi, otherworldly element, and then a paranormal series with werewolves, and they’re just, they’re fun, they’re sexy, and these guys just always kind of keep me entertained while I’m reading about them, and they all sound absolutely beautiful –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  – like the kind of people that you just want to sit there and gaze at.  So I enjoy all of them.  And just some other non-romance things that I love, which probably a lot of, you know, your readers already know about or might be into, and sorry, this is going back to us, but I just love Patty Briggs that we publish.  I think her Alpha and Omega series is amazing, as it the Mercy Thompson series.  I love –

Sarah:  Oh, it’s so good.

Erin:  Oh, she’s incredible.  Her writing is just incredible.  I mean, I would read her grocery list –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  – and – yeah, I really would.  I love her books.  I, I love the feeling of them; I love returning to these characters over and over again.  Anne Bishop is another one; I just can’t get enough of her.  I think she’s an extraordinary writer, and for anybody that is a huge romance lover and has been curious about reading, you know, a fantasy author but maybe feels a little overwhelmed by, kind of, the world that’s being built and the quest and all of these other elements that seem like, whoa, I don’t know if I’m really ready to make a commitment to all of that?  I promise that it is worth it to give her a try.  I have fallen in love with every book of hers that I have read, and I just think that she develops characters so beautifully with so much heart and that you get to know them over the course of a series, and as romance readers, we love that.  We love returning to people that we know and enjoy and want to spend time with, and that’s something that, you know, Ann does very beautifully.

Sarah:  Another question I’m, I’m always curious about is, I know that you guys had a HA-YUGE presence at RT last year, and that was your first year at RT, right?

Erin:  It was –

Sarah:  In a very long time.

Erin:  Well, yes.  I mean, I have been to RT in the past because I used to work for Dorchester Publishing, so I had come, you know, with another house, and I, I was very familiar with the convention and the way that it worked, but last year was the first year that Penguin came with a presence.  Obviously, specifically Berkley/NAL came with a presence.  There had been a couple of us that had gone in the past, either to sort of do reconnaissance or with a particular author, but 2014 was the first year that we came and actually sponsored at the convention, which I was incredibly excited about, as were my colleagues, and I know that our authors were really excited about it too, ‘cause it had been something that they had been asking about for a long time.

Sarah:  Plus you had one of the best presences in the, the whole pub crawl.  Like, I still remember so clearly, you had to go to different pubs, and you had a very limited time to do it, and it was very, very compacted and a little bit intimidating, but you walk into the Penguin stop, and then you were all in the doorway like, hey, how are you?  Welcome!  There’re drinks over there.  There’s a giant pile of alcohol.  Go drink it.  Have some beads, and there’s food, and you were so welcoming, and it was so fun to be where you guys were.  You did such a great job.

Erin:  Oh, thank you!  That’s so wonderful to hear.  We really had a fantastic time doing it.  It was a huge amount of fun to connect with all those readers and to sort of be the one helping connect the readers with the authors, and I have never seen authors have so darn much fun.  And we all know that, you know, authors can enjoy a drink or two, for sure, but to have them –

Sarah:  No!

Erin:  – yeah, I know, shocking, right?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  To have them in this, like, really fun, vibrant, New Orleans setting and to bring all these readers in there that were, you know, so excited to meet them and to network, you know, with us, and to just kind of have a really fun dialogue, it was so rewarding.  ‘Cause it, you know, it takes a lot of planning to put these things together, and it was incredibly rewarding to see how the whole evening went.  And, you know, I confess, by the end of the night, I don’t think that I had even had one of our drinks.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  I was so busy talking and meeting people and running around that we got to the end of the night, and one of our extremely wonderful bartenders sort of said to me, Erin, do you want a drink?  And –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  – I had this moment of –

Sarah:  What?

Erin:  – oh, my gosh, yes, I do want a drink!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  I want one very much, in fact.  And it was just so much fun to get all of those people that love books all the same in a room together with, you know, not a whole lot of formality, and that was one of the things that I think readers really appreciated about it, that you could really walk up to any author and just start chatting, and that’s why the authors were there.  They wanted to do that, and it’s funny; everybody gets a little shy, you know, both authors and readers when they’re –

Sarah:  Oh, I get shy –

Erin:  You know, it’s –

Sarah:  – on my way to your bar, I walked by Charlaine Harris and was like, I just walked by Charlaine Harris on Bourbon Street.  I walked past Charlaine Harris on Bourbon Street.  I need to sit down.  Just give me a moment.  Like, I get that way all the time.  I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Erin:  So, it’s so funny to have those, you know, experiences, because both readers and authors go through that, and really, it’s my job to sort of an icebreaker, you know, if that’s what they need, and, I mean, you know me, I could talk ‘til I’m blue in the face to a brick wall, so I’m very happy to sort of be that person that makes the introductions and gets things going, and it was a heck of a lot of fun.  And, you know, to, to talk about Charlaine Harris, I mean, I think anybody that’s met her knows what an absolutely delightful person she is –

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:  – and how down to earth she is, but when we got there, we had this huge mass of beads that we were supposed to give out to everybody.  Now, unless you have actually been given, you know, several hundred beads before in this massive grouping, you don’t realize how easy it is for those, you know, twist, chains to get kind of twisted and tangled up –

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:  – and we had to hand them out pretty quickly, so when they got twisted, I, I thought, well, geeze, I don’t want to be at the front door kind of trying to get these untangled and to the readers because, you know, they want to collect them, they want to keep moving with their evening, we don’t want any bottlenecks at the door, and Charlaine and some of the other authors saw us, you know, struggling, and she and, I think, Faith Hunter and, you know,  Charlaine’s assistant and a few other folks were like, well, just give us the, the beads, and we’ll help untangle them.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  So, you very well might have seen Charlaine Harris sitting at her table with, you know, her beverage, working on getting all of the beads unraveled and ready to pass out to readers, because she was like, well, I’m here.  While I’m chatting, I might as well do a little work for you; it’s no problem.  And –

Sarah:  People like that are so awesome.

Erin:  It was so sweet and so appreciated.

Sarah:  So, what are some of the things that you are working on for this year at RT or anywhere else?  Because you focus so much on connecting with readers, and it’s, it’s – I think, personally, and I could be wrong about this – I think it’s a relatively new evolution for there to be people within publishing who think, okay, we need to connect the publisher with the readers directly.

Erin:  Yes.

Sarah:  We, we need to, we need to connect with readers as Penguin or as Berkley or as NAL.  Like, we need to, we need to also have a connection with readers, in addition to the authors and in addition to the booksellers.  We need, we need to know that this is also the audience, and I also every now and again will hear – ahem! – an, an executive, and I won’t name any names, start talking at a conference, and it’s like, you don’t even know what readers are, do you?

Erin:  It’s true.  It is a fair –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  Absolutely.  It’s a fairly new evolution, and I, you know, I think most of that is because of the Internet, where we can hear directly from our readers, because, you know, twenty years ago, that just wasn’t an option.

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:  The only real way that you would hear from a reader twenty years ago was through a letter that you would receive, you know, at the offices here in New York or if you were one of the people going to an RT convention.  I mean, that was really the only way.

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:  At opposed to, I suppose, like, a, a literacy signing at RWA.  You know, that, that was still a place that you could interact directly with readers, but there are many more opportunities available to us now.  I mean, just look at Twitter and Facebook.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Erin:  You know, we really want to have a community where people feel welcome to come in and chat and comment and share ideas and have an open dialogue.  That’s one of the reasons that, you know, we decided to create the Binge Reads Facebook community, because there are so many books that people do binge read, and want to talk about.

Sarah:  Oh, yes.

Erin:  And we thought, well, that would be really fun.  I mean, how many people talk about binge re-, you know, binge watching television, and binge reading is a very real thing, especially for those of us that, you know, work in genre, you know, publishing, and, you know, read it, and I thought, well, what a cool idea when one of my colleagues came up with it, and now we just rotate every week or so who we have on our Binge Reads page, and we do, like, giveaways, and we have conversations, and the authors come in and chat with readers, and it’s a really cool way for us to see what people are discussing, and we have actually selected and moved around people in our Binge Reads schedule based on comments that readers have made and requests.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Erin:  You know, to some degree, we will base things on publication schedule.

Sarah:  Right.

Erin:  You know, no surprise; if this author has a book coming up, we’ll try and arrange it so that they’re on, you know, Binge Reads in advance of that, but if we are not specifically tied to a pub date, if, you know, a number of readers that come on, you know, the Binge Reads campaign for, say, you know, Laurell K. Hamilton, if they come on while we’re talking about her and a lot of them say, hey, you know, I love Laurell and I want to talk about her books and, oh, by the way, I also really enjoy this other author, you know, Yasmine Galenorn or Christine Feehan, then we would go, oh!  Okay.  Let’s –

Sarah:  Good to know!

Erin:  – the schedule, or let’s move her up if we have, you know, space to do so, because there have been times where we’ve gotten a whole bunch of comments about, would it be, you know, it would be so cool if you guys added this author on Binge Reads, you know, in the near future, and we’ve done that, and that’s a direct thing that we were able to do as a result of reader feedback, so we’re definitely interested in hearing more of that.  And me personally, my primary function is obviously to be in touch with media contacts, whether it’s bloggers, broadcast media, print media, that sort of thing, but when I travel to conferences and conventions and, you know, bookstore events and tours, I get to interact directly with readers, and that’s a whole lot of fun, because I always tell people that first and foremost, I’m a reader.  That’s why I got into this industry, because I love to read, I love books, and that’s what I live and breathe.  So to interact with other people that feel just as passionately about the material as I do is a huge perk of my job.  You know, just like any author would say that they’re a reader first too, and that they’re, you know, a strong author and a strong writer because of all of the books, you know, that they continue to read.

Sarah:  Well, it’s also important, I think, for individuals who work within a publishing house, especially one with as many different lines as Penguin, to connect directly with the people who are really interested in your book, because as – I know we’ve talked about this – except for Penguin Classics, there aren’t that many people who know the actual publisher brand that’s publishing a book.  Like, it’s not that big of a feature on the cover –

Erin:  That’s not –

Sarah:  – but as more readers spend more time talking, we do know, oh, this is a Berkley book, and this is a MacMillan book, and this one is from, you know, Sourcebooks.  Like, we know that, we, we know more about the different publishers, whereas I remember when I was growing up and I wanted to write a letter to an author, I was the only eight-year-old who knew how to spell Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, because that’s where Dell was, and that who, was who published my favorite author, so I wrote a lot of letters –

Erin:  Yep.

Sarah:  – to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza when I was, like, seven or eight years old.  Now, everyone can connect to everyone directly, and it helps you, I think, because not only can you, can you promote what your company does, but you can also identify, here is our audience, here are the people who are interested in our books, when at any other time, social media is very, very hard to quantify.

Erin:  Yes.  And, and –

Sarah:  I know, I know that you’re a business and that you like numbers and spreadsheets, but especially numbers.

Erin:  Yes.  It’s true –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  – businesses love numbers.  We love to be able to quantify things, and, and –

Sarah:  Ooh, spreadsheets.

Erin:  – measure and use metrics, you know, as not sexy as that sounds –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  – it is incredibly helpful, you know, to sort of see and, and to be able to measure how effective our outreach is, ‘cause at the end of the day, you know, I have to be able to say, am I effective at my job?

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:  And to some degree, you know, numbers do, you know, tell me that.

Sarah:  Yep!  It’s true!  So, what are some connections that you have made or seen that have made you really happy?  What are some things that have happened with you or your colleagues connecting with different reader groups or seeing Penguin people interacting?  Like, what are some interactions that have made you happy lately?

Erin:  Well, certainly all of the stuff that we were able to do at RT.  I was absolutely thrilled by this past year, and it was really fun for me to share that experience with colleagues of mine that had never been to RT before –

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:  – and it was so rewarding to hear from them, Erin, you won’t believe the conversation I had with this reader.  She loves my author’s books!  And here are all of the great things that she had to say, and it was really fun to see those things happen or to hear about them afterward, because, you know, working here in New York, there are only so many book events that we get to go to –

Sarah:  Yep.

Erin:   – so, those opportunities are fewer, and to have those in-person, really special experiences at, you know, an RT, which is very much focused on readers, is really fun and exciting.

Sarah:  And also because editors in publishing houses make decisions, if I’m, if I’m understanding correctly – you, you acquire a book based on not only will it fit in the schedule, does it fit your line, does it fit what you’re doing, but are you personally very passionate, and can you see a way to sell it?  There’s a subjective element to acquiring a book.

Erin:  Yeah!

Sarah:  So meeting the reader who feels the same way that you do about a book that you bought or acquired for your, for your publishing house has to be a wonderfully confirming feeling, like, yes!  I’m not the only own who thought this was amazing!

Erin:  Absolutely.  It, and it’s funny because, you know, when the author writes that book and then transmits it to the editor, I mean, the editor’s the first person to fall in love with it.  They’re the very first champion for that book, and they’re the longest champion, because they start at the very beginning of the process, you know, sometimes from the concept editing stage, right up through when it’s actually published and in readers’ hands.  So, you know, to, similarly to an author, live with a book far, far in advance of it being on shelves, and then to hear, I loved this book, and here’s why:  all the same reasons that you as the editor loved the book, is just such a neat thing to have happen, you know, for an editor, so I loved seeing their excitement, you know, with that experience.  And I also have loved all of the social media interaction that we’ve gotten in the last year or so, and I have to say that a great deal of that is due to my incredible colleague Jessica Brock who is the voice of our Twitter feed and, you know, just so darn much fun to work with.  She is the one that says all of the funny stuff, the pithy stuff –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Erin:  – on, you know, @BerkleyRomance or @SignetEclipse, and everyone knows it’s her, because she’s funny, and I’m only funny when I’m not trying to be.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  You know, people know it’s her.  And I think as a result of that, her personality and just the honesty that she brings to it, readers have really grown to expect and enjoy that and have really fun and different interactions on social media because of it, you know, both with the Twitter feeds and with Love Always on Facebook and, you know, that, to me, is so rewarding, because that’s what we want.  We want to hear from readers.  What do they like?  What are they interested in?  Is there something that they want to see more of?  Because I am, to some degree, our audience.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Erin:  You know, I am reading these books, you know, whether I, I have to for work or not.  They’re what I would be reading just on my downtime, so I’m definitely the audience, but you know, I’m only one person, so I’m only representative of part of the audience, and I want to hear from other folks that have different, you know, likes and dislikes, and what they’re passionate about, and what they want to see more of, so if anyone is listening that has maybe lurked, you know, on some of our social media in the past and hasn’t necessarily commented, please come say hello, give us a shout-out, tell us what you like or what you want more of, because only then can we, you know, do that for you.  I would love to be a mind reader, but I’m not, sadly, so I just kind of try to, you know, get as much as I can from the bloggers and reviewers that we work with and certainly the readers that are open to sharing and commenting with us, and then we want to act on that knowledge, you know, like I said with Binge Reads.  And that was because readers just told us what they wanted, and we were able to say, okay, we’d be happy to give it to you.

Sarah:  What are some things that you also hear from readers that they want more of?

Erin:  Certainly, you know, as much interaction as possible, you know, both with, I think, those of us that work at the publishing house – they’re interested in what we do and how we do it, which, you know, to me is sort of funny, because it, it doesn’t seem very glamorous, but then on the other hand, I think, well, back when I was looking to get into publishing, I was really interested in how, you know, these folks did what they, they did, so, yeah, I can get that.  And I think just as much personal interaction as possible with authors and, you know, if there’s a way that we can help make that happen, whether it’s through, you know, online chats, like a Facebook wall chat or a reddit AMA, or, you know, helping an author to, you know, maybe coordinate their presence at an RT, or to think about what new things can author try to, you know, reach out and closely be connected with readers.  I think that’s the thing that every reader wants, you know.  The, the next book is certainly what they want the most, but beyond that, they want to have a –

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yes, the next book now!

Erin:  – you know, always, always now – you know, to have a way to connect with the people that bring them the books they love, both the authors behind that work and, you know, for some of us that work at the publishing house, just to sort of get the inside scoop on what we do, which is why it’s cool that I, I get to do stuff like come on and, and chat with you to hopefully, you know, illuminate some of it.  We, we definitely don’t mean for it to be secretive.  I think so often we, you know, because for us this is what we do every day, and we absolutely love it, but I always think, well who really wants to know about what I do?  But people do, so I’m happy to share.

Sarah:  Awesome!  So, one last question:  you and I both really like to travel.

Erin:  Yes!

Sarah:  And whenever we have really long and somewhat inappropriate lunches, we always end up talking about travel –

Erin:  Very true.

Sarah:  – so where are you traveling to next?

Erin:  Well, in about two weeks, I will go out to San Francisco, and that is for Christine Feehan’s fan weekend, which I’m really excited about.  I’ve been doing this every year since 2010, so it’s a lot of fun for me to go.  This’ll be the sixth year, and I absolutely love going.  It’s all readers that, you know, I connect with while I’m there, and I do everything from, you know, kind of help the author with what she needs to – oh, she convinced me to do this the first year, and somehow I’ve been roped into it ever since – I also deal Texas Hold ‘Em poker –

Sarah:  Nice!

Erin:  – while I’m out there during the opening night, you know, Texas Hold ‘Em tournament that they do, and it is a huge amount of fun, but – this is slightly embarrassing to admit – I am not the best, you know, Texas Hold ‘Em poker player, so the first year, I was very concerned about shuffling.  I’m not a good card shuffler.  So they were going to get me a shuffling machine, and it didn’t work very well, and I was just incredibly nervous.  I said, what if I, I can’t shuffle right or the cards fly everywhere?  I’m imagining all sorts of horrific scenarios.  So I wound up getting a poker partner, so literally, what I joke, is my professional shuffler for the Hold ‘Em game –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin: – and when we introduce ourselves, I say, hi, my name’s Erin, I’m going to be your dealer tonight, and this is Denise, and together we make one whole poker dealer.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Erin:  And that’s the truth!  We have so much fun the whole night long, because we play off of each other, and, you know, we have a good time with the people that sit at our table, and you know, nobody gets upset about everything, ‘cause it’s all about fun.  We’re the beginner table, and we just really, we don’t always mean to be entertaining, but we’re told that we are, so we have a heck of a lot of fun.

[music]

Sarah:  That is all for this week’s episode of the podcast.  I want to thank Erin Galloway for being with us, or with me, and then with you, so with us, for the last hour or so.  Future podcasts will include me and Jane talking about romance novels and answering some listener questions that are very thought provoking and certainly nothing I wanted to handle on my own.  I needed to argue with Jane about these questions.  I mean, some, some arguments just, just need to happen, but you know this, ‘cause you listen to the podcast, and we never agree about anything.

This podcast is brought to you by Berkley, publisher of The Raven, the first in a brand-new series from New York Times bestselling author of the Gabriel trilogy, Sylvain Reynard.

The music that you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find Sassy on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is the Peatbog Faeries, from their album Dust, and this song is called “Marx Terrace.”  Now that’s Marx as in Karl, not Mark as in some guy named Mark and his terrace.  I’m not sure if Karl Marx had a terrace, but apparently, this is what it sounded like.

If you have questions or suggestions or ideas or you have something you would like me to argue with Jane about, ‘cause I could do that, you can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com, but in the meantime, on behalf of Erin Galloway and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[groovy music]