136. An Interview with Avon Publicist Jessie Edwards

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Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 136 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Jessie Edwards, publicist at HarperCollins, Avon, Harper Voyager, and a few other imprints.  Today we’re going to talk about being a romance fan and being a professional working in the romance publishing industry.  Jessie has always wanted to work in romance publishing, and now she does, so we talk about how she got her job, what she loves about it, what she’s reading, and what are some of the differences in pitching releases to the romance media versus the mainstream media.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Nice Girls Don’t Ride, a sexy new novella from New York Times bestselling author Roni Loren.  This will be on sale on April 21^st.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast, and as always, all of the show notes contain links to the books we discuss.  I have also had a request to include links to other retailers.  I can absolutely do that; not a problem.

And one thing before we get started.  Many of you have been listening to the podcast for a long time and have heard the many, many, many appearances of my cat Grace, who would hear my voice and then come in the room meowing because she had to be a guest on every podcast.  We had to put Grace to sleep the day after the last podcast went up.  She was seventeen and three-quarters to the day, I’m told, ‘cause my husband remembers these things, and I’m going to miss her a lot, but it made me really appreciate the community that we have in romance because I’ve, I’ve said often that romance fans don’t always have a lot of things in common, aside from the books they read, but that alone gives us many hours of things to talk about.  I also know that many of us are pet owners, and fellow pet owners understand how much the end part of having a pet sucks.  So thank you to everyone who expressed sympathy or tweeted at me or emailed me or found a way to contact me and say they were sorry, because it sucks.  God, it sucks!  To that end, I wanted to make sure to mention two places where if you’re thinking, I would really love the outstanding awesomeness of a podcast guest who meows the minute I start talking on my podcast, Grace and her littermate Oliver came from the North Shore Animal League, and you can find many, many animals awaiting a new home at the North Shore Animal League.  You can also go to Petfinder.org.  All of our pets, with the exception of the fish, are rescues, and they’ve come from all over the country.  Petfinder is a wonderful way to find an animal who needs a home, and you can specify by breed, by location, by age, by, by special needs.  If you have a really good hand at giving a diabetic dog injections – I’ve done that – you can get a special needs animal to help make your home more awesome.  So thank you to everyone who expressed their sympathy.  I really appreciate it.

And now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah:  So if you would please introduce yourself and tell the lovely people listening who you are and what you do!

Jessie Edwards:  I’m Jessie Edwards.  I work –

Sarah:  Hello!

Jessie:  Hi!  I work in publicity at Avon and Harper Voyager and sometimes William Morrow.

Sarah:  And those are all part of HarperCollins, right?

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  So when you work for Avon, does that mean you’re a publicist for all the romances?

Jessie:   So the way it works is we get, we have a launch –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jessie:  – and, where all the editors come, and they tell us about all their great titles coming out for whatever season we’re launching, and then we put in our requests for what we want to work on.

Sarah:  Ooh!

Jessie:  So, yeah.  So, there’s, like, a separate hardcover William Morrow launch, trade paperback William Morrow launch, and then mass market launch.

Sarah:  Cool!

Jessie:  So whatever I request and get assigned to for a particular season, which is a four-month, four-month period –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – that’s what I work on.

Sarah:  And are there authors where you’re always like, okay, please give it to me now.  Right now.  Gimme, gimme, gimme.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  Yes, there are.

Sarah:  And do you give –

Jessie:  And Pam knows them, and she makes sure I get them.

Sarah:  Oh, yay!  So who are the authors where you’re like, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, I’m dying, dying, dying to work on this book?

Jessie:  I mean, Lorraine Heath, ‘cause I’ve publicly declared my love for her.

Sarah:  Yes.

Jessie:  She’s, she, I always, I’m like, I have to work on Lorraine; no matter what else happens in my schedule, make sure I’m working on Lorraine.  So that’s one, and then when we got Lisa Kleypas back?

Sarah:  Did you, did you absolutely lose your mind?

Jessie:  I absolutely lost my mind, and I was like –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  – if you don’t let me work on this, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So basically –

Jessie:  So that’s happening; so that’s exciting.

Sarah:  So basically, you’re a romance fan who gets to work in being a romance fan professionally.

Jessie:  Yes.  And it is the best thing about my life.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Well, you knew, I mean, I remember you telling me, you knew all along you wanted to work in publishing, and specifically in romance publishing.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So you grew up reading romance, giving no shits what anyone thought about it, and thinking, this is what I want to do for my living.

Jessie:  Yep.  I started reading romance when I was fifteen.  Honor’s Splendour by Julie Garwood was my first one.

Sarah:  Isn’t it, isn’t it funny how everyone remembers their first?

Jessie:  Yeah!  I mean, it com-, it honestly completely changed my life.

Sarah:  Yes!  You’re like, oh, wait, wait, what?  There’s more of these?  [Gasp] Yes!

Jessie:  Yeah, I mean, you know, I read, like, YA and teen fantasy, you know, and I always wanted the romance in there, and then suddenly I discovered there’s, there are books that are completely devoted to that, and that became basically what I read.  Like, I don’t really read anything else, pretty much.  So, and then, you know, I figured out, oh, you know, publishing’s a  thing, so I could actually work on this for a living and make money doing it and not have, you know – I feel like I wanted my job to be something I loved and not something I was miserable to go to every day.

Sarah:  That is actually a pretty wise thing to figure out at a young age.

Jessie:  Yeah, I pretty much dedicated the rest of my school career and my college career to making this happen, so –

Sarah:  Like, I want to work in publishing.  I’m going to do all the things that I need to know to work in publishing.  So what did you major in?

Jessie:  English, but I minored in PR, on advice of my college adviser.  He was like, editorial is really hard to break into.  You might want to minor in PR or marketing, ‘cause those are different avenues you can go into in publishing –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – and I said, okay, so I minored in PR.

Sarah:  Do you like it?

Jessie:  Yeah!  I like it a lot, because I just get to talk about how much I love books all the time, and I don’t have to –

Sarah:  God!

Jessie:  – think so much about the, you know, saying, hey, maybe you should rework this –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jessie:  – you know, in the editorial process.  So I think it’s just, I get to tell people how much I love books all the time and hope that they love them along with me?  So.

Sarah:  And you get to be a reader working professionally talking to other readers.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  God, that just sucks!

Jessie:  [Laughs] It’s, it’s pretty terrible, you know, it’s pretty terrible.

Sarah:  I know, it’s horrible.  The one thing I’ve noticed about some publishing, publicity and marketing programs and departments is they’re sort of like, oh, okay.  Well, you know, romance.  Go and make those a bestseller, and here’s a dollar to do that with.

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  But I get the sense that at Avon that’s not the case.

Jessie:  Oh, no, it’s really not, because our publisher is very much behind our program.  So it’s –

Sarah:  Nice!

Jessie:  Yeah, it’s, it’s a really great environment to work in because she wants Avon to be the best and to succeed, and she, you know, knows how valuable our authors are to the entire, you know, HarperCollins program.  So she very much gives us the support that we need to do the job.

Sarah:  What are some of your favorite things to do when it comes to publicity?  I know from my interviews with Erin Galloway at Penguin, she explained the very basic difference between publicity and marketing is marketing is word of mouth that you pay for –

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  – and presence that you pay for, and publicity is the exposure you get for free.

Jessie:  It’s word of mouth that you beg for.

Sarah:  [Laughs] That’s brilliant!  Marketing is word of mouth that you pay for, and publicity is word of mouth that beg for.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  Nice!

Jessie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So, what are some of your favorite things?  ‘Cause you’re exclusively publicity, right?

Jessie:  Yes.  Well, the good thing about genre publicity is we do a lot of crossover with marketing.  I mean, we don’t necessarily, you know, get to pay for things, but we do a lot of more brand development that is traditionally marketing’s, you know, purview, but as, you know, in Avon publicity and in Voyager publicity, we handle a lot of the brand development in very close relation with the marketing team.  But my favorite part, I think, is, I really love interacting with the authors as closely as I do, because our authors are generally year-to-year authors or two-book-a-year authors, and so I get to talk to them all the time.  I get to, you know, be with them at the conferences and the conventions.  We work really closely together to plan out all their publicity, and that’s my favorite part is, is working with the authors.  So –

Sarah:  Because you both get to be positive and excited about the same book.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  Is it hard to work on a book you’re not excited about?  Or can you usually find something as a romance fan that’s like, all right, I got this part.

Jessie:  Yeah, I generally can find something that I love about every book that I work on, and again, it’s like, all your, you have such a close relationship with the authors that you want to do well for them, so, you know, even if it’s not your favorite book ever you’re working on, you still like the person that you’re working with, so you just want to have their book succeed.

Sarah:  Of course.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So what are some things, if you can talk about it without giving away trade secrets –

Jessie:  Uh-huh.

Sarah:  What are some things that you have found to be really effective in generating the word of mouth that you beg for?

Jessie:  Well, it’s really great to have bloggers on board, you know, with your –

Sarah:  Bloggers!  [Snorts] Fuck them!

Jessie:  I know, right?

Sarah:  Hell with them, they don’t know anything!

Jessie:  What do they do?  [Laughs] No, I honestly –

Sarah:  Bunch of people sitting around in their yoga pants.  Screw them!

Jessie:  If you have good relationships with the bloggers and you can be, can tell them truthfully and honestly, I’m so enthusiastic about this book –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jessie:  – you know.  I want you to read it, ‘cause I think you would love it too, and so what you’ve built relationships with these people, you can get them excited, and you can, you know, they’ll help you cover things.  And so that’s really effective for me, is to create these relationships.

Sarah:  And you have the ability to identify which bloggers like which types of books.

Jessie:  Exactly!  So, I know, you know, who wants the historicals but who is also really into the romantic suspense, so –

Sarah:  Not me.

Jessie:  You’re not into the historicals?

Sarah:  No, I’m into the historicals and not the romantic suspense.

Jessie:  Got it.  Not the romantic suspense.  Not like historicals?  Sarah, that’s not right!  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No, exactly!  I’m going to check my spreadsheet, but I’m pretty sure Sarah’s full of crap.  No, I love historical, do not like romantic suspense, whereas Elyse, who reviews for me, loves both.

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So everyone’s slightly different.  Do you keep track of that?  Like, on a big spreadsheet or a chart, or do you just have it all in your head and are therefore indispensible?

Jessie:  You know, I kind of, I kind of have a lot of it in my head, and I definitely don’t keep track of it on a spreadsheet.  I don’t have enough organizational skills for that, but –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  And you know, a lot, I mean, we just blanket, you know, all the bloggers get everything, you know.  It’s like, oh, here’s my long list of Edelweiss galleys, like –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – have all of them, you know –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jessie:  – to the ones that we’ve built up relationships with and know really well?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jessie:  But, but no, I can say to, like, Vilma, who does stuff for Happy Ever After –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jessie:  – and she has Vilma’s Book Blog, I know she’s really into romantic suspense, so, you know, I’ll, like, pass on the word to Laura Kaye’s publicist or HelenKay Dimon’s publicist.  Hey, you should send this to Vilma because she’s, she’ll probably be into it.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  Things like that.

Sarah:  So you can help other publicists out in your department with your –

Jessie:  Oh, yeah, we all work really closely together.

Sarah:  – with your super, super secret knowledge.

Jessie:  Yeah.  [Laughs] Well, because, so the core Avon team is me and Pam Jaffe and Caroline Perny, and so we have a really close working relationship with all of our contacts, but we have a twenty-person publicity department –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – all of whom, you know, can work on romance, and a lot of, a lot of them do, so they don’t necessarily have the deep knowledge of the bloggers that we do –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – so we can help them out, you know.

Sarah:  Right, of course.  So how many books a month does Avon usually publish?  And you’ve got three publicists.

Jessie:  Oh.  Well, probably mass market, we publish five to eight a month maybe?  And then – those come out on the last Tuesday of every month – and then almost every week we publish at least two Impulse titles, so a lot of books.

Sarah:  Yes, you do.

Jessie:  Yes.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And here’s a dollar; make them a bestseller.  Just kidding.

[Laughter]

Jessie:  But again, we can spread those out among, you know, the other publicists in the department, so it’s not just the three of us working on them.

Sarah:  Okay.  So, here’s your grand opportunity; get ready.  Get ready, get ready!  Okay?

Jessie:  I’m very nervous.

Sarah:  No, it’s not that big of a deal.

Jessie:  Okay.

Sarah:  So the last Tuesday of the month was last week, right?

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  And you’re working on books that are going to come out on the twenty-eighth.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  All right, what are, what books of those do you know that you’re really excited about?

Jessie:  Okay, I made a list.

Sarah:  Oh!

Jessie:  ‘Cause I’m working on, I’m working on five books in April, and I can, I can get behind every single one of them.  I’m so excited about all of them.

Sarah:  Like, you’re not, like, professionally excited.  Like, this isn’t –

Jessie:  No.

Sarah:  – this isn’t like a press release, where every press release says that they are thrilled about something.  You are genuinely excited.

Jessie:  I, yeah.  No, this is, like, a banner month for me.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Jessie’s whole life has been preparing for this month of publicity.

Jessie:  I mean, pretty much.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  So, 3/31 was It Started with a Scandal by Julie Ann Long –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – which made me cry on a subway, so that was pretty intense, and I don’t cry over books, and then I think 4/14 I have two books coming out, which is Taken by Charlotte Stein –

Sarah:  Who I know that you love.

Jessie:  Adore, adore.  Like, I talked her up so much to the, her eventual editor.  I was like, you have to read her, you have to read her, you have to read her, and she finally did, and now she’s with us and it’s so exciting.

Sarah:  So you can sometimes bring books into Avon if you’re really excited about them.  You sometimes have the ability to be like, yo, yo, yo.

Jessie:  Yeah, I can bug an editor enough until they read whoever it is –

Sarah:  Nice.

Jessie:  – and then they can decide.

Sarah:  Nice!

Jessie:  But really I just kind of wore her down until she was like, okay, I’ll read it, I’ll read it, and then she was, like, transformed.  Obviously, ‘cause Charlotte Stein’s transformative.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Okay.  I love how you’re, like, totally blasé about your powers here.

Jessie:  Basically.

Sarah:  Like, she’s transformative.  I knew it was going to happen.

Jessie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Ka-boom!  You read Charlotte Stein.  So Charlotte Stein writes intense psychological erotica.

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.  First person, too, which is not the norm.

Sarah:  No.  No, it’s not the standard.

Jessie:  No.  But it’s like –

Sarah:  Usually you get third person penetrative.

Jessie:  Yeah.

[Laughter]

Jessie:  No, it’s, like, very deep psychological, first person, you were just in their head.  It’s kind of weird –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – it’s kind of, you know, these off-beat, off-kilter characters, and the way their relationships are strange with the guys, but it’s just, like, amazing.  Like, I read it, and I don’t know how someone can write those words –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:   – and, you know, have all that in their head and make it into this beautiful thing.  It’s – I read her and I’m amazed.

Sarah:  Ah-ha.  So you get to work on her books and talk about them.

Jessie:  Yep.

Sarah:  That’s just terrible for you.

Jessie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s just horrible.

Jessie:  I know, I know.  It’s a sad life.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So what else?

Jessie:  Need Me by Tessa Bailey, and Tessa Bailey was recommended to me – actually, I get all my new book recommendations from Sophie Jordan.

Sarah:  Really!

Jessie:  Yes.  She will just email me and be like, I read this really awesome thing; you need to read it, and I’ll be like, okay.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So, wait, even though you work in publishing, you still buy books?

Jessie:  Not as much.

Sarah:  Not as much, but it still happens?

Jessie:  Yeah, but it still happens, because either I want it immediately or I don’t have a friend at the house who can get it for me, you know.

Sarah:  [Laughs] That’s a good professional network to have.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  ‘Cause I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s weird how publishing is a big industry, it generates a lot of money, but the number of people working in publishing, especially in romance publishing, is actually pretty small –

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and everybody knows –

Jessie:  We all see each other at the conventions, and –

Sarah:  Yep, and you all switch places when someone rings a bell.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Time for you to go to Random House Penguin, and you’re going to go over there, and you’re going to go – everybody switch places.

Jessie:  Yep.  Yep.  Although I’ve been at Avon for five years this year.

Sarah:  Wow, really?

Jessie:  Yep.  It’s the only publishing job I’ve had

Sarah:  Well, you came to New York specifically to find a job in romance publishing, right?

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  Like, you, you left Atlanta and were like, all right, it is time.

Jessie:  Yep.  I was, I was like that.  It took me three months to get a job.  I think that –

Sarah:  Wow.  You must have been really scared.

Jessie:  Yeah.  I cried a lot.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Five years ago, I would have cried a lot too.

Jessie:  It was, yeah, it was a bad time to graduate.  Like, I graduated in 2009 –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – which is after everything horrible happened –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – and there were no jobs to be had –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – and then I, my mom, like, half my family works for Coca-Cola, so she helped me get, like, a contract job there, like a temporary job, and so I just worked there, lived at home, saved up money, and then was like, okay, see you later, family –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  – and came up here, and it took me three months to get a job, and I was terrified the entire time.

Sarah:  Wow.

Jessie:  Yeah, so.

Sarah:  But you also love your job now.

Jessie:  Yes, yes.  I mean, I think it’s a –

Sarah:  And you’re not just saying that.

Jessie:  Huh?

Sarah:  You’re not just saying that.

Jessie:  No, and I think it’s a testament to how awesome I find what I work on to be, you know, the people I work with, and the company I work for, because people, especially in publicity, move around, as you said, a ton.

Sarah:  It’s a position that can be really stressful.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  ‘Cause there’s a lot of expectations placed on you for things that are not purchasable.

Jessie:  Exactly, exactly.  And, you know, and it’s easier to move around in publicity than editorial, because you get, you know, you have your authors in editorial, and you don’t want to leave them, or there’s not so many job openings –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – but in publicity, there’s lots of chances to just go elsewhere –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – but, you know, I just love doing it so much.  I love working at Avon.

Sarah:  Tell me about more books.  Tessa Bailey.

Jessie:  She was recommended to me by Sophie Jordan, and I don’t remember what I read of hers, but it was super cute, and then suddenly one of our editors has acquired her, like, her Broke and Beautiful trilogy, and I was like, oh, I just read her!  That’s awesome!

[Laughter]

Jessie:  So Need Me is coming out, and that book is, like, so much fun.  It’s, you know, they’re all set in New York with these young, broke girls trying to find love, and this one’s a professor-student romance, so –

Sarah:  Oh-oh.  Hello.

Jessie:  – a little risqué.  And then, okay, so Jay Crownover is ending her Marked Men series on April 21^st with Asa, and that has been a wild ride to work on, ‘cause –

Sarah:  Really!

Jessie:  – yeah, she’s done, I mean, she has done amazingly.  Her trajectory has – she’s been published for maybe, like, a little over two years now?

Sarah:  Wow.

Jessie:  And the last book was number nine on the USA Today list?

Sarah:  Whoa!

Jessie:  Yeah.  So she’s, she’s been, her fans, her readers are, they love her so much.  It’s amazing, the, you know, the love she’s been able to engender for these Marked Men and for, you know, her.  She’s just so honest and real.  She’s, she’s really great to work with because of how well she connects with the readers.

Sarah:  That’s very cool.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It, I imagine it makes your job a lot easier when the person you’re working to promote is as into that part as you are.

Jessie:  Yes.  The, I find the authors that do the best are the ones who, you know, they know that we’re working on it, and they work on it just as hard.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jessie:  So, it’s like if they’re out there promoting, and we’re out there promoting –

Sarah:  That’s good.

Jessie:  – it’s golden.

Sarah:  I remember back in 2009 when our first book was published that my agent was saying, you know, you really can’t expect publicists to have read your book or even looked at it.  They’re going to look at a summary, and they’re going to go out and try to place it, and they’re not going to read it.  You read the books you work on.

Jessie:  Yeah!  Like, that’s – I mean, I read them because that’s really the only way you can do good publicity, I think?

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jessie:  If you know what you’re talking about when you’re talking to a reviewer or a, a newspaper editor or whoever –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  They’ll know when you don’t know what you’re saying.  They’ll know when you don’t know what the book is about.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  So that’s, you know, you just have to do that to do a good job.  Also, I work on books I enjoy, so that helps, and it’s pretty much like a mandate in our department.  You need to read the books.

Sarah:  Have read what you’re talking about.

Jessie:  Yeah, but I will say the number of authors who have worked with other people in other houses before who have said to me, oh, you read it?  And I was like, like, of course I read it!

[Laughter]

Jessie:  And they’re just so surprised, so I guess that’s not, like, a universal publishing standard.  I don’t know.

Sarah:  I know that when our first book came out that, I was told that that should be my expectation –

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – but then I ended up with a publicist who has since left New York publishing and gone to work at a house in another part of the country.  I ended up with a publicist who loves romance, and so she was excited to read the book –

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and it made an enormous difference –

Jessie:  That’s great.

Sarah:  – because she was able to do, like, all right, I know that there’s a romance fan at NPR, so she got us on NPR’s All Things Considered weekend edition –

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and because she knew that producer loved romance, she had that connection, just because they talk about romance.  Now that she has a book to work on, she could actually talk about it, so I was super-lucky.  Like, I was hugely lucky.  I remember – [laughs] – I remember our agent saying, yeah, don’t, don’t ever expect that.  Like, that’s the, that’s, that’s not normal.  Don’t expect that.  [Laughs]

Jessie:  Okay.  That’s interesting to know.

Sarah:  But then again, I was writing in nonfiction, and that was, you know, six years ago, so things change a lot, especially because you have a, I think you have a lot more, you have a lot more options to talk about books because of the internet –

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and you have a lot more bloggers to talk to and a lot more reader groups to reach out to, but those source that talk about romance outside of the internet are fewer and fewer.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  That makes it a little bit more difficult.

Jessie:  Well, I think it’s been really great, what you and Jane have created, which is this culture of examining romances critically and within the larger culture of, you know, America?

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Jessie:  And the world, because it’s made it easier for us to be able to talk to people at NPR and –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jessie:  – you know places like that to make them see it as legitimate and something they should cover.

Sarah:  I don’t think we were the only ones to do it, but I definitely think that, that, that us deciding, okay, we’re going to take this seriously –

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – helps everybody take the genre more seriously.

Jessie:  Well, like, even right now with Kelly Faircloth, you know, posting on Jezebel about romance –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – has been amazing as well.

Sarah:  Oh, gosh, she’s so good.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That whole Harlequin, history of Harlequin thing on Jezebel, I was just like, it, you, you just might – and I was interviewed and quoted in it, so I sound a little disingenuous saying this, but, dude, you might as well have written my name at the top of it, because that was all of my catnip.  It was long-form, big dose of my catnip.  It was so good!

Jessie:  Yes.  I mean, it was, like, we were all abuzz about it at Avon, and you know, it’s, you know, and it’s not about Avon, but we were so excited.

Sarah:  Well, like I said when I wrote about it, there’s a couple different kinds of publicity in articles about romance.

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  You get the, oh, I have to write about this.  Here’s a joke about sex.  Here’s the information.  All right, now I’m going to go back to serious journalism.  And then you get the writers who are trying to reconcile their own shame about romance and trying to distance themselves from it, like, well, you and I would never read this, dear reader, but here’s some information, and now let us go console ourselves with much better books, because those are stupid.  Like, there’s always that sort of distance and derision, and then you get the people who were like, this is awesome!  Oh, my God, I can’t wait to tell you about it!  So when you get that and it’s genuine, it’s like, it’s still a balm.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s still so amazing, and I still get so excited.  [Laughs]

Jessie:  Okay.

Sarah:  Even though I’ve been doing this for 10 years, I’m like, oh, my God, there was another one, and it was so great!

Jessie:  I think one of our editors tweeted at her.  It was like, thank you so much for doing this.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  And she, you know, tweeted back and everything, and it was – I mean, we were so happy.

Sarah:  The, and then the, you saw the followup, where she was like, here are all the examples of reporters trying to imitate romance language, and they’re bad at it –

Jessie:  Yes.  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and I’m like, oh, my God, it’s like you did it again!  [Laughs]

Jessie:  Yeah.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  But the, I think the best thing about that article was that what she was approaching was not, here’s a thing that everyone should know about it ‘cause it’s cool.  It’s, why does everyone assume that all romances are Harlequins and that Harlequin is the shorthand descriptor for romance as a genre when it’s a different thing?  Like, why do people rely on that as a shorthand?  Which is a really hard question to answer, and I think she totally did.

Jessie:  Yeah.  It was great.

Sarah:  [Sigh] I think Kelly Faircloth is on her way to becoming the romance’s version of Anne Helen Petersen, who writes about celebrities.  Like, we have –

Jessie:  Yeah, I’m for it.

Sarah:  Yeah, I’m totally down with this.  This is making me so happy.

Jessie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So here’s a thing that I, I know you and I have talked about before –

Jessie:  Yep.

Sarah:  – and I’ve talked about with Pam.  One of the problems I struggle with when I’m trying to describe books is the genre terms that we have aren’t accurate anymore.  So if you say contemporary romance, I could be talking about Debbie Macomber, and you could be talking about Charlotte Stein, and those are two totally different things.

Jessie:  Yes.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  And so then you have, like, okay, well, contemporary erotic, and you have contemporary small town, and you have contemporary that’s in a city, so you have all of these little descriptors, and then you have to get into the plot twists or the, or the, the hooks, like, okay, this is a contemporary, small-town, friends-to-lovers.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  This is a contemporary set in New York about a paleontologist and a journalist.  I am making shit up, and somebody was, somebody is probably going to be like, I want to read that; what book is that?!  [Laughs] I made that up, sorry.

Jessie:  That sounds like a Nora Roberts right there.

Sarah:  Doesn’t it?

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  She, she does all the contemporary competence porn.

Jessie:  Yes!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  Yes, she does.

Sarah:  Like –

Jessie:  Those wedding books?  I was like, I want to plan, like, five different weddings right now.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  Oh, my gosh.  She –

Sarah:  The best scenes from those books, when the, when the – I forget her name – the one who always had a sleek ponytail and a Blackberry and walked, did, like, six miles on the elliptical every morning.

Jessie:  Laurel – no.

Sarah:  No, the, the head of it, was it Laurel?

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  The head of the group, whatever her –

Jessie:  Laurel might have been the baker.

Sarah:  See?  I don’t even remember this poor woman’s name!  I remember her job!  What is so – there was one scene, anyway – I’m going to actually look this up right now, because it’s going to make me nuts.

Jessie:  Okay.

Sarah:  It was the final book, because she was the, sort of, the, the, the head of the company, and there was one scene with a wedding where the bride spec-, specifically said – Parker!  Her name was Parker!

Jessie:  Parker, yes.

Sarah:  Parker, thank you, okay.  The, there was a guest who brought a child, even though the bride and groom had specifically said that the wedding was not for children, and the person who had brought the kid was like, well, I’m sure the bride won’t mind my child, because my child is, like, you know, so perfect, and that kid was really young and did not want to be there, and there weren’t supposed to be children at the wedding, and it was going to ruin what the bride and groom had wanted.  And so she handles this situation so perfectly.  She’s like, well, here are my options:  I can hire you a babysitter, and the cost will be this plus this plus this, and I will bill you, or you can take your child home.  And I was like, oh, my God, that was amazing.  It was like –

Jessie:  Amazing.

Sarah:  Yes!  It was, like, hardcore, badass competence porn, and I was like, I, I didn’t even care about the romance at that point.  I was like, can we just have a reality show of this woman handling difficult guests?  I would learn so much.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  But the competence porn is amazing.

Jessie:  Oh, she’s been doing that forever, though.  Like, I think she’s gotten more – ‘cause she did, like, the, the story, the series about the inn, you know, where it was like a reconstruct-

Sarah:  The BoonsBoro trilogy.

Jessie:  Whatever.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Jessie:  But she’s been doing it since, you know, she started writing, where she’s like –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Jessie:  – she’s got all these people with all these fascinating careers, like, comic book artists or –

Sarah:  Yep, graphic novelists.  House sitter.  Dog trainer.  Like –

Jessie:  Yeah, and she knows everything about the career.

Sarah:  She writes the best competence porn; it’s addictive!

Jessie:  Yes!  So, I’m, I am into that.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  But it’s hard to describe that unless you get really, really – I think the right term is granular.  You have to get really specific in order to fully communicate what it is, and I remember during the whole 50 Shades explosion, which went on for, like, ten months, I re-, I remember asking – I think I asked you, I asked Pam, I asked some other people at different houses – has 50 Shades, because it’s become, like, a part of our common language about books – even if you don’t read romance, you know what that book is –

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Has it changed the way you do your job?  And one of the things Pam said was, yes, it gives me a language to describe what I’m talking about.  I can refer to it as similar to or different from this one thing that everyone knows.  So, what kind of things do you have to, what kind of terms do you have to use when you’re describing books, when the genre terms are too big?  Like, do you rely on plot hooks, or do you rely on more specific descriptions of the book?  ‘Cause it’s really hard sometimes to communicate, well, how is Jay Crownover different from Tessa Bailey, and how is Julie Ann Long different from Tessa Dare, and how do you differentiate your different books to people?  Is that a hard thing to do, or do you just know them so well it’s kind of like, okay, you speak romance language, so we understand you.

Jessie:  Yeah, it’s easier to do with, with people who are in the romance community.  Like, everything you’ve said to me –

Sarah:  Uh-huh?

Jessie:  – I can understand immediately –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – because we have this whole culture of people talking and using these similar terms.

Sarah:  Of course.

Jessie:  Although if I’m talking about it to a mainstream reviewer –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – I generally use the more blanketing terms.  I don’t get into trope words, I don’t get into – I mean if I, if it’s a contemporary romance and I am talking about, or I’m talking about Charlotte Stein, I will say, contemporary erotic, and those two terms are very well understood.

Sarah:  Absolutely.

Jessie:  But if I’m talking – and I can say BDSM now –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – because 50 Shades –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – but again, it’s like Pam said, I can either say it’s different from or similar to –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – 50 Shades.  And it’s the only way that I can talk to people who aren’t in the romance world about this, because –

Sarah:  But we have our own language.

Jessie:  We have our own language.  And then a lot of times what you do with mainstream media is you’re not so much pitching – unless I’m, like, trying to do a, a pitch about the genre, if I’m pitching a specific book, I’ll pitch the author.  I, I don’t really pitch the book.

Sarah:  Interesting.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Because the, the person becomes the story around –

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – book release time.

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.  So, I mean, you can say, I mean, I can pitch their writing, I can say that they have, you know, their wonderful writing, and I can use the terms that they have a shorthand for, like really pacy, or –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – things like that, but I can’t say –

Sarah:  That is not a word I’ve ever used, pacy.  Unless I’m talking about Dawson’s Creek, I have never used the word pacy.

Jessie:  That, I mean, that’s a good way to use it.  But yeah, you know –

[Laughter]

Jessie:  I mean, he was my fave, so –

Sarah:  He was a lot of people’s fave!

Jessie:  Yeah.  [Laughs] But you can say, you know, plot-driven, snappy writing, you know, witty; they understand those things.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  Or you can say this author has this really interesting background because of X –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – but if, you know, if they already think that all romances are the same, I’m not going to convince them that they’re different, so I have to give them, I have to kind of go in sideways to get them to cover it.

Sarah:  Yep.  And you have to give them the language that they understand –

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  – before you explain it’s a contemporary romance with a friends-to-lovers plot and, you know –

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:   – that’s the part that they’re not going to give a shit about, whereas all of us are like, please tell me more about this friends-to-lovers plot.  Please give me all the details.

Jessie:  Well, romance readers love such specific things, they –

Sarah:  Yes, we do.

Jessie:  You know, and so I have certain things that I’ll look for, like marriage of convenience –

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  – or something like that, and I want that all the time.  So, it’s easy to pick out books that way, and you want to give people as many tropes as you can when you’re describing it because then, you know, you’ll pick on something that they like.

Sarah:  Absolutely.  Plus, you have, one of the things that I like to do is, is to try to help people identify what their catnip is so they can go find more of it –

Jessie:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – because it’s one thing to know, okay, I really like this author’s books, but when you can help someone realize what that author does that you like that you may be able to find in another author that’s going to sort of satisfy that same craving for that same tension, then you’re helping that person discover their catnip, which is an enormously rewarding thing, because there’re so many different ways to discover more of the, the, the conflict that you like.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And that’s really helpful.  But that’s not a language that I don’t think is spoken outside of genre communities.

Jessie:  No.  Because – so, I mean, literary books are just so disconnected.  I mean, you can talk about them, you know –

Sarah:  They are their own genre.

Jessie:  They’re their – yeah, they’re their own genre, but they’re not, you know, all, they all like to think that they’re different from each other?

Sarah:  But they’re not.  [Laughs]

Jessie:  But they’re not, so they haven’t developed this language to talk about it because they don’t want to.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  So –

Sarah:  I am getting better at reading literary fiction cover quotes, though.  A heartbreaking banquet of love – someone’s going to die, and it’s going to be sad, probably near a tablecloth.  Okay, I know I don’t want to read that.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  I’m with you.

Sarah:  Yep.  Heartbreaking, heart-wrenching?  No.

Jessie:  No?

Sarah:  Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.  I’m going to nope right out of here.

Jessie:  I don’t like family sagas either –

Sarah:  No.

Jessie:  – ‘cause you know someone’s going to die in that.

Sarah:  Yep.  Because it, you know, it’s just, you know, age and generations.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Although, I remember reading the Wakefield family sagas in the, the Sweet Valley High series?

Jessie:  Mm-hmm?

Sarah:  They had a Wakefield family saga about the ancestors of both Jessica and Elizabeth’s parents and the Patmans and the Fowlers, and I ate that up –

Jessie:  Are you kidding?

Sarah:  No, I ate that up with a spoon.

Jessie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  It was horrible.  I was totally a Sweet Valley High reader, though.  That was where I sort of, my sort of beginning of my onramp into romance was through Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams.

Jessie:  I read Sweet Valley Kids.

Sarah:  Well, that’s ‘cause you and I are very different ages.

Jessie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  ‘Cause I am old.

Jessie:  I read some Sweet Valley High stuff too.

Sarah:  Tell me, if you will, for the, my last question –

Jessie:  Okay.

Sarah:  What books have you read that are not Avon books that you’ve really, really loved.  If you’re allowed to talk about them.

Jessie:  Yeah, of course!

Sarah:  Of course you are!

Jessie:  I wasn’t sure I was going to be allowed to talk about the Avon ones.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, dude, please, bring it!  I’m, I’m genuinely curious about whatever you’re excited about.  Our tastes don’t always line up –

Jessie:  No.

Sarah:  – but what you like about a book, I totally see that in the book, even if I don’t like it, you know?  It’s not like you, you read something and I’m like, what?  You saw what?

Jessie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Did we read the same book?  That’s only happened a couple times.

Jessie:  Yeah.  Okay, first, my last Avon book, though, is the 4/28 release of The Duke and the Lady in Red by Lorraine Heath.  I have to mention it.  It’s so good and so emotional.

Sarah:  It’s Lorraine Heath.  Please tell me all the things about it.

Jessie:  Well, it’s just, it’s, so, this girl is a con artist, and she has to con men out of money to protect her family, which is kind of like a found family, you know.  She’s got all these people who she’s met along the way who she has to take care of, and so she goes to this opening night at, at a casino, I think it is, and she meets this man there who just wants her so badly, and so she’s picked him as her mark, and, but he’s, you know, he’s too smart for that, except he wants her so much that he kind of lets himself be drawn in, and he catches her as she’s about to abscond with a bunch of his money –

Sarah:  Oh, crap.

Jessie:  – and he says, okay, you can have the money, but you have to spend a week in my bed in exchange, and so that happens.

Sarah:  That always works out well.

Jessie:  It does!  There’s a lot of sex!

[Laughter]

Jessie:  And you know, she’s got, like, a big secret, and he’s, you know, angry at her for tricking him, and then, you know, things progress, and then they fall in love, obviously.  So, it’s really good, comes out 4/28, everyone should buy it.

Sarah:  And you just generally love Lorraine Heath.

Jessie:  Yes.

Sarah:  Do you, but you like her American historicals more than the European historicals, right?

Jessie:  They hold a very special place in my heart.  So –

Sarah:  The Americans?

Jessie:  Yeah.  So, Texas Destiny is, like, my fave of all time Lorraine Heath.  But I, you know, she’s been doing some really great things over in England.  So, and she hasn’t written a Western in a long time.

Sarah:  It’s not a very hot market, if I understand correctly.

Jessie:  Nope.  Hopefully it’ll come back, ‘cause I really love them?  But I think, if I remember correctly, her, one of her parents is from Texas maybe, and one of her parents is from England?

Sarah:  Cool.

Jessie:  And so, you know, she’s kind of brought them together in her writing, so she wrote, started over in Texas, then she went to England, and she’s got her parents there together.

Sarah:  Awww!

Jessie:  So I think that’s pretty cute.

Sarah:  That is pretty cute.

Jessie:  But books that are non-Avon that I’ve been reading.  I just got in the mail The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins.

Sarah:  Ooh.

Jessie:  ‘Cause Kristan Higgins is my crack.  Like, I love her so much.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  I love, I love all of her books, and they’re all kind of similar, but it’s everything that I love.  It’s, like, small town, quirky character – she’s always kind of desperate to get married, and she’s, like, hapless at relationships, and it’s all just so charming and funny that I love it.  Let’s see – oh, and like I said, all of my recommendations generally come from Sophie Jordan –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – so she rec’ed me Cara McKenna, who, I read Hard Time, I think, and that was pretty buzzy a while back when it came out, but it’s this guy in prison, and the girl has come to, like, teach a prison class, and they –

Sarah:  Yes.

Jessie:  – like, start writing letters to each other?

Sarah:  She’s the prison librarian.

Jessie:  Yeah, she’s the prison librarian, and that, I mean, it was weird and sexy and intense, like emotionally intense, and I love anything that’s going to get me, like, gasp, you know, because of all the angst in it, and so that one was, that one’s really good.  I’ve been kind of going through her backlist now, so – she’s, she writes pretty sexy.

Sarah:  Nice!

Jessie:  Yeah.  I wrote these all down, ‘cause I knew you were going to ask.

Sarah:  Of course I was going to ask!  And when everyone, when it, whenever anyone asks me that question, my mind immediately glows, goes blank, and I’m like, uhhh, I read books, what?  Really?  Oh, shit.

Jessie:  Yeah, yeah.  Well, and a lot of, a lot of it is, I don’t have time to read a lot outside of, of Avon, because I’m just reading what I’m working on, and –

Sarah:  Of course.

Jessie:  – I’m happy to do that, but – so it’s really good, I really like when bloggers who I talk to all the time tell me, hey, you need to read this, because I find that I don’t necessarily have time to actually, like, go through all the blogs all the time, so I don’t – so when they’re telling me, like, because of our personal relationship while we’re emailing, I’m like, this is perfect; thank you so much.  I’m going to go buy this right now.  So –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  – message to all the bloggers out there who talk to me and are listening to this:  tell me all the books you love in your emails to me, because I love hearing about it.  Amy Jo Cousins, Off Campus, is a male/male romance that I bought because they reviewed it on Dear Author?

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Jessie:  And it was super cute.  I thought it was very – I don’t read a lot of male/male, I don’t read a lot of male/male romance outside of fanfiction.  I read a lot of male/male fanfiction, but, so the ones I’ve read are kind of, you know, one of the, one of the guys is struggling to come out or not come out, and one of the guys is, like, already, you know, ready to go.  It’s just not, not, like, my favorite?

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Jessie:  But this was sort of that, but sort of not that.  Like, they were in an established, open relationship practically the whole time –

Sarah:  Right.

Jessie:  – and, so I thought it was, I thought it was fantastic.  Jaci Burton – I don’t remember the last thing that I read of hers, but she was one that one of our editors recommended to me –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Jessie:  – and she’s, she’s got that crack-y feel too, you know, like, I just wanted to keep reading it, and I was reading about, I don’t remember the book, but the lady was a, a PR professional, and she was resurrecting the image of this sports star?  I think he was a baseball player, maybe.  I don’t remember, but it was so good.  It was so –

Sarah:  It was your catnip.

Jessie:  It was my catnip.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  Yeah, I was like, I really like reading about PR people because I’m like, I do this every day!  This is what my life is like!  Or I’m like, God, this is terrible.  Let me keep hate reading it, you know.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Jessie:  People, I find that when people write about the publishing industry, they are – or they write about PR, they are either spot on because they’ve had to deal with it, or they’re like, oh, yeah, I’m going in for a meeting with the publisher today, and I’ve never, you know, sold a book in my life, and you know, I got my book published in, in two weeks, and it’s like, that’s not how this works at all!

Sarah:  [Laughs] I sent in my manuscript on Monday, and Avon published it on Wednesday afternoon!

Jessie:  Yep.

Sarah:  Yeah, that totally doesn’t happen!

Jessie:  And it’s, you know, gotten a little better with, like, the Eriginals, but it’s still not like that at all.

Sarah:  Yep.

Jessie:  And then I just started reading the Monica McCarty series that starts with The Chief?

Sarah:  Ooh, I’ve heard good things about that.

Jessie:  Yeah, so, it’s, I’ve just started The Chief, and it’s, you know, a lot of historical background, which I find that historical romances have gotten away from, you know?  Like, the really deep, you know, let’s explore the topics of the time type situation, and this is, like, with Robert the Bruce and, like, way back then.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Jessie:  So it’s pretty, it’s pretty interesting, because it’s, like, a time period that’s not written about, you know, it’s not in vogue right now.

Sarah:  I remember reading so many books with Robert the Bruce as a background character.  I must have read, like, over a dozen –

Jessie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – set in that time period, and he was, like, just off page in all of them.

Jessie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  He wasn’t going to have his own scenes, but he was right there!  He was just there, they were on their way to see him, and yeah, I remember that.

Jessie:  Yeah.  So I’m enjoying that.  It brings me back to, like, Laurie McBain?  Did you ever read Laurie McBain?

Sarah:  No!

Jessie:  So she was one of, like, the original, like Rosemary Rogers, Kathleen Woodiwiss, she was one of the originals that –

Sarah:  Avon ladies?

Jessie:  Yeah, the original Avon ladies, and she, she wrote these really long, drawn-out, like, Civil War saga or, like, 1500s Spain saga, and they were, like, on a desert island, and then they were over and, like, with the King of Spain, and just these crazy things, and it kind of reminds me of that –

Sarah:  Yeah?

Jessie:  – because it’s, like, so fine in the historical detail, but I think it’s, I don’t know, I think it’s just the beginning of The Chief.  I’m not sure if it’s going to be like that throughout.  So we’ll see.

Sarah:  Cool.

Jessie:  I’ll report back.

Sarah:  Please do.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jessie, and I want to thank her for taking the time to talk to me.

This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Nice Girls Don’t Ride, the sexy new novella from New York Times bestselling author Roni Loren.  Download it on April 21^st.

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can hear her on the last episode.  You can talk to her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This podcast features podcast favorites the Peatbog Faeries from their CD Dust, which you can find on their website, on iTunes, on Amazon, and in many other locations where you buy your fine, fine music.

You’ve got suggestions, we’ve got email.  If you have ideas or requests, you have points of information you’d like to clarify, you want to ask for recommendations, you just want to tell us what you think of a book, we love to hear from you.  Our email address is sbjpodcast@gmail.com.  We accept all of your fine, fine email and enjoy reading it, and we’re going to feature a whole bunch of ‘em in an upcoming episode because reader email is really fun, ‘cause y’all are awesome!

Thank you again for listening.  On behalf of Jessie Edwards, Jane, and myself, we wish you the very, very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[excellent music]