book Publicity – Julie Liddell Whitehead

Possumtown Book Fest Weekend

So this weekend was full of book fun! I went to Starkville Book Mart and Cafe for a signing on Friday–they brought out a punchbowl for visitors and me and Bob and employees to partake of–after I signed my first book at the event, I went and got a cup of punch, and the pattern was set. Now it was a drinking game; for every book sold, I got a cup of punch. Good thing it wasn’t spiked! We sold half the books we had on hand–she had some and I brought some and let her keep them and sell them herself. So I took away a nice check at the end of the day.

Then Saturday, I went to the 2nd Annual Possumtown Book Fest in Columbus, MS just a few miles down the highway from Starkville. That was a LOT of fun! Met some people, like my online writing buddy Shannon, the organizer and bookstore owner Emily Liner, the novelist Snowden Wright, my panel mates Benjamin and Nadia, and various other authors I knew only by reputation. I saw a lot of folks I already knew–MFA alumni, Bookstagramers, MUW professors, MSU professors, Mississippi Art Commision people, etc.

I had fun on my panel. I talked about why I wrote Hurricane Baby: Stories, how I felt being a Mississippi writer, what being a Mississippian was all about, etc. I carried on a good bit, as we Mississippians tend to do. And I got quoted in the local Columbus paper this morning! So that was a neat extra and hopefully may send people to the bookstore to get a copy of my book on Monday or this weekend. That would be nice.

This week I have a TV appearance and my last scheduled book signing. Things are winding down for Hurricane Baby. After this week, I have another TV appearance and two podcast interviews. Then I have a few events scheduled for 2026 already. In three days, the book will have its first birthday. Quite the milestone and a punctuation mark to a wild year!

Gearing Up

So this August will mark one year since Hurricane Baby: Stories published. It also marks twenty years since Hurricane Katrina struck Mississippi and Louisiana. That has really brought a lot of attention to the book right now.

–The “Writers Drinking Whiskey” podcast drops on July 23. Bill Hincy and I talk the book and my debut journey here.

–“Talk to Me Day” on Mastodon on August 3. The #ScribesAndMakers group hosts me taking questions about writing and my book throughout the day that Sunday.

–Interview with The Southern Review of Books publishes on August 6. My MFA mate Katharine Armbrester put this Q&A together for this online publication

–Book Signing at Impression Books, a locally-owned bookstore here in Flowood. MS at noon on August 9.

–Book signing at Book Mart and Cafe on August 15 in Starkville, MS at 2 p.m., followed by:

–Panel and signing at Possumtown Book Festival in Columbus, MS on August 16 all day. Panel is at noon and the signing is following.

–Book Signing at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in Flowood, MS at noon on August 23 at the front of the store

–“Lunch and Learn” podcast with Kyla Hanington, another MFA mate, at 11 a.m. on August 26.

–TV appearance on WJTV with Walt Grayson at 3 p.m. on August 27 on the “Focused on Mississippi program.

–“Tombigbee Tales” podcast with host Shannon Evans and guest Rod Davis to talk Hurricane Katrina memories and literature on August 29, TBA.

I think that’s everything.

And then I’m going to relax by continuing to query Looking for Home!

Seriously, if you can find a way to support some of these events, I really would appreciate it. Trying to do a big push to drive sales here before its book birthday. Thanks to all of you reading for all the support over this magical time these last few months. Happy writing!

Book Magic!

This week, I had another surprise pop up about Hurricane Baby: Stories–it’s now available online from Target.com! I was so STUNNED. I immediately wrote my publisher asking HOW she pulled this one off. She said it was likely because it was available at the wholesaler Ingram and that I had done such a good job collating my metadata. That was flattering, as was her comment that I should write something about metadata and its role in publishing.

Now, some readers may be wondering what metadata is and with good reason; I didn’t know anything about it until I started working for my job at a publisher. Metadata is information sent to online retailers such as Amazon, Barners & Noble, Ingram, etc. that makes use of search engine optimization (SEO) to enable readers to find a certain book.

Much metadata has to do with information the publisher will determine and supply–ISBN, title, cover image, shelving headers, BISAC codes, dimensions of the book. Other items of metadata that can be entered into your book’s electronic record are comparison titles, excerpts, and keywords.

Comparison titles are where the author indicates the book sits in the marketplace–books with similar themes, audiences, and writing styles. I used Amazon to search out mine for Hurricane Baby–I typed “Hurricane Katrina fiction” in the search bar and found several titles I thought would work. I then read the summaries and decided what books would match mine most closely. Other considerations include the amount of sales, the number of reviews the book had, and what format the book was published in; they needed to be as similar to the format as the book I was working on as possible.

Excerpts are important to give everyone reading the metadata the flavor of the book. I took a scene from the middle of my first story, “Still Waters”, where the hurricane hits Hattiesburg, Mississippi full force. It summed up the serious issues from the storm and showed the style of my writing.

Keywords are search terms for the book–a word or phrase that is electronically attached to the book as it goes out into the world. My keywords for Hurricane Baby were: 2005, climate change, destruction of the Gulf Coast, hurricane baby, Hurricane Katrina, loss of faith, post-traumatic stress disorder, Southern literature. The keywords can be a set of phrases or single words that someone might use as a search terms when looking for information/books on my topic. The key player in this case is Amazon–it has a fifteen-keyword limit for how many search terms you can attach.

So that’s a quick rundown of what I know about metadata and how I used it for my book. Hope the information can be helpful to someone else. And may it work in your favor as it seems to have done in mine! Happy writing!

OK. Wow. Here We Come!

So time starts speeding up for me very soon. This past Friday, I was interviewed in a statewide radio show on public radio that airs on August 18 at 5 p.m. on Mississippi Public Broadcasting and logged onto the website, http://msartshour.mpbonline.org/episodes later on for those who are not in Mississippi.

On August 14, I’m supposed to have an article published on the “First Person Singular” vertical on Substack, edited by Sari Botton. You’ll read about a sudden illness that felled me two weeks after getting the publication news about Hurricane Baby and how I coped with that.

Then on August 23, I have a live TV interview with Studio 3 at WLBT News at 3 p.m.to talk about Hurricane Baby with their host.

Then comes the big day of my signing at Lemuria Bookstore at noon on August 24, with signing at 12 and then moving to Lemuria’s event space at 12:30 p.m. for my conversation with Steve Yates, a longtime writer colleague, about Hurricane Baby. I did the same interview style talk with him when his book The Lakes of Southern Hollow was published, so here’s returning the favor at my signing.

And to wind up the month is another radio interview with Rebecca Turner on her show Good Things on the actual 19th anniversary of Katrina’s landfall in Mississippi. That show will be at two p.m. and will be later released on her website (https://www.supertalk.fm/shows/goodthings/) for those of you who might get the interview on the air.

That’s all for August except for the occasional stab at my work-in-progress/ There’s a new article I’ll put up on press and I’ll updated the schedule page to get all things Hurricane Baby in one place.

Bits of Good News

Two more bits of good news have come in for Hurricane Baby–my signing at my local bookstore may have been turned into a conversation about another writer Q&A format. I think it will be cool if we can pull it off.

And a bookseller back at my old stomping grounds at college finally got back in touch with me and agreed to hold a signing event the day after I had my reading in my hometown. So soon I will need to start publicizing that.

My work-in-progress in kid of in freeze frame. I don’t know what’s really holding me back from writing it the way I want to. I just don’t know Merrilyn well enough yet. I need to work on that. I certainly don’t think I’m going to hit that August deadline–but then again, I might. You never know. I may sit down one night and just type my heart out. It might not be right for the book, but at least it will be something to deal with.

We will see. Have a good afternoon!

Ups and Downs

I’ve had other media opportunities for Hurricane Baby come up in the past week–one on a statewide-syndicated radio talk show, another on a website I wrote some for while I was in grad school that focuses on women’s reinvention journeys. I’m still negotiating with the radio show so I’m not going to announce it yet. August seems like it’s going to be super-busy!

On the flip side, getting into the new point of view for my qork-in-progress is proving difficult. I pretty much know what I have to have happen to get the effect I want at the end of it. It’s the right voice I haven’t nailed. I have this character in the first section and the end section–in both places her interactions are mediated through another character’s consciousness. This section we’re hearing directly from her, and I have to decide how she’s going to react to events, going from one kind of person to another. I’m going to let things go downhill mostly, with three bounce-backs that later blow up in her face. I’ve been writing little microscenes when I think them up.

So I’m being a bit push-pulled with the writing–proud of how much attention Hurricane Baby is getting, but a nagging thought in the back of my mind that I want to finish this manuscript, Looking For Home, so there will be a future book being worked over and possibly sold while I’m promoting the other. We will see how it goes.

Off to write some more! Have a good week! Read a lot! Write a lot, too, if you’re so inclined!

New Podcast Episode

Soa few days ago I sat down with Shannon Evans, host of Tombigbee Tales, a podcast originating out of the Columbus MS area. We talked about how I got into writing, how I wrote Hurricane Baby, and how I wound up selling it to my publisher. So it was a good conversation in my head.

The tape told a little bit different story. I waited too long to answer questions, I used filler words like “um”, and I didn’t let the host set up the pace of the interview. Good points: I answered every question fully, and I wasn’t boring in telling my stories. So now I know what to continue to work on in future interviews–being quicker on the uptake with questions and speaking with authority.

So we will see how the next one goes! Here’s the link to last week’s podcast if you want to give it a listen:

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-jmfs3-163fdc4

Publicity Matters

So now I am starting to be in the thick of publicity/marketing/selling Hurricane Baby. I’ve identified several bookstores I want to do small events with. Bookstore events are tricky, because the bookstore orders a lot of product, and if you can’t muster up that many people to show up at the event, they can return those books and get their money back from your publisher. I am trying to do bookstore events in conjunction with other events around the state so the events will be joined in time. People could possibly go to my events then swing by the bookstore and buy the book. So that’s one angle.

Another angle is getting news outlets to cover my book. I made a couple of big asks such as sending info on my book to big names like NYT, WaPo, and Kirkus. But I am really working a lot of my personal contacts for interviews, book reviews, and other publicity opportunities–people I worked with when I was a freelancer, colleges I attended and worked for to participate in readings on those campuses, people I attended my MFA program with (who have been absolute rockstars in promoting my book) and word-of-mouth among the people I know.

Another marketing avenue is book festivals. I have about ten, all in the southeast, that I hope to be invited to where I can make some noise about my book. The Festival for the Book, Southern Literary Festival, etc. etc. Most of that is legwork I’ve done myself; others already have a connection to the publisher.

And working all these connections is outside of what my publisher is doing, such as shipping my book to reviewers, nominating me for book awards, and playing up posts about my book on social media. My motto for this whole endeavor has been to do everything I could to position my book for the best outcome possible–and that’s what I’m trying to do.