I took them to see this show at the library.

Libraries have pulled off an excellent rebrand and there is a lot for authors to learn from it.

The original library pitch was simple: we have the books you need. It was a transactional promise, come in, borrow, return, repeat.

And then bookstores multiplied and the internet made information free. That pitch stopped being enough. A library that only offered access to books was competing with a device in everyone’s pocket. So libraries changed the pitch entirely. They didn’t get better at lending books.

They got better at making people feel like they belonged.

Walk into a library now and the catalog is almost beside the point. There are children’s story hours, retiree programming, quiet working space, and community events like Pilim B’Chol HaTzvaim.

A library now sells identity before it sells inventory.

The psychology of a “third place” is behind the rebrand. A third place is somewhere that isn’t home and isn’t work, where people gather because the space reflects who they are. Do we go to book clubs because it’s the most efficient way to read books or get recommendations? Of course not. We join book clubs because of the wine, the people and, inherently, because it connects with who we are, or who we want to be. Identity is stickier than utility.

This is the exact rebrand available to authors, but most are still marketing like it’s the old library: here’s the plot, here’s the premise, here’s why you need it. Like my post, buy my book. That’s transactional value, and it competes with every other book making the same pitch.

A few ways to actually apply this to your author marketing efforts:

• Build a third place around your work. An Instagram page, a column for Zibby Media, a podcast - anything that gives readers a reason to show up as a group instead of consuming alone.

• Programming over promotion. Libraries don’t advertise “borrow this book”. They host. Authors can do the same: live Q&As, behind-the-scenes process content, discussion questions built by the community itself.

• Let readers self-label. Give your community a name or a shared identity marker. I am a proud historical fiction geek. If you give me a place to wear that proudly, I’m there with bells on.

Libraries didn’t respond to a crowded market by getting louder about the books they can lend you. They rebranded by becoming a place that offered belonging and identity. When I was shunned by the publishing industry as an Israeli author, my exact words to my husband were: if I am too Jewish or too Israeli for them, then I am going to find my people and be as Jewish and Israeli as I can possibly be.

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More than just a plot description, the title is some sort of contract with the reader. Read this book and you will get this.

Romance authors understand this. Readers pick up a romance novel knowing they’ll get chemistry and some sort of relationship complication. More than that, by definition and genre convention, true romance novels must end with a Happily Ever After (HEA) or a Happy For Now (HFN). There’s no gamble on whether the payoff arrives, only on how the author gets them there.

That certainty removes the exact anxiety that kills most purchase decisions, the nagging “will this be worth my time.” Once that risk is gone, readers relax into the experience instead of guarding against disappointment.

Understanding the psychology of expectancy and closure - the moment someone sees your cover, reads your blurb, or clips your category label - is critical for any author marketing their work. Readers form a schema, a mental shape of what the story will deliver. The whole challenge for an author is balance: Stray too far and break trust. Stick too close and it feels formulaic. The sweet spot is familiar structure, fresh execution that fulfils the schema, with just enough novelty that it doesn’t feel like a rerun.

This, of course, is a hard needle to thread and it’s what separates great books from the average.

For authors of any genre, this is the lesson: define your book’s implicit promise, and make it known before the sale, not only after.

A few ways to actually do that:

• Name the emotional payoff, not just the genre. “Historical fiction” tells a reader almost nothing about how they’ll feel at the end. Catharsis, justice, reunion, revelation. Whatever it is, pick the feeling you’re guaranteeing and say it plainly in your positioning.

• Let your cover and blurb sell the promise before the plot. Take that feeling and make sure it comes through in the artwork or illustration. This is psychologically more resonant than trying to convey the plot.

• Build this trust across all your books. Readers want to know what they’ll consistently get from you as an author and build repeat trust. My promise is dual timelines in some sort of race against time and secrets being revealed in a multi-generational family drama. The fact that I write historical fiction or Jewish literature is not the promise, it’s the category.

The sustained popularity of Romance as a genre shows us that consistency is a retention lever, not a creative cage. Know what you promise as an author, and make it the heart of your marketing strategy.

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This is a lesson in marketing for authors of all genres.

This is not only a cookbook about food. It’s the story of a Venezuelan woman marrying into a Persian Jewish culture she knew nothing about, and using the kitchen to figure it out and show she belongs. Every recipe gives her a bit more of a foothold in this new family and culture where she wants to fit in and prove herself. So while I do admittedly love Persian food, my husband devours this book as much for its deliciousness as the experience of following a character’s struggle to become fluent in a new language.

Authors, we need to be the character of our marketing story.

Some of my top-performing posts on Instagram and LinkedIn (podcasts and media appearances always perform, but they’re rare) are from day-to-day storytelling:

1. What I affectionately termed “the Goodreads miracle,” when 47 strangers wishlisted The Spoon and the Sea a few days after release. It blew my mind so much I went and asked ChatGPT if they could be AI bots.

2. A shoutout thanking all the friends I polled for cover color and font votes, including a tally of who I’d annoyed most with messages.

3. Admitting that I missed my March UK sales target because of the Iran war, and sharing a lovely stranger’s review from the UK as the small win I could hold onto instead.

4. The 6-month book anniversary, reflecting on going from “omg a stranger bought my book” to wanting to never lose sight of what it means to wake up most days to reviews from strangers (image below)

There’s a real temptation to market ourselves and our books as finished, polished products. But that goes against everything we know about character development. Nobody roots for a character with no arc. Tell readers when something isn’t working. Say when you’re excited about a plot hole you just fixed, or a podcast you just booked. Lift the curtain, from the idea to the writing to the selling and back again, and show the cooking as much as the finished dish.

I am in 7-8.

For the most part, it’s readers saying one of the following:

• I just finished Book X, loved it, what should I read next?

• I am in a reading slump, looking for a book that is X, Y or Z, what should I try?

• I am part way through Book X, does it get better? Should I continue?

As I write this, the most highly-discussed book club books are The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (lots of recs for the audiobook), The Correspondent by Victoria Evans and Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. In the Historical Fiction groups, it’s all about The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and The Alice Network by Kate Quinn.

The biggest mistake an author can make is to recommend their own book.

Book recommendations are a trust-based system, rooted in social exchange theory. While your book may indeed be exactly what they’re looking for, this is not where readers go to hear authors peddle their book. The self promotion grind is hard but this isn’t the place for it even if you’re being honest and upfront about the fact that you’re the author. It’s not that it’s wrong, it just psychologically will not work in your favor at scale.

Until The Spoon and the Sea takes off in these groups one day, I try to be like Ed Sheeran. He goes to busk with the people because he loves the craft. Above all else, he is a musician who loves music.

Writers, above all else, be readers. Join these groups to follow the zeitgeist and, most importantly, to recommend books you actually loved to read and help put them in the hands of people looking for it. Books and reading are a powerful form of goodwill that will come back, one day, in some way.

Want to show that you’re an author? First show that you’re a reader.

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While I would only use a proper human voice for a full audiobook (see my post about the Uncanny Valley), here are 3 things I learned about AI for audio:

1. It’s easier than you think, and the top solutions have a free version. Upload your text, pick a voice, and you have a sample almost immediately. I used an AI voiceover for my book promo on Canva, which auto-generates subtitles too (this is fine for short projects like a promo video). The hardest part is picking the right voice (gender, accent, age, tone). There are a lot of them, and it takes a few tries. But once you find one that fits, it moves fast.

2. It will butcher anything that isn’t an English word. For example, my book has a smattering of Yiddish words. Remember that AI narration reads what’s on the page, and if what’s on the page is “chutzpah” or “Shabbat”, it will do its best and its best will not be good. The fix is simple-ish. Before you upload, go through your manuscript and rewrite the tricky words phonetically in a separate script version e.g. “chutzpah” as “HOOTS-pah”, “Shabbat” as “sha-BAT.” The AI reads your script, not the word, so you’re just telling it what to hear. Some companies have a pronunciation dictionary feature if you have a lot of them and want a more permanent solution. It’s fiddly but fixable, don’t let it put you off.

3. Go for a quick win. Using AI for your whole book may seem daunting. There are smaller quick wins that AI can give e.g. a first chapter sample. It’s a great way for loyal readers and/or new audiences to get a taste of your book. A 10-minute audio sample does what a cover and a blurb can’t, it puts a reader inside the book. Put that perfect opening chapter you wrote as a hook for agents or publishers to good use.

And one bonus thought on AI narration more broadly: don’t think about it only in terms of speed and efficiency. Think about personalization which is a true unlock of AI. Some readers might prefer a woman’s voice, others want a British accent, and some might want both or neither. You don’t have to do the whole book to test this. A first chapter in two or three different voices costs almost nothing and can be a great way to engage readers.

If you’ve read this far, I popped my Canva AI-narrated promo video on Instagram and got approached by a publisher, leading to an offer.

Magic can happen, good luck!

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I get it but it doesn’t work, and there’s a better way.

(Quick caveat - I am pulling suggestions from my day job, Director of Marketing - Brand and Communications at a large AI tech company)

In the enterprise world, when a large company is assessing a new tool or capability like AI, they have three options: build it themselves, buy it, or partner with a vendor. The same build-buy-partner framework applies to marketing your book and none of it requires asking anyone to buy anything.

Build - Everything you know about your book that a reader doesn’t. Where the idea came from, the obstacle that almost stopped you finishing it, the character you had to kill off etc. These are gold and they make people want to read your book far more than being told or asked to buy it, even when it’s tongue in cheek. Books are a relational product, not a transactional one. So build content that pulls people toward the book the same way you wrote a story that brings people in.

Buy - full disclosure, I had the build and partner bits figured out before I wrote this but the buy section I brainstormed with AI. It helped me narrow down that I am not talking about buying with money, but with time and in ways that nobody can stop you from doing i.e. you don’t need to be invited or accepted to a podcast or a panel or a column spot, for example. Communities of your readers already exist and are open to anyone e.g. Facebook groups for historical fiction lovers. So buy eyeballs with your time and effort. Show up with recommendations (not your own book!!!), be genuinely useful, talk about books you love. Be a reader first.

Partner - Books aren’t competitive, rising tides raise all ships. If someone loves one book it doesn’t stop them buying yours. Readers who love one book in a genre are the most likely people to buy another. So find authors writing for a similar readership and propose something mutual e.g. a joint Zoom call or a shared newsletter feature. Worst case they don’t reply but unless you’re JK Rowling, you can benefit from someone else’s platform and they can benefit from yours. Most authors are looking for exactly the same thing.

The authors who sell the most books aren’t the ones posting “buy my book” the most. Build, buy, partner, and go for it. (Feel free to reach out to me, for example!)

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This is what it’s like to swim in lands of AI-generated writing e.g. LinkedIn.

Working in tech for a large AI company, LinkedIn is a big part of my job (where my sub-job is telling people to stop outsourcing their brain to AI for LinkedIn posts). It has become almost unreadable, because people who aren’t writers don’t seem to notice that everyone can tell when they asked ChatGPT “write me a linkedin post about blah blah AI trend”. Even if they remove the em-dashes and the “it’s not X it’s Y” sentences, it’s just off.

The State of Brand shared a brilliant essay on what they call The Great Flattening. The bottom line is that companies all use the same model, trained on the statistical average of everything ever written, which produces the statistical average right back at them. So everything that comes out of an AI model sounds exactly that - flat, like the average of everyone else’s voice.

Many authors blanche at the mention of AI. We’ve spent years building this muscle and we have been made to think that we are watching it dissolve and that even the mere mention of AI is unethical.

I think we need to learn how to have this conversation. The Uncanny Valley is very real. When readers want to curl up with a book, they want to enjoy it (not feel threatened or weirded out by it).

At work I need to scold people for writing on LinkedIn using AI. Luckily, Substack is filled with authors who don’t need to be told.

So the question doesn’t need to erupt and cause panic.

There are ways authors can use AI, not for writing:

Research. AI is a brilliant starting point and good at summarizing what’s known. But it hallucinates without proper prompting or a critical human eye so use it to cover ground quickly and then go cover some of it yourself.

Brainstorming. Let’s say you have a plot hole to fill, work with AI to throw ten resolutions at you. You’ll probably hate nine (or ten) of them. One of them might give you an idea and then go from there.

Marketing. Use it for visual and audio work (read my post on this). Work with AI to scour for book clubs that have picked books like yours, finding relevant communities etc. My email voice is second nature thanks to my tech job, but for some authors email outreach is less a comfort zone and AI can be helpful to at least get started.

Bottom line, AI is a problem for everyone who now thinks they can write.

For us, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.

Write the words of the book yourself and use AI for everything else.

This is a new section with AI x book marketing tidbits from my own experience. Subscribe to follow the conversation as I try to demystify the subject on everyone's mind.

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Have we seen this movie before?

Authorship has always evolved. Once it was revolutionary to revise your work. Then to research from books instead of the field. Then to Google instead of libraries. We didn’t stop being writers when we switched from ink to keyboards, or through any of the shifts along the way. AI is just the next frontier, maybe the biggest one in our lifetime, but it’s part of a long continuum, not a break from it.

How does AI fit into a collaborative creative process?

Sometimes I sit down knowing the emotional point of a scene, and that I want to start with a flashback. Don’t know what the flashback is yet though. I use AI to brainstorm. It’s like a lightning-fast, very eager intern who doesn’t mind being rejected. But deciding to start with a flashback, then linking it to a tiny visual detail from the chapter before, that’s still magic from little old humans.

What happens to voice when AI starts suggesting the next sentence?

AI still struggles with voice. Hands you something correct but hollow, a lot of the time. Brilliant for breaking a blank page but making a reader actually feel something? Not quite yet. Yet being the operative word, because the pace of innovation is mind-blowing and emotive storytelling may not be out of reach for long.

What’s an idea worth when AI can generate thousands?

We live in an era of infinite ideas. But I come from Israeli startup culture, where ideas are cheap because everyone has one, including your taxi driver. What matters isn’t the idea, it’s what you do with it. As The Social Network puts it, if you were the inventor of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook. JK Rowling wasn’t the only one with a story about a boy wizard. She wrote it first, wrote it well, and put it out there. Sorry if that sounds brutal.

When it comes to research, where does speed cut depth?

Fast research feels like having a tireless assistant riding the high of an all-nighter and a million Red Bulls. Want a legal case summarized in seconds? No problem. But the danger isn’t shallow research on the subject matter. It’s a shallow connection for the writer. When shortcuts get too easy we risk skipping the long winding paths that build emotional investment. That’s the part the reader actually feels, even if they only see the tip of the iceberg. Depth isn’t just in the facts you gather, it’s in how much you care while gathering them. Read my piece about Jodi Picoult that touches this subject.

How can AI help busy people find time to write?

Probably the most personal reason I’ve come to value AI. I’m a mother of 4 under 7, full-time job as a tech exec. I hate not finishing things I start. Writing, in that context, can feel like a project that haunts me at night. AI helps me move faster and fire on some cylinders when I need momentum. It doesn’t write for me, but it helps me start and keep moving, because it increases my chance of finishing. Plays at odds with point 5 sometimes, but I think it’s a balance worth pursuing.

This is a new section with AI x book marketing tidbits from my own experience. Subscribe to follow the conversation as I try to demystify the subject on everyone's mind.

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But I think the headline is wrong.

I don’t think Theo of Golden broke the rulebook. I think it is the rulebook of the new publishing world.

The Wall Street Journal’s logic is that this level of success usually follows a different route, manuscript to agent to publisher, and then some black magic happens and it becomes a hit. That was true, once upon a time. It still works, occasionally. But increasingly, you have to get in there and sell your own book.

Here’s the good news: no budget, however big, can fix a boring book, or make a stranger finish it and press it into a friend’s hands saying “you have to read this.” Word of mouth is still your best sales engine, and you can build it with patience and a shoestring budget.

This applies no matter which path you’re on. Maybe you’re signed by one of the Big Five, with a decent advance and strong launch-month sales that taper off fast. Maybe you’re with a boutique, author-friendly publisher doing real legwork on your behalf. Maybe you put your book on Amazon yourself. Distribution has changed and reach to readers has changed - both no longer gatekept by the traditional publishing infrastructure. The flipside is that you’re running a sales and marketing engine now, whether you signed up for it or not.

That’s publishing today, and it’s what the Wall Street Journal missed.

Theo of Golden sold 2.5 million-plus copies because the author’s niece did the tiresome, unglamorous, unpaid work: tracking platforms, contacting book clubs, treating every website visitor like a potential advocate. Those efforts compounded, to 3,000 copies, then enough people passed it along that it reached 125,000 copies in a single month, before any agent, before Oprah.

That’s not breaking the rules. This is what good - excellent, even - looks like, with the rulebook we’re all actually playing by now.

And it should be good news if you’ve felt the door close in traditional publishing, or felt let down by lackluster marketing from your publisher. Instead of watching with helpless frustration from the sidelines, technology and market shifts put the ball at your feet. The Theo of Golden playbook proves that a great book can find its readers.

So how do you stay motivated while you tinker and chip away, playing marketer when you’d rather be writing?

I keep coming back to something Kristin Hannah once said in a podcast interview (forgive me, I can’t remember which one, I’ve listened to so many). The Nightingale didn’t take off right away. It did fine, but it didn’t catch fire. Then one of her other books did well, and readers of that book discovered The Nightingale, and it became a phenomenon.

Your book doesn’t need a big marketing budget. It needs patience, conviction, and creativity. And if you wrote a book, you already have all three in spades.

Congrats to Allen Levi, and his niece, on the success, and on a beautiful book.