Spotting and plotting

Learning from The Names campaign + a new email format

I thought I’d test out a new format for my newsletters. I won’t stick to this for every email (and definitely won’t be doing it for the next couple, which are planned or scheduled), but I thought I’d share:

• Spotting: Some kind of marketing something — either a campaign I’ve been watching or a marketing suggestion or marketing mindset tip.

• Plotting: What I’m currently working on.

• Currently I’m…: What I’m reading, watching, thinking about generally.

I hope you like it, and let’s see how it goes!

Spotting

Over the last few months, I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to work on a small element of The Names campaign. The Names is Florence Knapp’s fiction debut, it came out at the start of May, it’s a Sunday Times bestseller and it is WONDERFUL. I read it last year on my Kindle, and it was one of my favourite books of the year, so it’s been incredible to be involved.

This campaign has been one of those that shows how good publishing can be when every box is ticked, every opportunity explored. It’s been a joy to watch.

I haven’t been involved in 99% of this book! These aren’t takeaways from my work on this campaign! But I’ve been watching it on social media as anyone else could do, and I really encourage you to do this, too.

Some things I take away from what I’ve seen are:

• Start early. The book was published at the start of May 2025. I was sent a digital proof in July 2024, by which time personalised proofs (with the recipient’s name on it) had already gone out to authors and influencers. You don’t need to start as early as this but — starting early and building excitement is *always* a better idea than rushing things.

• Be consistent. I’ve been working on the social media activity for the book, and there has been something going up on publisher (and author) accounts at least once a week for months.

• Be clear. This book has a strong hook which is easy to explain. If your book doesn’t have this (YET), start thinking about what your one line pitch for the book is. Be clear why someone will want to read this book, and repeat that message.

• Have a strong visual identity. The book cover for The Names is stunning, and this look, and the internal images, have fed into all of the assets online and off. Your cover is your strongest visual asset, please don’t scrimp on it.

• Be creative. They hired three artists to decorate the windows of three indie bookshops with their interpretation of the story, and then documented it as they were painted. What a brilliant idea and so impactful. It also gave them another way to get bookshops involved in spreading the word on their social media channels. This isn’t something you can do as an author, but are there interesting collaborations you can look at in the real world to bring your book to life?

• Maximise impact. I don’t know what the campaign budget for this book was! As I said, I was involved in one little corner of it, but as far as I know they haven’t done a nationwide outdoor advertising campaign. What they DID do, which I loved, was hire three large posters sitting next to one another and run three connected ads next to one another as a triptych that ties back in to the ‘3 different names’ storyline. The impact of this is huge for people who come across it, the budget would have been much smaller than a nationwide campaign, and it gave the publisher (and the author) another thing to shout about on social media. How you can bring the activity you do offline into the online world to expand its reach?

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I know this is a big campaign with a strong budget, but please don’t reply to this to tell me the reasons you could never do any of these things.

Watching these big campaigns that are well outside of your budget / capabilities is still useful. Firstly, because they are far more visible than the smaller publisher campaigns, which might be about bookshop engagement or Amazon metadata, or elements you’ll never see in public.

But also because there is so much to learn. When you spot one (or an interesting campaign from an individual author), ask yourself ‘is there something I can learn from this to apply to my marketing here?’ Maybe there is only a tiny element you can implement. That’s fine! Test and learn and use the inspiration to continue growing and improving your marketing.

Question for you:

What marketing campaign have you been watching lately? What have you learned from it, and how can you apply it to your own marketing?

Plotting

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on creating some visual assets for an author, including a book trailer I’m incredibly happy with, and working on two author plans — one specifically for social media, and one for an author’s entire campaign. Fun!

I’m currently plotting a *giant* change to my work, which I’ll share more about later this week, but it’s involved a brand new Notion workspace (which is like a brand new notebook x10 for me), a lot of emails, and updating my website. More soon!

Currently I’m…

Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered upstairs and The Other Windrush downstairs. Finishing up the excellent BoyMum (non fiction, about parenting in the age of toxic masculinity) on my kindle.

Watching The Four Seasons on Netflix. Actually, technically I just finished watching this, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and now I’m not sure what to watch next.

Enjoying the last couple of weeks of my 100 days of tea and coffee project. Every day for MONTHS I have been painting or drawing or collaging something inspired by tea and coffee, and it’s been so fun, and I love these creative projects. I am both extremely ready for it to end and thinking about starting another one immediately.

Thinking about summer childcare. I have a spreadsheet and I’ll be using it and printing it out. One week the holiday club near us is shut! The other one only runs one of the days I need that week. Even the “after hours care” ends at 5. Our babysitter is away for most of the summer. Good times.

Looking forward to sharing some big news later this week. Watch this space!

What do you think?

Do you like the new format? Should I keep using this one? What would you add in?