Rick Pascocello

• Rick Pascocello is a literary agent with the renowned Glass Literary Agency in New York City.
• He has over 25 years of book marketing experience, including time as the VP of Marketing and the Executive Director of Marketing at Penguin USA.

• https://www.benbellabooks.com/
• http://www.glassliterary.com/home
• http://www.penguin.com/

Glenn Yeffeth: Welcome to the Building Books Podcast. I'm Glenn Yeffeth, publisher of BenBella Books, and on this podcast we will talk about ideas, authors and how publishing really works. Welcome. I'm very excited to be speaking with Rick Pascocello. Rick's a double threat. Not only is he a literary agent with a renowned Glass Literary Agency, but he has 25 years of marketing experience, most recently as a VP of Marketing at Penguin Group USA, where he had a staff of 35 and a 25 million dollar budget, so he's seen a lot of big names, a lot of big books, and he's been around the block.

Glenn Yeffeth: I'm excited to learn from him in this podcast. We'll talk about the agenting, we'll talk about marketing, but before that, tell me about what attracted you to the publishing book industry.

Rick Pascocello: Well, I always was a fan of books since I was a kid. I think a lot of people who get into this business start that way, but I was also a big consumer of media, all types of media and news, and I slowly realized that books are part of the cultural conversation. I wanted to be a part of that. You can influence the culture if you work with books. I think that's a noble and also entertaining profession.

Glenn Yeffeth: How did you break into the profession?

Rick Pascocello: Well, let me back up, I actually wanted to be a journalist. When I got out of school, I found it was really super competitive to get into journalism, this was the early 90s, and I couldn't get a foothold in, so then I started looking at book publishers. The only thing I knew that publishers did was edit, so I'm gonna try to be an editor. Those jobs are also extremely competitive, even more so now.

Glenn Yeffeth: Yes, they are.

Rick Pascocello: Along the way, I started to talk to other people who knew my background and what I was interested in. They said "You should look into marketing," so I fell into marketing actually at Putnam Berkley, was my first job in 1992. They were a growing company at the time. I started there in the promotion department writing ad copy.

Rick Pascocello: Actually, I always tell people, I had a typewriter when I started, and part of my job was trafficking, which meant that someone would write a memo, would make copies of it, you would go around the office and put them in people's inboxes. That's how [crosstalk 00:02:39] it was and how quickly things have changed.

Glenn Yeffeth: I remember those days. It's just funny, what you said about being interested in editing and then ending in the marketing side. We have great editors and I love the editing, but I think marketing is the most exciting part of publishing. I noticed at BenBella, we've attracted people who wanted to get into publishing, and to them, that means editing.

Glenn Yeffeth: We were like "Well, we only have something open on the marketing side," and it turns out they love that. Marketing is just, compared to the editorial side, probably has more variety, more creativity, in some ways at least. There's just a lot to it.

Rick Pascocello: Oh, yeah. No, it was a blessing. I realized it right away, especially knowing how long and hard you have to work, even as an editor, just to get to work on things that you want to work on. Also, because of the experience and the diversity with working with all of these different books, and it was so creative, and you're right, the strategies are somewhat the same, I think, of what you want to do. I don't know how much those have changed. We'll probably get to that later.

Glenn Yeffeth: Yeah. I want to hear about that.

Rick Pascocello: It's more the tactics change so often, so it's always something new. I feel like you always get to put on your lab coat and experiment in this business.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, and it's changing. It's changing a lot faster than the world of editing is changing. Now what year did you join Penguin?

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, I left Putnam Berkley and I went over to HarperCollins for about a year and a half. To be honest, it was a shit show. People were fleeing left and right, but it was funny because it became an opportunity for me because I just kept picking up more and more work because, like, "Hey, can you handle this? Can you handle this?"

Glenn Yeffeth: Right. It's battlefield promotions.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah. It was such the wild west there, I remember. People were leaving so quickly. I had a small interior office. A big sales director left, they were replacing him, I just picked up and I remember I moved there to his office. Called my team and said, "Here I am now."

Glenn Yeffeth: That's great.

Rick Pascocello: It was getting a little crazy. This was before they really did a very thorough restructure, before Gene Friedman and all that time. Anyway, I got quoted to come back to Putnam Berkley right as they were being acquired by Penguin, or merging with Penguin, and it turned out that was a great opportunity. That company really exploded over the next 10 years.

Glenn Yeffeth: You were with Penguin for 17 years? Something like that?

Rick Pascocello: Well, yeah. With the other side of it, it was over 20, between Putnam Berkley, and then I left and came back.

Glenn Yeffeth: You've seen a lot of evolution, so how has marketing changed over the last 20-odd years?

Rick Pascocello: Yeah. That's where I was moving to before. As far as strategies, the number one thing that has always sold books is word of mouth, that has never changed, for as long as I've been in this business.

Glenn Yeffeth: I love hearing you say that. I've been preaching that for years.

Rick Pascocello: Well, it's true. Every tactic and activity that you use should be thought of with the realm of you're trying to instigate word of mouth. The number two tactic, which has probably diminished in effectiveness but is still the second best, is I saw it in a store, which means that retail remains extremely important, at least if you wanna break into the really mainstream book world, it can't just be a niche book online.

Glenn Yeffeth: The people that are saying retail is dead and it's all online, you don't think we're there?

Rick Pascocello: No. Actually, in books, it's probably more mature than in so many other industries. I mean, there's still [inaudible 00:06:18], it extracts from everything, it's always gonna push and you're always gonna fight, but look at the independent bookstores that are still around today.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, and they're booming.

Rick Pascocello: They're thriving. They're improving, the ones that are good are opening another location because they've figured out how to do that job really well in the space that they can operate. Whereas music and TV and film are still scrambling to figure out really what their model is, and retail is really dead for that. DVD is never coming back.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right. For a long time, publishers were looking at that model and were terrified that what happened to music, where all the money left, is gonna happen to them but really hasn't happened.

Rick Pascocello: No. I mean, things are changing, and one of the reasons we're talking, I've said this to a lot of people, is that a lot of the large big 5 houses, their models are moving away from risk and on smaller books that are on building, and that gives a lot of opportunity to small and independent publishers who wanna do their hard work of finding and growing and building off, so it's shifting. I think there's still a ton of opportunity.

Glenn Yeffeth: Yeah, absolutely. Amen. I think about, like in films, Disney, all they do is the big animated films and the big franchise films, and they're 25% of the film business now. It seems like the big publishers are going the same way where they want more sure things.

Rick Pascocello: Absolutely. Absolutely, but there are other companies that are coming in, like I say, to sweep in and take up those opportunities. I've seen it happen in all of the real genre fictions markets, first romance and now mystery. There's a few mystery-only publishers that have popped up, it's like Crooked Lane, for instance, who wasn't around a few years ago that just completely went in and took that market, which was still there, it just was maybe not big enough for some of the big 5's to still wanna play in.

Glenn Yeffeth: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so you said that two big things that maybe haven't gone away, haven't changed, word of mouth and retail observation, we're seeing it in the stores, so what has changed? What have there been in big evolution?

Rick Pascocello: Well, the really big thing that's changed is plus so much of discoveries happen when you're online that something as unsexy as metadata is probably more important to them, or one of the other things that publishers invest in and do in marketing, for instance, I hate to say this, that came out of there for advertising, for instance, is really not critical at all, at least until you have the wind at your back, you have a critical mass of attention on a book, but things like metadata and adjusting your metadata to things that happen either in the current climate or just to make sure that you're doing it correctly and optimizing correctly to be discovered are critical because that's how people have looked at it.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's two different things, one is getting your metadata right when you launch, but then you said changing it over time, so that means really keeping an eye on your full back list and looking at how many publishers do that well?

Rick Pascocello: Not many. They're all systematically looking for ways to do it better, and some of them do do it quite well. Explain this to people, it's like if you went through all the energy, you could get through the quote or the review, right, and you put it on the back of the cover printed, but then is it linked anywhere else in a digital world?

Glenn Yeffeth: Where you're selling half your books.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, you've lost the value of that book. Now, to their credit, I don't think any publisher misses that opportunity, but there are other things that [crosstalk 00:09:59].

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, but as something you like, as the Me Too movement rises, how do you tie in an older book that's so relevant to that topic?

Rick Pascocello: I just was talking with the publisher of Chicago Review Press, it's a mid-size independent publisher.

Glenn Yeffeth: Is it Cynthia?

Rick Pascocello: Yeah.

Glenn Yeffeth: Yeah, I know her well.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, you know?

Glenn Yeffeth: Yeah.

Rick Pascocello: I was saying, "You have all these social justice books, you have a lot of books that deal with feminism, have you gone back in and re-tagged them with Me Too?" She said, "No, that's a really good idea." I go, "That's the type of things."

Glenn Yeffeth: No, that's very smart. Metadata, metadata, right? I wanted to ask you about advertising because you mentioned that, and this is something that, as an independent publisher, always eluded me what was going on here. You see these big ads in the New York Times for books, I can't imagine that there are [inaudible 00:10:42] very good, so you may correct me and tell me I'm wrong, but if I'm not wrong, I would think there's so many good ways to spend money, why are you doing that? I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah. Again, it turns out that probably the things that work better aren't quite as sexy as those big ads. You often don't get the ROI on those, but they're great for impression, they're great for building a brand, when you have a brand big enough. What they're really good at is, I don't know if I even saw it, but I would advertise Fire and Fury like mad during that time. I don't know if I did it, and there were a lot of publishers who'd be like, "Well, we have all this media, we have all this going on"-

Glenn Yeffeth: I mean, it was hard to get away from that book.

Rick Pascocello: Oh, I know, but there's a moment in time when it wasn't, where there's a second tier of people who are just like, "Really? I haven't heard of this yet." You and I wouldn't believe it, but you have to understand, and publishers never get this, there's 350 million people in this country, so when you sold a million copies, you really didn't get to that venue.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right, that's a good point.

Rick Pascocello: That's when they could've turned that in my, I don't wanna dis them, they did a great job, believe me, and they had to chase it, but no, I think that could've been the Harry Potter of nonfiction if you kept it going for another few months. Maybe they realized they had squeezed it dry, so many people are gonna read it. I don't know. There's only a few runaways, they don't happen, but every year, you can't predict them, but when you get something up to a million, in my experience, you can get it to two million, and you can get it to three million.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's very interesting.

Rick Pascocello: You can get it to four million if it's really, really good. That, a really big publisher Random House has created that and those type of big publishers and other people, I think they forget that, how many more people are out there.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, and there's a velocity issue, too. I mean, I think about our book The China Study, I'd love to hear your opinion about this, I think we probably printed 5,000 when it started, that book grew every year, it's now well over two million copies, so can I sell four million or is that slow?

Rick Pascocello: Possibly.

Glenn Yeffeth: Maybe.

Rick Pascocello: Possibly. It's that moment-

Glenn Yeffeth: We're still selling close to a thousand a week.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I look back to a long time ago with the [inaudible 00:12:56] first book, which did really nicely in hard copy.

Glenn Yeffeth: Is that the Kite Runner?

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, it took about a year for the paperback to find its way and send it that time, in the 90s when that was, that was unheard of for a publisher to keep a book going for that long, right?

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, but they did.

Rick Pascocello: They did, and now that's a 10 or 20 whatever millions across the world, so there may be a moment in time for you to go and hit the hammer hard on that again because it's always been sell more of what's selling.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, and we've been working the cookbook angles, a new addition of the cookbook, so we're trying to build that brand over time. No, you're absolutely right. Now, wanna go back to what you said, so this is something that fascinates me, are you familiar with the black swan? To me, that describes publishing.

Glenn Yeffeth: You talked about these books, these rare books that just explode, and I do a little presentation where I look at all our profitability. We've done about 450 books, well, if you take out the top five, I don't think we have a business. That's how black swan it is, and for those who aren't familiar with black swan, black swan is basically saying there's a small number of data points, so whatever it is, that are whatever you're talking about, and I'm talking about, let's say, book sales, there's a small number of data points that dominate the whole pie, so it's the Harry Potters of the world, the 50 Shades of Grey, and I was thinking, is it just us as a little publisher? Now, a huge house will say, "Oh, we didn't have a 50 Shades of Grey book this season, so our profits are off."

Glenn Yeffeth: At every level, there's those rare books, so given that those are so impossible to predict, is it the job of marketing to figure out when they're happening versus spotting them upfront?

Rick Pascocello: It's some of both, and I think that now you're finding that also really good publishers are trying to identify even a big publisher, one or two major opportunities far, far out in advance that they can really stage an awareness campaign to build, and I'm gonna go back to the word of mouth thing now. By that, I mean if they have a debut fiction author, and I'll give you an example. This should be fine to be talking about it because it's really positive, when Random House did Lilac Girls a couple of years ago, and they've actually replicated this with another book this year, but they took the time, even though I think delaying the publication by a season should go out and get the reads on the book in advance, and by that I mean, and we used to do this, too, when I was at Penguin, you wanna get your influencers involved. Some of them, you wanna get them involved as early as possible, so for that I would mean maybe there's 10 or 12 real face makers, both in the book industry trade and maybe a couple of librarians that you know and maybe a few key media people, and they get a bound manuscript with a handwritten note from an editor saying, "You're really, really gonna like this."

Rick Pascocello: Then, a couple months later, you're printing up your bound manuscripts with just the typeface on the front, and then those are maybe going to 100 people that are also really important, but sort of the next tier that you wanna reach, right?

Glenn Yeffeth: Right.

Rick Pascocello: Then maybe another few months down the road, you're making a Galley with a cover on it, a color cover that has a little bit more deeper penetration, goes to more media, more bookstores, and even Goodreads or other type of consumer reader giveaways. By the time a book like Lilac Girls published, they had 3,000 pre-orders for it, so it's very, very difficult to do for a debut author that doesn't have any sort of platform like that, but you built it up through these face makers-

Glenn Yeffeth: They saw they had something special in that book.

Rick Pascocello: Right.

Glenn Yeffeth: You can't do that for every book, you have to really be selective.

Rick Pascocello: You have to give it a shot, right. They don't all work. We don't know the ones that they try that didn't work.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right, that's right.

Rick Pascocello: Hopefully they get one or two right a year, that's what they're banking on. You said what most publishers already said, we've published 10 books and one of them works.

Glenn Yeffeth: For us, if a book sells 10, 20,000 copies, we're very happy. We consider that worked, that's a successful book, but it's funny because the book that hits 20,000, sometimes will hit 100,000, and those are the rare ones that make everything-

Rick Pascocello: That's harder, I think, too, also to gauge. I mean, but you always want to have a feedback group where you're watching this and you're seeing what's happening, and if you got a little momentum, even if it's at a smaller scale, that's when it's really important to keep the marketing going, and that's when, maybe, I said about advertising, that's when it's possibly most effective, and also, the types of advertising that work better, things like even on Facebook, for instance, which aren't quite as glamorous as a big, glossy magazine [crosstalk 00:17:58].

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, but you can be much more niche.

Rick Pascocello: Yep, and you can spend a lot more efficiently. Those things do work, too, at least for right now. We'll see what happens when Facebook's cache starts to fall.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right. We do a lot of that, and we'll do boosting of an author's promotions because that's the exact target market for the right book. Let me actually talk about target marketing because when you say word of mouth, well, one of the things that, I talk about like a bonfire, all the work we do is kindling and those logs are word of mouth. If those logs are dry, it's a beautiful experience. If the logs are wet, it's very hard to make money on selling to the kindling.

Rick Pascocello: Right, right.

Glenn Yeffeth: Different logs are right for different people, so for 50 Shades of Grey, that's a wet log for me, so where is the role of, like you talk about, influencers and getting books out to the early readers, but that's all in the industry, but what about all the niche books? Let me back up and not try to lead you, what's your thought about finding the target market for the book and how you've thought about that at your previous work?

Rick Pascocello: Now, I think every book you have to start with an audience, and you have to separate somewhat fiction and nonfiction. You don't have to separate them a lot, but starting with fiction, that audience is a lot broader, so that whole effort is a lot different, but there are ways to find certain genre readers and there are tools that publishers use, Galley and Goodreads, and things like that, but the other thing is that, and I tell this to publicists a lot, one way of using social media is not, necessarily, that you're trying to do the broadcasting, but you're trying to do the connecting with that influencer, right?

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right. Especially Twitter is great for that.

Rick Pascocello: Exactly. The really good publicists that I see have developed a voice and relationships on Twitter where they're just authorities either about a type of book, which is really what I'm getting at with you, if you're a cookbook person or a gardening, or it's more niche like Keto, whatever, diversity fiction, they do it really well, so they find those people, they become the voice of that community and they talk about all books that are in that area, not just their own, right? Then, when the time comes, they're able to get the ask from somebody who's big in that area to talk about their book, as well. It's a way of, I think, using social more as the connecting part instead of really just the media part.

Glenn Yeffeth: No, that makes a lot of sense. One thing that seems to be more new is now the authors themselves have a lot more market power role to a publisher, and I think very often, when an author reaches out to someone on Twitter, they are gonna get a response than some anonymous publicist. What are you seeing about the balance between what the author ought to be doing and what the publisher ought to be doing these days in marketing?

Rick Pascocello: Well, you want the author to do as much as possible and you want to either, for them, support them and also to try to guide them, but the reality is that authors that are good on social have probably figured that out already. They don't have to do a lot of guidance for [crosstalk 00:21:20]. You're absolutely right. I mean, I'd hope that the list, too, I wish that more editors would try to do this because they have a vaulted status in this world when you're a publicist or a marketer too because they know we're selling. The editors, they are seen as at least more-

Glenn Yeffeth: More authentic.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, yeah. The writer is also the most authentic in a lot of cases, he's best able to get the ask, and I think you have to look at that almost case-by-base basis. Who's the best person to have this ask? I was just talking to somebody with a big, big best-selling author, I won't say, but I said, "You should have her send this package to so-and-so. Don't let it come from a publisher in this case," and it's somebody like, "Really? This is a big," I'm like, "Yeah. Everyone likes to know that their treated a little bit special once in a while."

Glenn Yeffeth: That's, right, that's right.

Rick Pascocello: That's a good way of doing it, still put her with [inaudible 00:22:11].

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right. I've seen that, when the author reaches out, even to media sometimes, they'll really like that, if it's the right person.

Rick Pascocello: It works very well for media a lot. I mean, other big organizations, they're just not equipped to handle that much volume, in a sense, but certainly on a lot of the niche publications and this more general media, and even some MPRS, especially your locals, a lot of people have good relationships there, and you know authors, they can do it themselves, too.

Glenn Yeffeth: One thing I hear from authors a lot, I even hear it from some agents, is that publishers don't do marketing anymore, or they aren't very good at marketing, or some combination of the two. Is that fair at all or is it just a misperception?

Rick Pascocello: It depends. It could be fair, could not. Like I said, a lot of the things that a publisher's doing are things that people don't really think about or think are that important, like making sure that all of that metadata is right and all of the distribution channels have it at the right time, and these things that I think other people probably take for granted that are super important, if you ever want to be really successful, is just simply a book can't run if it's out of stock. All of those things are-

Glenn Yeffeth: They don't think of that as marketing.

Rick Pascocello: Except that, and I just had this conversation with someone, if you're a marketing person, isn't in the feedback loop of operations and sales, it's pointless because they don't always know if they're out of stock or what's happening, or they have to tell you that a big hit is coming. It's shocking to me that some publishers, smaller ones, haven't closed that loop altogether.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right. I would think that's almost an advantage of a small publisher, is that everyone's talking.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, you would, but sometimes people forget. Then the other thing I think that marketers, good marketers, should do, like I said, is be able to prioritize, this is more of a company goal, but to prioritize and to get those shots and know how to galvanize attention for it for the longest period of time.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right. Part of the challenge in marketing, there's a million of them, but one of them is we know there's the box one, we know that 5% of your books, 10% of your books are gonna be worth all the rest, so you should focus on that one, in one sense, but on the other sense, every author expects and deserves to be treated with respect and their book given every chance, so there's a temptation to spread out your marketing like peanut butter across the books. How did you guys resolve that at Penguin?

Rick Pascocello: Well, this reality and perception is part of it, but the reality I was saying is if you do a lot of those basic things well, listen, the publisher wants to make money as much as the author, so if you do a lot of these basic things well and the author's doing their part and the book's responding, the publishers, absolutely the smart ones, are gonna go back and lay it on and help to try to sell more, but the reality is that at the start of the process, there are A, B's and C's, you know?

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, of course.

Rick Pascocello: There is a hierarchy, and yes, it's helpful to be realistic about that and it's also good to have good agents that push so that the squeaky wheel gets a bit more grease, but I try to balance, even with my own clients, between a realistic expectation because I don't want the publisher to spend a ton of money on something I know is not gonna work, which a lot of people would push, then it seems to push for the wrong things, where I sell them. Please make a lot of Galleys, please make sure the beta data's right, these are the things I want to really focus on first.

Glenn Yeffeth: The basics, the basics.

Rick Pascocello: Then a lot of authors, like we say, have platforms where they can do a lot of that lifting, and of course, then it'll seem like I did everything, but these other things, if they're connecting, the publisher's connecting them well and you're communicating all of this stuff with them, then you're gonna sell.

Glenn Yeffeth: Of course, the other side of it is that you have your A, B's and C's, but sometimes you've got a C that turns out to be an A+, and paying attention to that and realizing that's happening is key.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, I think most of the publishers are really good at that now. There's so much data and feedback on what's selling and how quickly it's selling. As a marketer, I always tell people your ad hoc way is just to bookmark movers and shakers and monitor that to see what medias affecting the sale of what book, but any big publisher has daily sales and other things they have to look at to see as popping or what's moving and knowing that what you're doing is working. If you're even on, as I simply started to say, like when we talk about Facebook ads, which are extremely important to keep monitoring and adjusting, then you can see if this thing is working, if the effect that you have is working and if you should be branching out further and trying to do more. On almost any level of marketing, if you know something's working, keep pushing.

Glenn Yeffeth: Now, do you see missed opportunities out there among publishers and what they could be doing, marketing wise, as things evolve?

Rick Pascocello: I just think that people forget about the basics, which is it's about a Galley, it's about getting people to read it. Frustrating now, there are, and I don't use it because I'm not on that side, but there's services like NetGalley and I know [inaudible 00:27:47] lets you post Galleys, digital Galleys, right?

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, we use all that.

Rick Pascocello: I go back to it when I had first started. If you wanted to blow out a book, you printed 5,000 ARC's, you send a bunch to EEA or ABA, or whatever, and you stuffed a bunch more in Jiffies and sent them all over the country, it cost $20,000, right?

Glenn Yeffeth: Right.

Rick Pascocello: Now you can actually put up a digital Galley and if you can get the word out and get people to pick it up, which is harder because it's not physical, but out of sight, out of mind, but you can do that all for relatively nothing, but it's not relatively nothing when you do the effort and the time to get people to read it. That's still gonna be more effective than some of the other things that you're doing. People, I think, sometimes forget.

Glenn Yeffeth: No, that makes a lot of sense. The way I think of it, we almost dodged the first wave, that first wave where eBooks were coming, and we thought, okay, this could drain all the money of the system, but it turns out sales were relatively flat, maybe went down a little bit, but probably actually went up for a lot of publishers because of the eBook margin and how that worked out. Do you see another wave coming? Do you worry about BNN?

Rick Pascocello: I always worry about BNN.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, we all do.

Rick Pascocello: Yes. Knock on wood, longer than I've either thought. When's that shoe gonna drop? No. Like I said, the positive thing, I think, is what's happening with the independence is the thing that is the fight for books is always really, at this point, fight for mind share with all the other entertainment options out there, and there are reasons to be encouraged. People say it seems as if teens are reading at a pretty good level, that that's suggests that the market will be there when they grow.

Rick Pascocello: Someone was asking me recently, it was about Spotify this week, if the books would go to a subscription model, and I think that would be horrible because it's not an all-you-can-eat type of category, you can't eat that much. There's not [crosstalk 00:29:51].

Glenn Yeffeth: Right. I mean, that really can't happen unless the publishers decide to do it, or somebody's gonna lose a lot of money trying to make it happen.

Rick Pascocello: Right, right, so I think that's an unfounded fear. I don't know. Unless there's something dramatic that happens with Amazon and the way that they promote and handle eBooks, I mean, they're gonna continue to inch up and take a little bit more, a little bit more, and I think everyone has to be diligent to fight for their own, but if all things remain somewhat stable, I don't have a big fear that we're gonna see another collapse, anything of grieving.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's good to hear. Let's say you sign a new author and they're two years away from having a manuscript ready, so it's early in the process, but they said, "Rick, I wanna build my platform so that I'm ready when my book comes out in three years," what would you tell them to do? What's most important?

Rick Pascocello: I don't make anybody start the platform until their finish their books, or at least most of it.

Glenn Yeffeth: Really? You don't advise them to start working on it early?

Rick Pascocello: No, because the book's more important.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right.

Rick Pascocello: Especially with new authors, sometimes get a little bit too excited about the marketing. I can tell them, their best marketing is to give me the best book. Other than that, once they do or once I feel comfortable or we've had a bit of a relationship for a while, like for fiction writers, I tell them the really simplest, and really, I guess it works for everything, but it works better for fiction, the simplest thing is to start building your brand on networks that are free, like Goodreads, which means all you do is go on there and start reviewing the books that you've read. The more books you have, the more your own name will be able to make it out there.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's a good idea.

Rick Pascocello: If you happen to have a social media platform that you use and you like and you feel that you're pretty good at, and that could change for different authors, nonfiction is probably more Twitter, just to be simplistic. Fiction is probably more Facebook, but then I would work with them on how to organically build that, and also, more importantly, to build those same relationships that I was saying-

Glenn Yeffeth: With those influencers?

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, the publicists. For writers, if they're not, sorry, lasting, for nonfiction writers, I tell them just keep writing and getting published, get your name in various articles, and they go, "Maybe you'll hit a black swan, maybe you'll get lucky and one of these will pop [crosstalk 00:32:22]."

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right, and go viral, that's right.

Rick Pascocello: That's the way a nonfiction writer, or really even fiction too, but mostly nonfiction, their writers platform.

Glenn Yeffeth: Yeah. What I was gonna say is for us, it's all nonfiction, so that's what I think about more. Very often, these are people with deep expertise, so they often have a Twitter following, or something like that, that's really based on their expertise, and that's always very positive when you're launching the book.

Rick Pascocello: Exactly. Like I said, if they have that, then work with them on a couple of those key things that I mentioned to help them make them stronger during that time.

Glenn Yeffeth: All right. Talk to me about the transition to becoming an agent. That had to be pretty dramatic.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, it was. My wife is also in the business, she's an editor, and she goes, "Hell do you wanna do that for?" I guess it goes back to probably what I said, is that getting into publishing, I always wanted to be closer to the books. I thought about editing, I used to write a lot and I used to be at different writing groups, so I felt like I wasn't afraid of trying to edit, that that, I think it's a big part of it, a little bit more than I even knew, because you have to get things a lot tighter now because the competitions tough, especially in fiction.

Rick Pascocello: The transition for me has been really, really fun because anybody at a Big House right now, I mean, we're all busy, and I get that, and every industry is busy, but because of just the realities of what's happened in the book publishing industry, there's just less people working there. They are busier, they're online. I said to somebody, until you get knocked off that treadmill of what you're doing every day, I was having a little bit of a harder time seeing the bigger picture, and once I got off, I saw it, and I think I had said this to you, I said I saw all of these smaller and independent publishers with a lot of opportunity and knowing that I was starting this on the ground floor, it's probably the people I'd be working with. I said to somebody, "If I get James Comey's book, I'd be really happy to sell it, but I don't know him and I'm not a professional."

Rick Pascocello: There's a lot of opportunity in the building phase, and that's still fun, it was for me as a marketer, it still is now. I've only been doing this a little over a year, so my books are just starting to hit market and now it's fun for me to be able to do both things. I used to tell the writers, I'm like, "There's not a publisher who's going to be able to BS me on this stuff. I know what every excuse is and I know what every vagueness means," and all these things, so I'll make sure [crosstalk 00:35:08].

Glenn Yeffeth: Now you can translate for the poor author about what the publisher's really saying. Oh, no, that's great. What kinds of writers are you looking for? What are you focused on?

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, I really was focused, initially, on nonfiction and things like business. I would say idea books and also narratives, and then what I found is the more projects, especially that I would seek out to try to put together, those take quite a bit of time. Novels come to you whole, so if you can find some that are good, that don't need a ton of work, I've been supplementing and doing that. I'm enjoying it, so I have a few [inaudible 00:35:47] writers who I'm really missing more in that area.

Rick Pascocello: It's a shame, my wife says, too, I had a whole career with romance. I know more about romance publishing than any male probably should, but it wouldn't be a business I would get into now mostly because I don't enjoy reading those books. It's not my thing, but I do still consult romance writers on marketing. I get it.

Glenn Yeffeth: No, I mean, I think that's one of the nice things about being an agent, honestly even for me as a publisher, if I don't wanna read it-

Rick Pascocello: You don't have to.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right. It's hard to get motivated to.

Rick Pascocello: That is really the beautiful thing. I occasionally will go after a project that you don't exactly love because maybe that has a relationship there that you wanna cultivate for somebody, whatever, but for the most part, no. It's funny, it's harder, it's also difficult, because some of the things I'm interested in are really liked, especially fiction wise, or not really as potentially viable, and I have to separate my taste from that too, but there's plenty of stuff. Like I said, I'm a big thriller fan and I've worked on a lot of thrillers in my career, so I love to try to find new thriller writers and work with them and build them up.

Glenn Yeffeth: What's wonderful about that genre is if you do have a hit, that it tends to have some sticking power, you have a series.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah. It's funny, I tell people when they ask me, "What are people looking for," and I say, "They all say they don't want the next girl book, but they still want the next girl book," in that genre. I say, "What's great is that you don't know when the next thing is gonna come. You can have a room full of quants trying to figure out what the next trend in fiction's gonna be and they would never figure it out.

Glenn Yeffeth: In the end, you have to go with your gut?

Rick Pascocello: You do, you do, and then you have to get somebody whose voice is resonating that a lot of other people think it's great, too. I think it's harder in genre now because, for me, what I've seen in fiction, a lot of the things that are breaking out are more literary, which is really nice to see because that's where I think a lot of the influence is, face makers are. There are a lot of those people still left in the genre world, but it might not be as prominent in the media world or even in the social world.

Glenn Yeffeth: It's funny, I grew up in the reading science fiction and it almost seems like it was a golden age. There was nothing in movies and television, now it's saturated with science fiction, but it doesn't seem like it's, on the books, any good.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, I guess because we need to be a superhero or something.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, right.

Rick Pascocello: It's interesting, I remember many years ago meeting the head of the DC Publishing here in New York, John Levitts, I believe his name was, and he was telling me one of the joys of working in that business was you got to work with all this great, fantastical content and all the parent company wanted you to do, not so easy, is pick me up a Wolverine every 10 years. I guess at that time that it was easy, but for DC or Marvel, they had to go to a machine that would say, "Okay, we'll get you a Wolverine every 10 years." They published hundreds of other things that were bizarre and [inaudible 00:39:02], so it is out there but it's like everything else, it's an all or nothing game. You have to be the top one in town.

Rick Pascocello: I've always found this interesting, some of the biggest things that have come out in books, in popular books, the things that have been runaways like Game of Thrones or 50 Shades are as genre as they come.

Glenn Yeffeth: Well, that's true.

Rick Pascocello: You have to remember, and I worked on Charlaine Harris's True Blood, and both of those [crosstalk 00:39:29].

Glenn Yeffeth: I love that series.

Rick Pascocello: Those got big before the TV shows. They blew up after the TV shows, but we still love that stuff, you know?

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, right.

Rick Pascocello: That's why it bothers me to see that some publishers seem to be shying away from these things, not all, because that's where the next one's gonna come from.

Glenn Yeffeth: Yeah. It's funny, seems to be there's the stuff that's really in the ghetto and then there's stuff that transcends.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah.

Glenn Yeffeth: How do you find writers? I've managed a lot of competition for good writers.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, and not a lot of competition for bad ones. It's funny, I asked the same question. When I started, they said, "Honestly, once you put up a shingle, they're gonna start coming because they find you." I always tell people like, "Oh, I wish as many people wanted to read a book as they wanted to write one." Mostly fiction comes that way.

Rick Pascocello: You do get a lot of unsolicited queries, but now what I find, and it's more interesting that I say this as part of work, is I try to find a project or think of a project, sometimes give base, sometimes it's writer based, I have a couple political thoughts on books that I'm working on right now that I'm trying to find the right writer for, seeing if they want to do it because I think it'll be right for the [crosstalk 00:40:47].

Glenn Yeffeth: That's gotta be really fun, where you conceptualize the-

Rick Pascocello: It is. Very creative. Yeah, yeah.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right.

Rick Pascocello: It's a little bit of both. Some of it's that push and some of it's just the incoming of what's warping in with their ideas.

Glenn Yeffeth: Now, a lot of the agents that I talk to, they also have to compete with self publishing, especially with an author with a big platform. They were like, "Well, why do I even need a publisher?" What's your view on the whole self publishing thing?

Rick Pascocello: Well, it's what I started with, which it said, and it's a bit of a conundrum, but if you wanna be a big commercial best-seller, you need retail. If you wanna be in retail, you have to be a big commercial best-seller, so you have this regular conundrum, but the thing is, you're not getting into Walmart as a self publisher unless you happen to be a Hugh Howie and maybe you've done a really excellent job of this one, because they just don't take it. Not that every book you wanna get at Walmart, but I think distribution's a big thing. I have a writer like this, he's self published a business book that he's done fairly well with and now he's getting interest from foreign publishers and he goes, "Now what do I do?"

Rick Pascocello: I'm like, "I'll try to help you with it, but if you happen to be lucky enough to do well, then you're screwed," because another thing is that most publishers don't wanna take those on anymore unless they were 50 Shades because they feel like, well, what sales gotten out of that? There really is a huge animosity between self pub and traditional pub, which is another kind of funny thing that, even when I was still working there, I really tried to bridge because it's almost like they ignore that it's there. It's there, and in some cases, it's eating your lunch, so you have to be aware of it.

Glenn Yeffeth: You're saying it's eating the traditional publisher's lunch?

Rick Pascocello: Yeah.

Glenn Yeffeth: Yeah. I mean, everyone has their own views on this. I mean, what I say, and when I give talks, whatever, and people ask me about self publishing, I like to say, it's an exaggeration but it's like every book is self published. The question is whether you're gonna do it all yourself or you're gonna partner with a publisher to take some of it off your plate, and they're gonna charge you a big chunk of the money to do that, and are they gonna add more value? You don't want to think about it as here's my book publisher, good luck with it, especially with a nonfiction.

Glenn Yeffeth: You wanna think through here's how I can make that book successful, here's why it's gonna win in the marketplace, now do I wanna hire you, publisher, to work with me on it because you're gonna add more value than you take, or am I gonna do it on my own?

Rick Pascocello: I think that's absolutely right. Actually, I've said this to a lot of writers, do you really like marketing? Do you like distribution? Do you like all those things, because all that stuff is really important.

Rick Pascocello: No career writer really wants to focus on anything other than the writing and the art. That's what I said before, it's usually debuts who have all these wonderful ideas and everything, and I'm like, "Slow down, slow down, let's get the book done first."

Glenn Yeffeth: I like successfully self-published books, if it wasn't like they didn't just mind their own audience and then it's done, if they're showing some traction. We have three of them like that where they had sold in the five figures, and now they're into the six figures with us, as published, and so I think the publisher can do some things, but also, those books probably would've continued having momentum on their own. There's a lot of things, retail being the biggest, but also some marketing perspectives and some professionalism, and that it's hard for an author to do, particularly when they're doing 10 other things as well. They're running a business, they're a doctor.

Rick Pascocello: What you see now, or at least I've seen, is that there's several authors, who are veteran authors, who have now almost started cooperatives of publishers where they have six or eight writers that they work with. They help to get their books ready, production wise, and all that other stuff, and then getting them out in the marketplace, Tucker Max, for instance, is a company that does this.

Glenn Yeffeth: [crosstalk 00:44:54] book and bucks.

Rick Pascocello: There's been all of these gaps in the market that have been filled with lots and lots of people providing services to help people with that. The other thing is, at the end of the day, there is no question, media takes a publisher of books more seriously and especially on the larger media. If you have aspirations of being more commercially successful, I don't think self publishing is usually the way to go. It's good to hear that you guys and some publishers are open to doing that because most of the ones here in New York, if they had self published, I usually had to hide it.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, right. It's a little hard to hide it, too. Yeah.

Rick Pascocello: I tell them, "Take it down," that way it's six months before you send it.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right. Well, it's only if it's success, and only if it has showing ongoing momentum, and then you're like, "Well, then they did a lot of work for you," because really, every book launch is a market test.

Rick Pascocello: Yes, exactly. That's exactly what it is. The market test was in hardcover and then, if it did really well, you'd print a million for paperback.

Glenn Yeffeth: Exactly. Now, it is a little controversial in terms of eBooks and royalty rights, and to me, the royalty structure, which, basically, I do the industry model unless we're doing a profit share, but it always seemed, to me, bizarre that the publishers are guessing about what the book is worth. If they're wrong and they overpay, then the author gets a big win, but if they're right, then author earns out, then that author is really subsidizing the ones that they were wrong about. The whole system just seems kind of bizarre. I mean, do you have any thoughts on that?

Rick Pascocello: Yeah, but I do think it's starting to change a little bit because publishers are, like I said, it's all or nothing, so they're offering a lot less on a lot of books so that the risk is already more with the author, it's even pushing more of it there, and some of them, the good ones, while they're doing that, may escalate royalties and [crosstalk 00:47:06].

Glenn Yeffeth: You're seeing more flexibility on royalty rights?

Rick Pascocello: On ones that can do it, ones that aren't bound legally not to, but yes, I am. Actually, now that I think of it, there have been creative ways that have worked with big 5.

Glenn Yeffeth: What do you mean bound legally not to?

Rick Pascocello: Agency pricing, things like that. It's some of the [crosstalk 00:47:23] to offer. I was just thinking about that, and I don't think that's actually the case. I don't think they have the issue with the author.

Glenn Yeffeth: Now, I thought some of the big houses had these most favored nation clauses in their contracts so that if they would have to match it, if they did, and that's gotta be paralyzing if that's true.

Rick Pascocello: I think that's still the case. Again, I've been out of that loop for a little while, and to be honest, I was just talking to somebody, they say as soon as you stop negotiating with Amazon for one year, you start the next year.

Glenn Yeffeth: That is correct.

Rick Pascocello: I don't know, my hunch is that not everyone, well, I know not everyone's negotiations are the same, but I think that clause is still in.

Glenn Yeffeth: What you have to pay Amazon is distinct from what you pay the authors. Obviously it's connected because you only have so much left over.

Rick Pascocello: When you say how they're doing, they pay it all, that's mostly what they're thinking about.

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, right. To some extent, I mean, I think about this, too, if we're moving to a world that's dominant by Amazon, I think nobody wants that, but if we do, and by dominant I mean it's 80% of the market, or something-

Rick Pascocello: What's it now? Two-thirds? I think it's 47.

Glenn Yeffeth: For us it's like 55 to 60%. In that world, one, I think marketing becomes more important because what you used to say to authors is, "Well, we do all this great stuff, but you need us for distribution," and if you don't really need me for distribution, that's only 20%, and you really need me for marketing, but a lot of publishers are not in good shape to say that because their reputation is they're not that good at marketing.

Rick Pascocello: Right.

Glenn Yeffeth: This is why you know marketing's a big focus for us and the other is cost structure. Amazon can continue squeezing, and they will, but they have to stop. If your cost structure is lower, they're gonna have to stop above you because I don't think they wanna put all the publishers out of business, because it's a lot of great leverageable business for a company like Amazon to be in.

Rick Pascocello: Exactly. Those margins are getting smaller and smaller, I was finding for this couple percentage. Go back to the independence and the printed books and the idea that this is, I forget, maybe 4 to 6% of the business, but a very influential 4 to 6% because that's part of that influencer group, that if you make something there, it starts to pop out to other areas in other markets.

Glenn Yeffeth: Maybe a little evidence of the importance of retail is you look at the Amazon imprints, I think they've done less well than people who are forecasting because they haven't been able to get into stores.

Rick Pascocello: I think it's still a real challenge for them, and it will be for a while, to really break anybody. You do see, occasionally, I think, some of the merchandisers like the big boxes, rather, like a Costco or something will carry some of those books, but you're rarely going to see them in any independent [crosstalk 00:50:24].

Glenn Yeffeth: Right, and you're not gonna see them in BN.

Rick Pascocello: No, that's for sure.

Glenn Yeffeth: Now, when you've got a book that you're excited about that you're bringing to market, do you view the publishers as having different sets of skills and expertise and you're trying to fit the book to that, or do you view them as kind of fungible and it's really about the money?

Rick Pascocello: I mean it's sort of both because if you don't have anybody who wants to buy it, then you don't have anybody.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right, right, but assuming you have competitors for that book.

Rick Pascocello: No, absolutely. Yeah, you certainly have, in your mind, who you would ideally think would be the best editor and publisher for a book, or maybe not always, but a lot of times, and to be honest, there are, more often than not, more than one, and [inaudible 00:51:09] to many. Again, I think the really good thing is that when I have a project, I can usually think about eight or 10 people and places that I think it would be good at and then you could even develop the list a little bit further, and sometimes be surprised in people I don't know and also elected. I think that there's a bit of both, but I think that, more often than not, I know I would sit down with Alex and with some of the other agents and literally say, "Who would be good for this?"

Rick Pascocello: That's really, really important. That's [crosstalk 00:51:41].

Glenn Yeffeth: When you're saying who would be good for this, are you saying who is likely to wanna buy it or are you saying who would do a great job if they published it?

Rick Pascocelloz: Yeah. Who would do a great job, who can publish it? Yeah. I mean, the other part has to [crosstalk 00:51:54].

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right, that's right, they have to want it. That's right.

Rick Pascocello: Yeah. It's disappointing. I mean, I've had books that I thought would be perfect for someone and I talked to them about it, but sometimes timing's in everything, so if it takes six months for the writer to write the book and that editor bought another book in that field, I've missed my shot.

Glenn Yeffeth: That's right, that's right.

Rick Pascocello: Then you go, "Okay, but there are other people that I thought would be good for this."

Glenn Yeffeth: All right. Well, it's always hard to predict the future, but what do you see is the trends? Where do you see publishing going?

Rick Pascocello: I'd like to think, because I always say that there's a pendulum swing, and you see it now with, I think, a lot of the best-selling fiction, is breaking out being certainly more diverse and targeting audiences that, if they were there, they weren't as visible 20 years ago. When I say the pendulum swing, I say that there's still a lot of growth for new, diverse voices in fiction, for sure. Prescriptive nonfiction doesn't seem to be really going away or suffering. I look at the best seller lists and a lot of the things that you do with health and wellness and cookbooks-

Glenn Yeffeth: There's a time when we said the Internet's gonna take all of that away.

Rick Pascocello: It didn't. It's interesting, it really didn't. If this was an alternate world and somehow everything was digital first, and then somebody invented paper later, I think we would've had the same excitement about that discovery because you'd be like, "Look! I can capitalize one thing, I can keep it in my hand, I can take it to the beach, it gets wet, it doesn't matter." It's very fascinating to me that it almost settled in the middle.

Glenn Yeffeth: It does seem like there's an equilibrium, yeah.

Rick Pascocello: About 50-50. Like I said, with kids, it seems in the younger generation, they like print anyways, so I don't think that it's gonna go away, but I also, getting into my science-fiction head, think that there'll be a delivery system one day where they just put a chip in your head and that's how you get the book or the audio.

Glenn Yeffeth: Amazon will be running ads on it.

Rick Pascocello: Exactly. Exactly. You think about something and Alexa delivers it.

Glenn Yeffeth: All right. Well, Rick, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Rick Pascocello: Well, thank you. This was great.

Glenn Yeffeth: All right, take care. Thank you for listening to the Building Books Podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you happen to listen to it, or share it on social media. If you're an author who would want to submit a proposal or pitch to BenBella Books, please go to BenBellaBooks.com, click on the For Perspective Authors button and that'll lead you through a little form that makes it real easy to submit to us. Thank you.