290. Music Industry Tips for Book Marketing with Ari Rosenschein

Author and musician Ari Rosenschein is back to talk about the parallels between publishing and the music industry, and gives unique tips on how you can market your book!
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Check out Ari's website:
https://arirosenschein.com/

Follow Ari on Instagram:
https://arirosenschein.com/

Grab a copy of Ari's book, Dr. Z and Matty Take Telegraph:
https://amzn.to/3U2Xyty
About Dr. Z and Matty Take Telegraph:
It’s the late ’90s—the final days before smartphones and the internet changed the teenage landscape forever. Zack and his mother have moved from Tempe to Berkeley for a fresh start, leaving behind Zack’s father after a painful divorce. A natural athlete, Zack makes the water polo team which equals social acceptance at his new school. Yet he’s more drawn to Matthias, a rebellious skater on the fringes, who introduces him to punk rock, record stores, and the legendary Telegraph Avenue.

As their friendship intensifies, Matthias’s behavior reminds Zack of his absent dad, driving a wedge between him and his mother. Complicating matters is Zaylee, a senior who boosts Zack’s confidence but makes him question his new buddy, Matthias. Faced with all these changes, Zack learns that when life gets messy, he might have to become his own best friend.

Dr. Z and Matty Take Telegraph is about how a friendship can challenge who we are, how we fit in, and where we’re going.

About Ari:
Ari Rosenschein is a Seattle-based author who grew up in the Bay Area. Books and records were a source of childhood solace, leading Ari to a teaching career and decades of writing, recording, and performing music. Along the way, he earned a Grammy shortlist spot, landed film and TV placements, and co-wrote the 2006 John Lennon Songwriting Contest Song of the Year.

In his writing, Ari combines these twin passions. Coasting, his debut short story collection, was praised by Newfound Journal as “introducing us to new West Coast archetypes who follow the tradition of California Dreaming into the 21st century.” Award-winning author Jeff Zentner calls Rosenschein's young adult novel Dr. Z and Matty Take Telegraph "a keenly and compassionately observed coming-of-age story that glows with truth and yearning."

Ari holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch Los Angeles, and his work appears in Short Beasts, Drunk Monkeys, Noisey, Observer, PopMatters, The Big Takeover, KEXP, and elsewhere. He is Global Editorial Content Manager for Roland, helming the legendary musical instrument company's article platforms. Ari lives with his wife and dogs and enjoys the woods, rain, and coffee of his region.

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole-person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Author Ari Rosenschein is back, and we're going to be talking about everyone's favorite subject: marketing! But he has some unique insights that are going to help guide listeners through something that can easily feel overwhelming. This is, "Music Industry Tips for Book Marketing."

Jennia: Well, first, it is a pleasure to have you back. I'm so glad you're here!

Ari Rosenschein: I'm so glad to be back. Thank you for inviting me!

Jennia: Well, thank you for being open to the invitation! (laughs)

Jennia: So when did you first get started in the music industry?

Ari Rosenschein: It's funny, I started playing music—I'll say, semi professionally—at 15. I'd already been playing guitar and picking out U2 songs and sitting around singing to myself at home for a while. But I joined a band when I was 15 and we started playing in clubs in the Bay Area in California where I grew up. And throughout high school, I continued to play in bands. And by college I was playing in sort of more serious bands. And then it was in my twenties, when I moved to Los Angeles, that I kind of had a different shift in my career that, after many years, became more of a professional career, I guess you'd say.

Jennia: I think that's how most things go for most of us (laughs). It starts off with, "I enjoy this," and then, "All right, how can I make this a living?"

Ari Rosenschein: Absolutely. I always wanted to do music professionally, but I think I had this sort of fantasy that you would get signed by one record label and then they would put you on tour and you'd be playing for people all over the world. And what actually happened was I played in many bands and then I started co-writing with people as a member of bands. And then eventually, I started putting solo records out and some of those songs got used on television shows. And then I got a publishing deal based on some of the songs that I was writing with other people, and then another publishing deal, and it kind of kept—things kept happening to the point where I was able to create a career as a professional musician. Though, I'm not famous by any means. I tell people that I'm, like, "I've had songs you may have heard on lots of television shows, or in advertisements, or maybe a co-write with another artist that you might like, but I am not a name that that you would know" (both laugh). But—though I've been doing this continually for well over three decades, yeah.

Jennia: I mean, I'm already seeing some parallels here with the music industry and books with that whole thing, too, about, "My first book was going to become the next great American novel. I'm going to be signed by Simon and Schuster, whoever, and they'll give me a six-figure deal" (laughs).

Ari Rosenschein: It is so utterly similar, it's crazy. And, in fact, some of the things that I had to really kind of reconcile to with publishing when I entered the world of publishing was, I have to start from the beginning again—

Jennia: Ohh, yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: —in a certain way. I don't have years and years of doing this, and people I've opened for, and tours that I've been on, and music placements that I can fall back on. It was, like, "Well, I've written for these magazines, and this is what I've done, and there you go." But what I have found is that in writing, there is a benefit to being a debut author that I didn't realize people really—there's still sort of this magic fairy tale of, like, "The debut author you've never heard of before, and this book comes out—"

Jennia: Oh yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: "—and lights the world aflame." And then I've had to kind of dismantle that for myself, too, and just be like, "Hey, you know, I'm a writer. I can't stop doing this. I love doing this." And much like music, there will be many ups and downs. There will be books that maybe reach less people that I'm very proud of, books that reach more people that maybe don't have as much of a personal connection to me, but it's not really my choice. Once they get out in the world, they are the world's.

Jennia: That's so true. I mean, it's the same thing with music too.

Ari Rosenschein: It absolutely is. And you have to—at least I have to—kind of just be appreciative for every reader, right? And I'm just kind of realizing it's a different story for everybody. And, you know, the whole "don't compare yourself to other people," "comparison is the thief of joy" type of stuff.

Jennia: When you first started marketing your music, what did you do? Or what were the methods that worked the best for you?

Ari Rosenschein: It's funny, that's a really great question. In the old days, when I first started playing in high school and college, it was the era of flyering. We put up flyers—

Jennia: Ohh yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: —and physical demo tapes to venues that we wanted to play, and to the weekly newspapers, and the weekly music magazines—or monthly music magazines—sent stuff around. And, you know, as tools developed and the end—online music became sort of the norm. Like, there's so many different places you can send stuff. I can, in two minutes, I can send, an email with a tracker, like a PDF of a book—

Jennia: Mhm.

Ari Rosenschein: —to hundreds of different blogs and stuff like that. So I've kind of had to develop, you know, my understanding of the tools as they go in music. Those tools, you know, started with, at one point, it was MySpace. That was the thing. Everyone was loading songs up to MySpace, and it was all about, "How are those MySpace listens looking?" And then things evolved, and people started using platforms like Spotify, and now it's, like, you know, they're looking at Spotify and Bandcamp to see how those are doing. And it's the same with books. Every time there's an—I can't believe how much marketing technology I've had to learn putting books out independently. It's like making my way through IngramSpark. We talked about that on our last podcast (Jennia laughs), and then I use—And then trying to figure out BookBub, and then there's Book Funnel to help people get a downloadable PDF to, you know, a free giveaway that I'm doing. And then that, that has to link up to my Mailchimp. So the backend of Mailchimp needs to make sure that it's got—It's like there's a constantly evolving set of tools, and if you're not willing to learn those tools, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. So I've had to challenge myself with that.

Jennia: Mhm.

Ari Rosenschein: But I will say this, one thing, in terms of physical media, that has been really interesting, is I found myself kind of harkening back to the old days of the flyering cars and all that kind of stuff—

Jennia: Huh.

Ari Rosenschein: —Well, not cars. Like, I've been putting—I put—I had some sort of old first editions of my first book, Coasting, and I had a little bookmark for the new book, Dr. Z and Matty Take Telegraph. So I put the bookmark in those old books—and this is an idea that my wife had—and I put some of those in the little reading libraries—

Jennia: Ohh!

Ari Rosenschein: —in various neighborhoods. So I was kind of, like, "Wait, maybe this is like getting back to the old days of, like, physical marketing." Like, sent—putting something out in the universe, and maybe somebody will pick it up and find the book in that way.

Jennia: Mhm. I've heard of people doing that, too, with copies of their books. Like, maybe their leftover author copies, or their proofs, or something. Yeah. And I know that there is at least one of the Big Five does marketing campaigns that are similar to that. But this is also all fairly new where, yeah, they just go around and they pick different people to leave copies of the books in their little free libraries. And then they just take a picture of it.

Ari Rosenschein: That is so cool to hear that because this has been like a very kind of DIY project and I felt a little bashful at first. I was, like, "I don't know, like, I usually put books that I finished in there." I don't usually put my own books in there. But then once I got used to it, it kind of gave me that same feeling as when I started sending CDs and tapes around—

Jennia: Ah yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: —Like, in the early part of my music career, I was, like, "You know what?" It's like a ship—or not a ship in a bottle. A message in a bottle.

Jennia: Yeah, completely agree. So one of the things I want to talk about, too, is that we hear so much about author branding, and I think anyone who has ever been devoted to any particular band, or singer, or group realizes that branding is also a big deal in the music industry as well. But do you think—well, first, why do you think that this personal branding is important? But also, should it change depending on the medium that you're working in? So could you take, let's say, like, your musician persona and just copy and paste it over to your author persona?

Ari Rosenschein: These are really, really good questions.

Jennia: (laughs) Thank you!

Ari Rosenschein: I really appreciate that. I thought a lot about this, and I've attempted to sort of create some distinction between my music brand and my author brand. My music is under a different sort of project name at this point. It's under the name "Stahv," S-T-A-H-V. My solo records, back in the 2000s through 2012, 2013, were under the name Ari Schein. So it wasn't quite the same name as my author name, which is Ari Rosenschein—

Jennia: Mhm.

Ari Rosenschein: —But it's pretty easy to find and pretty interconnected. If people Google me, it all kind of comes up together. And what's interesting is even—there have been points where I've been like, "Wow, it would be nice to add some of the accolades of music type stuff to my author bio" or something like that. But I've tried to be tasteful about that and not try to lean too much on one or the other because I want the words to be taken seriously as they are and not look just kind of, like, "Hey, this is some person trying their hand at another thing and maybe I'll try a hand."

Jennia: Ahh, yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: —For me, it's, like, no, I put—these are both disciplines for me, and they're things that take . . . They're incredibly time consuming and obsessive passions of mine to write and to make music. And it's definitely not like I'm just jumping around from between different mediums. So I use different photos for my author photo and music type stuff. The bio is different. It lists some of my publication credits and a little bit about my book. And, actually, most sort of—the big, most profound difference is that I call myself an author now. For a long time, I called myself a writer because I am a writer by trade. I write about music and artists and stuff like that. So the biggest shift for me was making that shift to calling myself an author, somebody who has put books out. But on my site now, it is sort of—it takes you to an author page with all the stuff it says, "Author/Musician" And then there's a separate page that is a little bit less robust, frankly, at this time, for music type stuff. And I've kind of—I put my author brand forward, I think, a little bit in the last few years.

Jennia: Right, yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: I follow lots of authors and see the way they create sort of a persona. It's just themselves, but a little larger.

Jennia: That's an interesting take on it. But it makes sense, too, because we're not necessarily putting forth the whole person, but "vibe," I think, captures it perfectly. So we're picking maybe that vibe that our books give off, or at least the vibe that our most popular books give off and then matching that somehow. Or at least showing how it's complementary to what we're writing.

Ari Rosenschein: Absolutely. And I've been kind of lucky or maybe it's just the whole idea of "write what you know," is that both my books, they lean on pop culture and music in a way that is, if you know me, fairly on brand, I think just finding an authentic way to represent yourself, just be yourself, whatever that is. Some people are more buttoned up, and their author brand is more buttoned up, almost like a lecturer kind of aesthetic. Whatever your thing is, the more real you can be. I kind of aspire to be more real, actually (Jennia laughs).

Jennia: You seem very, very real. So you just feel very open and just who you are is who you are, even when we're interviewing.

Ari Rosenschein: I appreciate that.

Jennia: So you mentioned looking to other author accounts and sort of getting inspiration from that. Did you do that also with the music profiles that you put together or anything you did with music marketing?

Ari Rosenschein: Absolutely. I do. I mean, I'm definitely aware, especially when it comes to people using project names instead of using their own name. I'm always interested. "Okay. Ohh, so this band is actually really this person." For example, Illuminati Hotties is this really cool kind of indie pop band. One of our writers interviewed them for an article for work, and they are super creative, and it's really the brainchild of one person, but they give it a band name.

Jennia: Mmm.

Ari Rosenschein: —As authors, we don't have that luxury. It's really us. I guess our version of that would be using a pen name. Like, some authors will choose to put their romance under a pen name and then their literary fiction, or YA, under a different name. I'm trying to create some clarity. I want people to be able to find my book (both laugh), so I definitely don't want to put too many . . . There's already a little confusion. My name is Solomon Arye Rosenschein. It's a mouthful. There's a lot of music things I've done over the years that have that name listed.

Jennia: Mhm.

Ari Rosenschein: Ari Rosenschein is my author name, and it's also what I go by most commonly. So there's a lot of stuff with that. Then I had the solo records underneath Ari Schein. So there's some of that going around. So between those three, I already feel like I have enough . . .

Jennia: Right. There's a lot to juggle (laughs).

Ari Rosenschein: There's a lot of confusion—So I'm really trying to just keep it Ari Rosenschein as much as I can (laughs).

Jennia: At least the names are similar enough that you're not getting confused. Like, you know, someone says, "Steve," and you realize, "Oh, right, right, I'm Steve today. I should be responding to that."

Ari Rosenschein: Absolutely. No, it's mostly my grandmother called me Solomon and the people at the DMV (Jennia laughs). But other than that, it's been pretty much "Ari."

Jennia: Well, are there any marketing strategies that you can think of that are successful for music, but might not translate to book marketing?

Ari Rosenschein: Wow, that's a really, really neat one, because there's so many different corollaries. Like, for example, in music, there's the whole playlist thing. Make a playlist and then put your song on there somewhere to get people, maybe who are fans of the other bands, listening to the playlist, and then they discover you. I guess the author version of that would be a reading list. I would say that that can be powerful. I don't think it's—I don't know if it's as commonly used as, like, playlists. Playlists are pretty much the baseline for a lot of people marketing their music. And there's been so much back and forth—I was going to say promotional videos, sort of, like, you know, like the old school video—

Jennia: Oh yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: —Like, the MTV-style video. People make those sort of more on their own now and create, you know, music videos, but on a budget. And I feel like in publishing, it's a little bit more overt. It's like, "Are you a fan of this? Well, let me get your hands on my new book, The Prince and the, you know—"

Jennia: Right (laughs).

Ari Rosenschein: "—and the Ballerina. Part three." Or, "The Sci-Fi Saga. Part four." You know, it's—there's a little bit more genre identification. I think that in music, people are often . . . They're a little bit more hesitant to be grouped in with the genre. Though I am seeing some more savvy marketers in music who are like, "Are you a fan of The Cure, and Depeche Mode, and this band? Well, then check out my band." Like, they're being more overt—

Jennia: Oh really?

Ari Rosenschein: —Yeah! It's kind of newer, like—because in my day, it was really about being different—

Jennia: Yeah!

Ari Rosenschein: —And I feel like the words—the worlds with social media, especially TikTok marketing, the worlds of music and publishing are getting closer and closer. I mean, you know, for example, in music, you have gigs. In publishing, you have readings. Though I will say, bands tend to live off their gigs more than authors rely on readings. I feel like readings are important. They're important, but a lot of the action can still happen online, whereas bands seem to really do need to get out there and play.

Jennia: Yeah. Even just thinking then, about audience engagement, and how do those differ? Because, like, with the gigs then, for instance, I'd imagine you're really looking for in-person audience engagement to pull people in. Not so much that distanced audience engagement that we can use with mostly online marketing for books.

Ari Rosenschein: In music, there is that sort of, "Get on the road and do that," where I think that authors are used to sort of, "It's really one person, one book." It's a little bit more of a slow-moving thing. And then, of course, with Amazon, and once you start harnessing Amazon ads and Facebook ads, which I have not yet done. But I know many people are very successful with that. That becomes that bigger audience the same way you would in a concert.

Jennia: I think there's almost, too, like a different energy to each of these venues and these experiences, and that probably also leads in a different way to creating fans and then leading to that purchase of merchandise. So I know they've done studies before on that, like, almost group effect of being in a crowd, not necessarily at a concert, but, like, at a sports event or something of the—similar, where it's just, like, this build up of energy and excitement, that it's not just yours, but that you're feeding off all these other people. Whereas at a book reading, it tends to be very quiet and reserved. You're not really participating. Because even when we're at a concert and say we're jumping up and down, or we're screaming out the lyrics, that still feels participatory in a way, rather than passive listening.

Ari Rosenschein: I haven't been to very many rowdy readings (Jennia laughs). They tend to be kind of calm and sort of internal.

Jennia: Right. Unless it's, like, preschool storytime with a library. Those are pretty rowdy.

Ari Rosenschein: Those get rowdy. The difference is little kids.

Jennia: Yes. They don't really have any spending money, so.

Ari Rosenschein: Yes! That's actually something really interesting I found. For a YA book, bookstores have a different—some bookstores just flat out don't do YA readings. Unless, of course—

Jennia: Oh!

Ari Rosenschein: —I'm sure if it was a really big author. But a lot of them have just sort of decided it's just not a crowd that's gonna buy a lot of books. Whereas, like, you know, cooking books and stuff with a more mature audience, an older audience, I think is just a better bet. It's different with a YA book, and that's been something I've been learning. Like, just, like with music, every time out is a different . . . it's a different product and a different market. It's always evolving, you know?

Jennia: Mhm. That really seems to be the main message that is being carried through this whole conversation, is that adaptability and knowing that things change. And even if we read articles about the psychology of marketing, we're seeing that our brains cannot keep up with the level of information—marketing information that's being given to us all at one time. So then you have the added difficulty of, "Okay, well, how do I break through that? And how do I not just add to the noise?"

Ari Rosenschein: You just nailed it. It's so much information. Now, how does anybody make a choice?

Jennia: Mhm. Well, do you think that your background in music and already knowing some of these marketing techniques has given you sort of a leg up when it comes to other people who are brand new to marketing?

Ari Rosenschein: I think it has. I think I'm used to packaging myself for gigs, for festival performances, even, gosh, for press. Like, I'm used to creating a little pitch. And wh—I just kind of had to get my head around what is required in the publishing world. The way query letters look, the way advanced reading copies work, sort of the machinations of publishing. That's what I've had to learn. But I think the basic concept of packaging myself into something, or packaging the book into something that people can kind of understand. Like, "Okay, this is a 90s book set in the 90s. It's about two skaters. It's a coming of age story." Kind of give them the ballpark really quick. That stuff I think I've learned from music. Like, people don't have very much time. They just want to know what you're doing. And if they're interested in it, they will pursue it further. And if they're not interested in it, they're not for you (both laugh).

Jennia: What about direct responses? So your personal direct responses to readers versus maybe how you would respond to someone who's a fan of your music? Do those also differ or were you given any guidance on how to approach that?

Ari Rosenschein: It's funny, a lot of—I've had some, you know, direct messages, or emails, or texts from people who've completed the book. And I would say it's very moving when somebody tells me that they've finished the book and it meant so much to them, or I read their review. Like, when I read these things, it's very moving to me, and I don't get that same . . . You don't spend as long with a listener. They don't spend as long with your music. So there isn't—and they don't really have a forum to write a review quite like that. It's just not like that on Spotify. People aren't dropping reviews on Spotify (both laugh).

Jennia: Yeah, what I can think of is like the YouTube comments, maybe under the video—

Ari Rosenschein: YouTube is the closest.

Jennia: —"Wow! Excellent video. Will listen again."

Ari Rosenschein: Yeah, "Will listen again *heart, heart, heart* This is fire!" (Jennia laughs). But, like, whereas with books, people get really—they really want you to know—And I do the same thing when I write my reviews for books. I'm, like, I keep—in the back of my head, I'm, like, "Oh, I really hope that Walter Mosley, I hope he reads this review because I really love this book. Or I hope that Kathleen Glasgow reads this review because I really want her to see this." And I think there's a little bit of that. It's like you're sending them a little letter, a little message. So, yeah, it's a lot more personal, the conversations that I have with people and a lot more meaningful.

Jennia: Yeah, I was thinking, too, just as you were talking about how, like, in any relationship where we give a certain amount and we expect to receive close to that or equal in return. And it's sort of the same way with some of these author-reader interactions versus musician . . . I don't even know what we'd call them, YouTube-rater (laughs) relationships. You know, all I have to do is like your comment versus someone does write, let's say, like, [a] 500 word review and talk talks about how, "This moved me. It changed my life. It helped me with x, y, or z." That maybe we should put a little more thought into our reply to them than just a like.

Ari Rosenschein: I totally agree. Books have a way of sticking with us. Even books I don't remember exactly what the plot was, they become part of my life memory.

Jennia: Yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: They stick with you.

Jennia: Well, that is so well said. Well, for our final question, do you have one main marketing technique that you would recommend that you borrowed from the music industry?

Ari Rosenschein: I would say in music . . .  packaging and having a well-curated pitch, that is something I've definitely borrowed. You know, the book cover, a picture of the author, a really pithy description at the front, then a longer one. Make it very—Making it very easy for people to get the information they need. I always—I attach PDFs in both formats, no matter what—They take up so little space—

Jennia: Yeah.

Ari Rosenschein: —you know, having like a—Like, it doesn't hurt anybody to have—you know, if they don't want it, no problem. But I try to make things as accessible and simple for people as possible. Because people are so busy, especially podcasters, reviewers. Like, people just want to get the stuff. Don't make people hunt for it. So that's been something I've learned from music, is to try to put everything out as simply as possible and make it accessible.

Jennia: Fantastic advice!

Jennia: Well, thank you again for being back on the show. It's been great.

Ari Rosenschein: Yes, I appreciate you. Thanks again for having me!

Jennia: Thank you for listening! And be sure to check out this show notes for additional information. And please join me next week when Ava Morgyn visits to share how she writes about family secrets, but also why readers can't get enough of them. Thanks again!