book promotion how-to | expert interviews author success stories
117 episodes listed below
Plainspoken book marketing for working authors.
Get Your Book Seen and Sold is a warm, author-focused guide to making books easier to find, pitch, promote, and sell. Claudine Wolk mixes Substack audio versions with relaxed interviews, keeping the advice plain, specific, and close to the realities of writing life.
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Get Your Book Seen and Sold approaches publishing and promotion from the author’s side of the desk. It assumes the listener may have a manuscript, a book already out, or a half-formed plan, and then tries to make the next move clearer. The tone is warm and practical. Claudine Wolk often begins with a personal frame, a seasonal note, or a small anecdote before turning toward the lesson. Some episodes are audio versions of Substack posts. Others are interviews with writers, authors, book marketers, and people who help authors think about voice, visibility, sales, and self-presentation. The advice tends to be concrete. BookBub gets explained through profiles, ebooks, featured deals, discount pricing, and reader discovery. Special sales are introduced as a way of thinking beyond bookstores. Podcasting, newsletters, voice acting, audiobooks, and author platforms appear as real options rather than abstract buzzwords. The show is also honest about the emotional side of promotion. Episodes with Marissa Polselli linger on personal branding, consistency, authenticity, and the discomfort of putting oneself forward. A holiday-stress conversation with Maureen Humple connects author work to family responsibilities, control, delegation, and the need to stop carrying every responsibility alone. The show does not stay narrowly technical. A reading about The Staircase and the Michael Peterson case follows one true-crime story across books, documentaries, series, and podcasts, using that fascination to think about how narratives mutate across media. That range gives the feed a lived-in quality. It can be a publishing checklist one week and a reflective essay the next. The throughline is visibility: how a book, an author, a voice, or a story gets noticed without losing its human texture. It suits listeners who want encouragement, but also want links between encouragement and action. The show’s best moments come when a guest offers a simple sentence that sounds obvious only after it has been said. Then the conversation circles back, repeats it, and turns it into something usable.
Made for: This show is for writers, self-published authors, traditionally published authors, and author-publishers who want practical promotion ideas without a hard-sell tone. It also suits listeners who need encouragement around visibility, consistency, and creative self-presentation.
What sets it apart: The show pairs step-by-step book promotion guidance with a personal, coaching-like interview style. It treats marketing tools, confidence, family pressure, and storytelling across media as connected parts of an author’s real working life.
Publishing and book marketing how-to with examples hosted by author and book marketer, Claudine Wolk. Includes interviews with authors who share their marketing successes. Marketing tips that get books seen and sold! claudinewolk.substack.com
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Claudine Wolk turns book promotion into practical business decisions about positioning, distribution, audience-building, and the author's responsibility for sustained sales.
Get Your Book Seen and Sold treats authorship as a working business, with Claudine Wolk asking guests to turn promotion advice into decisions an author can actually make.
A binder-clipped marketing list lands, and Claudine Wolk knows why you flinch.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear case for showing up as yourself and letting consistency do the rest.
Claudine Wolk guides this conversation toward practical self-marketing, drawing Marissa Polselli back to the career pivot she has discussed before and the steady way she has continued refining her work.
A New Year reflection that treats busyness as a problem, not a prize.
Claudine Wolk turns a New Year's Eve broadcast into a plainspoken reflection on a rough year, draining work, and the relief of building something that feels more fitting.
A holiday-season discussion about book promotion, shared family work, and learning to rely on one person less.
The episode folds holiday stress, book promotion, and family responsibility into a conversation that feels grounded in everyday pressure. Claudine Wolk revisits her talk with Maureen Humple from Stories and Strategies for Women, and the seasonal framing gives the discussion a…
A candid, practical talk about Substack, payment, and audience-building.
This piece treats Substack as a practical question: who gets paid, who gets seen, and what authors do with that tension. Claudine Wolk and Meg Alders stay on useful ground, talking through newsletters, paid subscriptions, affiliate pitches, and the frustration of making work…
A plainspoken reminder that authors own the daily work of promotion.
Sharon Woodhouse treats book promotion as steady work, not a burst of energy that ends when the launch week does. She is clear that agents are there to secure a good contract and advocate for the author, while publishers may promote a book or may not; the larger burden, she…
A practical look at revisiting a book, improving it, and getting it back into circulation.
Claudine Wolk keeps the conversation on the practical side of publishing: revisiting a book, bringing in an editor, and sorting out what self-publishing can do well and where it still falls short.
Odd questions, followed patiently down to the incentives.
Family grief, public questions, and the responsibilities of care.
This episode features an interview where Sharon Wagner discusses how a course on book marketing helped her successfully promote her award-winning book Genius.
The host introduces Holly Mitten to discuss StoryGraph as a tool for authors and readers, comparing it to Goodreads for tracking books and reading habits.
This episode segment introduces an interview with bestselling author and actress Isabel Gillies about her book 'Cozy', discussing her writing process and the author's experience interviewing her.
This episode segment introduces Sharon Woodhouse, author of 'The Profitable Author', discussing book marketing strategies and author business development.
This episode segment introduces Joe Walters, founder of Independent Book Review, to discuss book reviews, blurbs, and endorsements for authors seeking to market and sell their books.
This episode segment introduces Holly Moore, a graphic designer and children's book author, discussing the importance of professional graphics for book marketing and promotion.
The host introduces Holly Mitten, a publicist specializing in PR for authors and small businesses, discussing how PR can help expand their reach.
The host Claudine Wolk interviews author Julie Vick about using TikTok (BookTok) to promote her humor book, with Julie sharing her experiences and tips despite the book being released a few years ago.
This episode segment introduces Jane Friedman, an expert in publishing and author education with extensive industry experience and media recognition.
The host introduces author Julie Vick and discusses using BookTok and article writing for book promotion, with Julie sharing her current limited use of BookTok.
This segment introduces author Geraldine Donaher and her new YA novel 'Mouth Shut Head Down,' which addresses coercive control in children, as part of a podcast interview about her work and background.
This episode introduces Penelope Trunk to discuss honesty in writing and life, focusing on book publishing and marketing tips for authors.
This episode introduces Keith Kopka, a poet and professor, discussing his background and work in poetry, setting the stage for a conversation on marketing poetry books.
This episode segment introduces Maddie DelRimple, co-author of 'The Podcast Guest Playbook,' and discusses securing and delivering great podcast interviews for authors to promote their books.
This episode segment discusses the importance of book covers as a key element of book marketing, featuring an interview with book cover designer Rob Williams from I Love My Cover.
This episode segment introduces a follow-up interview with book marketing expert Sharon Castlen, focusing on distribution options and author challenges in publishing and selling books.
This episode introduces a tool for researching profitable keywords and categories on Amazon to market books effectively.
Host Claudine Wolk interviews Sharon Woodhouse, author of The Profitable Author, to discuss how authors can build profitable businesses through effective marketing and consulting services.
This episode features an interview with Meg Alders, author and Substack writer of The Romantic, where she and host Claudine Wolk discuss practical strategies for using Substack as an author to market books and analyze love stories.
In this episode, host Claudine Wolk continues her interview with author Meg Olders, discussing her Substack 'The Romantic' and her YA novel C.Smile, originally on Wattpad.
Promotion can feel strangely personal.
Claudine Wolk opens the show by welcoming listeners to Get Your Book Seen and Sold and pointing them to her Substack.
Claudine Wolk opens by treating the holiday season as a real pressure point for authors, especially moms.
Claudine Wolk interviews Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies, the founders of Witches of Pitches, about query letters, agent outreach, essays, and publishing choices.
Claudine Wolk interviews Mariah Fredericks, author of 16 books, about The Wharton Plot and its fictional investigation into David Graham Phillips's 1911 murder.
Geraldine Dunneher explains that plotting her second novel, "Mouth Shut, Head Down", on a story-structure map revealed that her antagonist disappeared between the opening and the climax.
Host Claudine Wolk interviews author and book shepherd Judith Bryles about marketing books and helping authors succeed.
Host Claudine Wolk interviews special sales guru Brian Judd about book marketing strategies, focusing on special sales outside bookstores.