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What’s the story you can’t stop telling? Fran and Bethany are here to help you write, sell, and launch it.
Literary agent Bethany Saltman and bookstore owner Fran Hauser—also both critically acclaimed authors—host Bookbound, the podcast for non-fiction writers who want to learn how to transform their ideas, expertise, and obsessions into successful books and publishing deals. Fran and Bethany interview accomplished authors who share the strategies and surprises behind their bookbound journeys. These how-I-did-it conversations will inspire listeners to claim their own “author-ity” mindset and turn the story they can’t stop telling into a book the world needs to read.
To connect with the hosts and more, go to www.bookboundpodcast.com/
Julie Satow [00:00:00]:
I also, like really doubled down onto digital marketing. I think that honestly made the biggest difference. So I started doing these little videos and then I paid to boost them on social media, on Facebook and Instagram, basically. And I really think that that helped get the word out about the book beforehand.
Bethany Saltman [00:00:21]:
My name is Bethany Saltman and I am an author and a best selling book coach.
Fran Hauser [00:00:26]:
And I'm Fran Hauser. I'm an author, a keynote speaker, and a publishing strategist. These how I did it conversations will inspire listeners to claim their own authority mindset and turn the story they can't stop telling into a book the world needs to read.
Bethany Saltman [00:00:42]:
This is Bookbound, the podcast created in partnership with share your genius. Julie Satow is an award winning author and journalist. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and her work has been featured on NPR, Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Newsweek, Travel and Leisure, and more. She also co-hosts her own podcast, How Books Work. When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion, Julie outlines a glittering portrait of the golden age of american department stores and the three visionary women who led them. This was an incredible book. I absolutely, absolutely loved it. And it's a New York Times bestseller.
Bethany Saltman [00:01:24]:
One of the most amazing things about this episode is that Julie talked to us about how she did her own kind of guerrilla marketing by doing videos on her instagram and boosting them on Instagram and Facebook. And she thinks that that really contributes to the success of her book and even to landing on the list. So this is something that I think all of us authors will really enjoy learning about. I hope you enjoy. Hey, Julie, we are so excited to talk to you about your incredible book When Women Ran Fifth Avenue. It's a long title. I'm going to say the whole thing, Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion. Welcome to Bookbound.
Julie Satow [00:02:04]:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
Bethany Saltman [00:02:07]:
And your book looks great back there.
Julie Satow [00:02:08]:
It's a little last minute change a roo.
Bethany Saltman [00:02:10]:
We love it. We love last minute. So we begin most of our conversations asking our writers this question, how did you know that this was a book and not just a personal obsession?
Julie Satow [00:02:24]:
I should say that the premise of your question does not completely, is that totally relevant for me? Because I see myself very much as a working reporter. So I wouldn't say that any of my topics are like personal obsessions. They're things that, you know, I'm interested in. I'm intrigued by, I feel like are rich and deep to explore, but it's not like you know, I've always been obsessed with, you know, fashion and department stores or even, like, for my first book, the Plaza Hotel, it was more like, oh, this is a really interesting topic. I feel like I can say something about, you know, so in my case, that tends to be the truth.
Fran Hauser [00:03:10]:
I was just looking at your. I think it was the afterword, perhaps, in the book where you talked about the research that, you know, that went into the book and, like, visiting these women's hometowns and how, you know, there wasn't a ton of archival material, even for you to kind of go through. So tell us a little bit about that.
Julie Satow [00:03:31]:
So, obviously, the book is about, you know, three women, and it spans the 1930s roughly to the 1980s through the 20th century, you know, and I kind of see it as the. The re narratives. It's the narrative of the history of the department store in the 20th century. It's the story of these three women. And then it sort of morphed during my project into the history of women in work in the 20th century. So it's sort of like three different narratives, which is how I kind of broadened it out, because, yes, if I had just exclusively focused only on their three lives, I think it would have been narrow and it probably would have been 150 pages. It had to be more than. That was not a ton of material.
Julie Satow [00:04:15]:
I wasn't exactly sure what I could get. You know, when I wrote the proposal, I had done, you know, obviously, like, a clip search and look through, like, newspaper articles. And one of the women, Dorothy Shaver, is probably the most famous during her lifetime. So she had quite a number of articles that I could use, you know, in the forties and fifties. And the first woman had an autobiography, which, as I got closer into it, I realized Washington, largely false, but she had that. And then the most recent woman, Geraldine Stutz, died in 2005. So I was able to do, like, just regular reporting and interview people who had worked for her. So I sort of had those three kind of, like, buckets I knew about.
Julie Satow [00:04:57]:
But Hortense is from St. George, Utah, and I did go to St. George. Her grandparents were, like, early converts to Mormonism. So they followed Brigham Young from Europe, and they were, like, some of the first white settlers in Utah. And so Mormons are very interested in their genealogy. They keep very deep records. They had, like, a pioneer museum in St.
Julie Satow [00:05:21]:
George, rather, in her town with, like, all these records of, like, her family. So that was great. Dorothy. I hired a genealogist, actually, to help me, which was amazing, because he discovered, like, a great niece who lived in Maryland who was like, come on down. I have a basement filled with materials, which was, you know, like manna for heaven. And then, yeah, Dorothy, I did a lot of the interviews, as I mentioned.
Bethany Saltman [00:05:46]:
So interesting. So one of the things I'm really curious about, we work with women writers, nonfiction writers, and, you know, this idea of the organizing principle, like, how you pull everything together, is something that brings up a lot of angst. And people. People have no idea how much iteration goes into organizing your book, especially when you have material like what you have. So as I was reading the book and delighting in it, I sort of observed to myself, when you read a book, you just imagine that it's always been like this. It's the perfect organization for this book. You've got the big ideas. You plug in with all these other women's stories with different font, which I'd love to talk about, but I know enough to know that there was a lot that went into that.
Bethany Saltman [00:06:36]:
So if you could walk us through the iterations, that could be really fun.
Julie Satow [00:06:41]:
It was hard. I was a little insecure about the length because I was worried about, you know, their three lies and how that would work. But I felt like there were all these other stories that were not exactly relevant to, like, those three narratives, but were very important in terms of, like, painting a picture of the world and understanding other aspects that I couldn't quite figure out how to, like, weave into the main narrative without it feeling like I was going off on some weird tangent or something. And they were, like, kind of discreet stories unto themselves. So the first one I found was, I found this, like, this story about this woman in 1906 in San Francisco who was, like, a dust girl, and she wrote this, like, essay about her career for this magazine in, like, 1917. Okay? And it was like, basically, the department store is the most amazing place to have a career. I started out as, like, this young twelve year old working as dusting China in this big department store in San Francisco. And now, look, I'm in my twenties.
Julie Satow [00:07:46]:
It's 1917. I go to Europe several times a year as a buyer. I have made enough money that I've actually moved my family out of, like, a tenement in the mission district to across the bay in a beautiful home. Like, look at how amazing this is. And I was like, oh, my gosh, that is such an illustrative story of the power of the department store in terms of, like, career development for women and this sort of unknown aspect of, you know, this industry. So I pitched it to my editors being like, can I just, like, write this as its own thing? I feel like it's not relevant to any of the three women per se, but it totally is relevant. Like, what do you think? And they were like, yeah, like, try it. Let's see how it goes.
Julie Satow [00:08:29]:
As I found those kind of stories, like, I just started writing them as vignettes. I called them, like, to intersperse within the. In the narrative. But the organization was very hard, because then I have three women, you know, and their own timelines. Plus I have these, like, vignettes, and trying to figure out how to make that work, obviously, like, chronology was, like, the overarching, organizing principle. But I. Weaving the three stories and the vignettes. I mean, I have read the Goodreads critiques, and some of them, you know, find it a little confusing, and I get that.
Julie Satow [00:09:07]:
I hope others don't.
Fran Hauser [00:09:08]:
Well, and there's also the extra layer of the imagery, like, having the photos. I love the photos. I love looking through the photos. So how involved were you with that process of, like, you know, where the photos get placed and, like, the design? Or did you really kind of just leave that to the designers?
Julie Satow [00:09:30]:
I had to, you know, pay for all the photos out of my advance. I had to find all the photos. I had to get all the rights to all the photos. I had to do all of that. That was all on me. Just like fact checking is all on me, you know, I had to hire a fact checker. I mean, that's how it works, you know, with narrative nonfiction, it's all really your responsibility as the author. So you get this great advance, which is amazing, but you have a lot of things you have to pay for yourself in terms of making the book what it is.
Julie Satow [00:10:00]:
I believe very intensely on having an amazing fact checker, which I really could not do my work without. It was really hard to get permissions. I could not get permissions for a lot of images that I really wanted to use. I have, I think, like, 77 photos in there, which is a lot. Some were given to me by family, things like that. A lot of them were from archives or Getty. And in terms of, like, where I place them, you know, some were reflective of what was happening in the story. So I was like, oh, I guess when I got my first pass back or second pass, I'm not sure which one had the images in there, the colored ones, I knew I wanted to use for the insert, and I was given one insert, which I was really excited about, so I saved all of those for the insert.
Julie Satow [00:10:46]:
And then the designer did come back with the pass, with the images laid out on the page. But sometimes they were correct, and sometimes they were incorrect.
Fran Hauser [00:10:55]:
I'm curious, when you wrote the proposal for this book, in thinking about, like, where does the book sit on the shelf, like, from a comps perspective. Right. Because we talk about, again, in our accelerator, we talk with writers about how agents and publishers love books that are in a very active category. People are buying these types of books. But then your book also has to stand out. Right. It needs to be fresh. It needs to be different.
Fran Hauser [00:11:24]:
How did you think about the comps and the market positioning of this book?
Julie Satow [00:11:28]:
It was definitely positioned as sort of a code girls kind of, you know, untold women's history thing. It's hard for these books because the women aren't famous, as I mentioned. Like, none of them had biographies written about them before. So you kind of have a leg up if you do, like, a Kennedy woman or, you know, someone who is known in the culture. You know, Carolyn is just. Her book just came out, so I was thinking about that or those things. You have a bit of a leg up because you have a built in, like, you know, audience that knows about them. But it was positioned as sort of one of those, you know, girl books, although, you know, or hidden figures, that sort of a thing.
Julie Satow [00:12:07]:
But, you know, there was, like, a rash of those a while ago. So it was sort of in that vein, but also, like a fashion history, a bit of some popular, like, Fifth Avenue at 05:00 a.m. i think it's what it's called. There was some, like, you know, different comps we used, too, that were like that. And I think the idea was always that it was nonfiction, clearly, but it would appeal to a reader who doesn't typically read nonfiction, who reads, like, historical fiction. So that's kind of what I was thinking in my mind. You know, a lot of nonfiction is very serious. It's very heavy.
Julie Satow [00:12:49]:
You know, I don't see mine as not very in depthly researched and not serious. I absolutely do think it is that, but I very much tried to write it so it wouldn't feel, you know, like, intimidating. A lot of nonfiction, I do think, is, you know, it's mostly a lot of men who read it. You know, it feels a little heavy. Presidential biographies or whatever. So I saw this more as fun and entertaining and enjoyable. So maybe book clubs would read it, you know, who wouldn't normally read a nonfiction? Maybe they'd want a break and go for this kind of a book. So that's what I had in my mind.
Julie Satow [00:13:26]:
And I think my agent, you know, we tried to angle it that way.
Fran Hauser [00:13:30]:
And also, speaking of which, I mean, it made the New York Times bestseller list. Julie, that's amazing.
Julie Satow [00:13:37]:
Thank you. I still am. Like, I'll be sitting at the dinner table and just be like, what? I think there is, like, a hunger for nonfiction in that space, you know, because there isn't that much of it. I mean, obviously, like, everyone knows the Barbizon or something is sort of of that, you know, Paula Brent is, like, of that kind of genre or something, but, you know, there's not a ton.
Bethany Saltman [00:14:04]:
Hey, Bookbound ones, if you're loving this interview as much as we are, we think you want to join us for this very special, first of its kind, Read Like a Writer Book Club. What the heck is a Read Like a Writer Book Club? I'm so glad you asked. This idea came to us after working with so many aspiring authors who are still reading books like a reader liking this, not liking that. Instead of studying successful books for lessons and how to weave their own stories into clear structures or develop frameworks that really change people's lives, and we thought, hey, why leave so much learning on the table? Then we realized that we have this incredible archive of author interviews. Yes, this very podcast. And so we put it all together and said, hey, let's host a read like a writer book club. This is how it works.
Bethany Saltman [00:14:50]:
For the low price of $175, we'll meet once a month over Zoom for seven months. Our meetings will take place on Wednesdays at noon eastern time. We'll give you a list of books related podcast episodes to review and a simple reading guide. We'll meet up and discuss together and in small groups. Fran and I are so excited to get started. We love reading. We love you guys. And we love studying books with other women.
Bethany Saltman [00:15:16]:
Sign up at bookboundpodcast.com/club. We can't wait to see you there.
Julie Satow [00:15:25]:
I also, like, really double down onto digital marketing, so I don't know if you guys talk about that, but I am, like, a huge believer in that now. I mean, I think that honestly made the biggest difference. You know, my book, because of the vignettes and, like, it is nonfiction, it was easy to kind of, like, pull out little factoids or something. So I started doing these, like, little videos of, like, hey, did you guys know that the person who started windows, you know, shop windows, was the guy who wrote the wizard of Oz or, I don't know, like, little fun things like that? And then I paid myself to boost them on social media, you know, like, so I boosted the posts on Facebook and Instagram, basically. And I really think that that helped get the word out about the book beforehand.
Fran Hauser [00:16:14]:
This is so cool. This is the first time, actually, we've heard this.
Julie Satow [00:16:17]:
Okay. Because I am, like, I am proselytizing this to every author I know because I think it's such an overlooked thing. And I really think it worked for me. Like a lot of people talk about, you know, should you hire an outside publicist? And I do think, obviously, publicity is huge and can really help, but it's much more of, like a hit or miss and you don't know, whereas this is in many ways, like, much more of a sure thing. You control the budget. You can see what's working, you know, same with Amazon. If you, like, do sponsored posts of your book on Amazon, you do the budget. It's, like, pretty simple, and you can just see if it's, like, working or not.
Julie Satow [00:16:58]:
So I also did that, and I could see from my ad on Amazon that, like, I was getting orders. I can't see my pre orders, obviously, because it's owned by, you know, random house, you know, double days, my publisher, Penguin Random House. So I can't actually see pre orders, but I could for my Amazon ads because it shows you the click through rate and orders, if they're accurate.
Fran Hauser [00:17:19]:
I love it. And I'm also thinking, like, Instagram and Facebook as authors, we're creating this content anyway. Like, we're leveraging content from the book to create these posts. Why not spend a little bit of money to boost the posts so that they go outside of your network?
Julie Satow [00:17:35]:
That's exactly right. And, you know, I let them pick the audience. I did not choose the audience. And I think that the algorithm, you know, would pick whatever people who are clicking on fashion or nonfiction or. I don't know what, you know, I think it depends on your book. You know, my daughter last night was like, do you think you cheated because you did that stuff? And I was like, no, because I didn't have people or I didn't pay for people to order them, but I did pay to, like, try to get my material out there in front of them to see if they wanted to order it, you know? And I do think that a lot of authors, you know, we feel chagrin or weirdness about the marketing aspect, you know, but I really saw the jaw. It was like I had two discrete jobs, basically. I had the job of, like, writing this book, and then I had this job of, like, marketing it because my publisher is amazing.
Julie Satow [00:18:23]:
But, you know, what basically happened was that I started spending my money to do it, and they started seeing the pre orders, and then they got excited and they decided to, like, you know, add in their marketing dollars to help me. So it became, like a joint thing. But I showed, like, proof of concept by, you know, showing like, oh, look, people are interested in this, you know.
Bethany Saltman [00:18:46]:
Julie, this is incredible. Our listeners and our students are going to eat this up. So I have a question. I'm going to get a little granular. How many hours a week would you say this took you?
Julie Satow [00:18:59]:
Okay, so that's really surprising because honestly, videos are so much easier to do than, like, a post. I did it my husband's office because he has, like, a great bookshelf behind him. So I mostly did it there. You know, he had the better zoom background, but I basically just, like, propped up my camera. But my friend Susie Schnall, who's a writer, she was like, oh, my God, I was reading your book. I can't believe, like, the first Pilates studio wasn't it bendles? What? That's so cool. And I was like, oh, yeah. And that actually gave me the idea.
Julie Satow [00:19:25]:
I was like, fun. I'll, like, use that as a little hook or something. So I just, like, it took me, you know, 30 seconds whenever I tried to keep it short, and I just, like, put it up on a video and then I use the hashtags in. But basically it was not. It was not as time consuming as you'd think it was only if I over thought it and I, like, tried to record it 100 times that it started to be time consuming, but otherwise, it was just basically not any more time consuming.
Fran Hauser [00:19:52]:
Yeah. And actually, I wonder if it would have even been more consuming to have to create the graphic.
Julie Satow [00:19:58]:
I didn't do any of that.
Bethany Saltman [00:20:00]:
Wow. Well, this is huge because your platform is very relatable.
Julie Satow [00:20:05]:
I had, I think, like, 800 followers on Instagram when I started, and I now have, like, over 3000. And I'm sure it's because of that. You know, I've stopped doing it now because I'm like, all right, you know, I already made the list. Okay, I'm not going to spend more money. But you know what I mean? Like, I personally, I don't let my daughter, who's a teenager, be on tick tock. So I was like, I'm not doing TikTok. I had already had Instagram because I was on Instagram from, like, before, and I thought Facebook would be really, like, where a lot of readers might be for me. So I just doubled down on Facebook and Instagram, basically.
Bethany Saltman [00:20:38]:
So can we back up a little bit and talk about your first book and how you got your first agent, how you got your first deal, the first time writing a proposal, because our listeners and our students are very conscious of this whole platform question. And to hear you talk about numbers, like, I had 800 followers, and that was after you wrote your first book, which was very successful.
Julie Satow [00:21:01]:
Okay, well, but I should say, yeah, that my first book was in 2019. So I was always, like, a regular traditional news reporter, you know, for papers, whatever, Huffington Post. I was at, like, different places, right? I. I basically went freelance, and I was essentially, like, a permalancer at the New York Times. So I was writing, like, a lot of features for them, for various sections of the paper. I wrote a feature for the, like, Sunday Metropolitan section. And it got two different agents to approach me and be like, have you ever thought of writing a book? And I was like, yeah. So I talked to, like, both agents, and I chose one.
Julie Satow [00:21:38]:
And then I started kind of, like, trying to brainstorm what might be a good book idea with her. And, you know, the plaza ended up being that. And I think because I was a journalist and I had had by lines and I was in times and stuff like that helped me, you know, even though I didn't have, like, a big social media presence or anything, which, like I said, this was 2016, if the book came out in 2019. So it was very, very different back then. And, like, all this marketing stuff that we just talked about, like, that was not even a thing, you know, when I did the Plaza book, it was just like, wow, I got, like, a New York Times Book review that was, you know what I mean? Or whatever. So that was that.
Fran Hauser [00:22:16]:
Julie, did you work with the same agent on this book?
Julie Satow [00:22:20]:
I did not. I changed agents after my first book. She's great. But it was just not. It wasn't like, a great situation with my first publisher. Whatever. There was all this stuff after the plaza came out, I actually tried to sell a book in between, which I didn't sell, and I was kind. And then it was, like, right before COVID and then Covid happened.
Julie Satow [00:22:40]:
So I was, like, home alone with my two little kids. I didn't have a book deal. It was very depressing. I was freelancing. It was hard. And then towards the end of COVID I was like, okay, I gotta figure out what I want to do. So I started interviewing agents and talking to different agents about ideas, and the agent I currently have, who I am obsessed with, Susan Kanaban, who I really recommend, she had an idea for me. Her idea was store wars.
Julie Satow [00:23:09]:
Like, department store wars was what she wanted, and I took that and ran with it. You know, I changed it, obviously, but that was the genesis. So I felt like we really connected on, like, ideas and stuff, and so we were, like, brainstorming, and that was a cool thing. So, anyway, that was what happened.
Fran Hauser [00:23:24]:
I'm also really curious. I mean, you host a podcast called How Books Work. So, like, you're talking to publishing industry experts, right?
Julie Satow [00:23:35]:
Yeah. So this part of my. Oh, my God, I have a book coming out, and I don't understand how the sauce is made, basically. And, you know, my friend Alice Robb, who's amazing, who I love, we met through sob sisters, which, if you're a female journalist in New York, I highly recommend. It's this really cool group started by, like, Ida Calhoun and some other women journalists, and they meet at a bar every, you know, I think every three months or something in the East Village, and it's a chance to, like, meet other women journalists, nonfiction writers and stuff. And it's very cool. And I met Alice through that, and, you know, we each had had two books. Her second book was about to come out, and I was still writing on mine, and.
Julie Satow [00:24:15]:
And we were just, like, bemoaning the fact that, like, we both have two books by, you know, the big five publishers, and we have no idea, like, what goes on behind those doors. Still, even with that experience, like, it's so unclear. And we felt like it was so obtuse, and I was, you know, in the grips of so much angst over my book about to come out, and hers was coming out. So we were like, this would be great. Like, I want to know if we both want to know. I am sure there are other writers like us out there who want to talk to the people who don't get talked to a lot. So our point is, like, to really try to talk to the salesforce, the editors, you know, the people who are not like us, who get interviewed a lot, and we can hear their journey. Not to say that's not so important, and I think it is, but if you're already on that journey, if you're already there, like Alice and I were, to hear from the people you don't typically get access to, I felt like was really huge, you know, to see what they think about how the market is going or whatnot, or, you know, and other agents that kind of thing.
Julie Satow [00:25:18]:
So that was the genesis for that. And we've done a handful of episodes so far. We have a new one coming out, which was actually the most amazing episode. So I highly recommend people listen to it. It should be up, like, later this week with Eamonn Dolan, who is an editor at Simon and Schuster, who's coming out with his own book and talking about how that was being an editor to write your own book. So, anyway, it's selfishly motivated. I mean, it's an excuse for us to understand it.
Fran Hauser [00:25:45]:
I love that you brought up the salespeople, because I was so surprised with my first book that the sales team actually weighed in on the title of the book, and they actually took it to Barnes and Noble and had Barnes and Noble say, like, weigh in. Right. Because from a bookstore perspective, Barnes and Noble is the biggest. I love how it's also, like, connected and, like, it's so easy to imagine that everything is very siloed. You know, that you've got the editors, you've got the designers, but they're all working on the book and on, like, creating the best, possible, most marketable book.
Julie Satow [00:26:23]:
That's right. And actually, my cover was completely changed because of the salesforce, which was really a pretty insane experience to go through. We had the editors. Maybe I can show the original cover in your show notes or something if you want. But I, the designer, hired this amazingly talented illustrator who does a lot of fashion illustrations to do an illustration for the book. And I was, like, in love with it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And it's beautiful.
Julie Satow [00:26:52]:
It's like a sort of a colored wash of, like, a woman in high heels with, like, a shopping bag. It's very sex in the city, okay. And glamorous. And I loved it. And the sales force hated it. They were like, absolutely not. This will not work. We cannot do this.
Julie Satow [00:27:09]:
It totally looks like a novel. You cannot tell it's nonfiction at all. You don't think about that as the writer, right? Because you're like, oh, I want to get the fiction readers to read this. But booksellers, as you were mentioning, think about where it goes on the shelf. That cover would have looked ridiculous. On the history shelf, it looked like a romance novel. So, you know, booksellers wouldn't have known where to put that. And they were totally right.
Julie Satow [00:27:36]:
And this book, you know, now the COVID is a photograph. I mean, it's clearly like a non fiction book. You know, it made a lot more sense. But that was absolutely all the sales force.
Bethany Saltman [00:27:47]:
Fascinating. What about the title? How did you come up with the title?
Julie Satow [00:27:51]:
The publisher actually came up with the title. It was a totally different title that, you know, my friend David came up with. He came up with it. It was a great title, but it would not have been good. This is a much better title. And I was really excited that he came up with it.
Bethany Saltman [00:28:06]:
Can you share what the other title was?
Julie Satow [00:28:08]:
Yeah. It's what I sold my proposal on, which is garment queens, which Queens has its own connotation. I really wanted Fifth Avenue, and I really wanted women. Those were, like, the words I really wanted in the title. So we were, you know, it was a lot of brainstorming.
Fran Hauser [00:28:24]:
What are you working on now or next?
Julie Satow [00:28:27]:
In all truth, I had a book idea, which I was very excited about. And when I was in the midst of all the anxiety of this book coming out and weeding and weeding for reviews and all that, hell, it was my savior. It was something to focus on. I started researching it. I was super into it. My editors are not as into it, so I'm not really sure where things stand right now. There are some, like, outside things that has nothing to really do with the idea itself that might make it so it doesn't work. So I'm looking at some iteration of that idea.
Julie Satow [00:29:01]:
So now I'm a little bit back to square one thinking about it, which is a little depressing. But I'm also kind of brain dead. I'm writing a book review for the Wall Street Journal, which is super exciting. I've never done a book review before, so I'm working on that. I'm working on, like, a freelance piece for the Times and trying to think of how to fix my book idea.
Bethany Saltman [00:29:20]:
It's so great to hear that someone whose book just came out on the New York Times bestseller list is pitching something to her editors who are saying, no, thanks. Like, that is so important for people.
Julie Satow [00:29:32]:
Yes, that is very true.
Fran Hauser [00:29:34]:
Well, and Bethany and I always say it's like this idea of not getting too attached to things and, like, being able to, like, let go and play with it a little bit and iterate. And, like, this is the process. I mean, it takes years.
Julie Satow [00:29:47]:
Yeah. And, you know, your first question was, like, what? You know, what made me know it was more than, like, an obsession and actually book idea? I actually think it's serves me that, like, I was not a fashion journalist. I never covered fashion before I did this book, you know, and I think it kind of serves sometimes to have a little bit of distance and, yeah, be open minded to different ways of thinking about something I think is sometimes can be helpful because you don't come in necessarily with your own, like, made up mind about a topic. You know, it's more about discovery, which is like, how I prefer to work, you know?
Bethany Saltman [00:30:26]:
That's beautiful. What a great way to end discovery.
Fran Hauser [00:30:29]:
Julie, we've loved having you. Thank you so much for making the time. I know that our listeners, our students are going to learn so much from you. I mean, you dropped so many gems and also just let everyone know what's the best way to stay connected with you.
Julie Satow [00:30:43]:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, my website is just my name.com, so you can contact me there or I'm on all the, the socials. So definitely if you have questions or comments, I'm around. I'm totally here for you, so please drop me a line. Yeah.
Bethany Saltman [00:30:59]:
And the name of your podcast is How Books Work.
Julie Satow [00:31:03]:
And it's available wherever podcasts are available. I'd love to hear any feedback on that, too, for sure.
Fran Hauser [00:31:10]:
I'm so excited to check it out because it's very complimentary to what we're doing. Right? We're interviewing authors, whereas you're interviewing the people that are behind the scenes. Well, thank you so much, Julie.
Julie Satow [00:31:20]:
Enjoy your day. Thank you so much, guys.
Bethany Saltman [00:31:26]:
Thank you for joining us on Bookbound.
Fran Hauser [00:31:28]:
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and rate and review us on your favorite podcast listening platform.
Bethany Saltman [00:31:35]:
Please visit us at bookboundpodcast.com for more on us and how we work with authors.