This week on the podcast we sit down with Kobo’s Content Sales Lead for North America Deandra Lalonde to talk about the new Kobo Staff Picks page and the importance of word of mouth marketing. Deandra tells us why she’s decided to bring back the Kobo Staff Picks page, what she’s learned about the Kobo customer during her time with Kobo, and we discuss what new releases Deandra is excited for and the power of word of mouth marketing when it comes to backlist titles.
- Deandra tells us about her career at Kobo so far and the different roles she’s held, and she explains what her current position as the Content Sales Lead for North America entails and why she’s had to learn to be flexible in her promotion plans
- She explains what she’s learned about the Kobo customer including the difference between the audiobook and eBook customer, how the markets differ depending on the territory, and what sub-genres tend to flourish in these different markets
- Deandra talks about the new Kobo Staff Picks page and why she decided it was time to give this page an update, and she explains what customers can expect to find on the page and how she’s managed to ensure there will be a book for every type of reader on the page
- She discusses the power of word of mouth bookselling, especially when it comes to bringing new readers to backlist titles, and how she’s attempted to capture that on the Staff Picks page
- One of the perks of her job is reading advanced copies of new releases and Deandra shares which new releases she’s most excited about
- Deandra tells us which book she’s recommended the most and why, and she talks about which books’ success has surprised her as a bookseller
Useful Links
Kobo Staff Picks
The Wreckage of my Presence by Casey Wilson
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Animal by Lisa Taddeo
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
It’s a Sin
Where the Crawdads Sing by Dalia Owens
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Big Little Lies (and the TV show on HBO)
Little Fires Everywhere (and the TV show on Amazon Prime)
The Time Traveler’s Wife (and the movie on Amazon Prime and TV show)
9 Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
The Housewives by Brian Moylan
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (on Disney +)
If you would like to sign up to receive recommendations from Kobo’s bookselling team, you can do so by signing into your account at www.kobo.com and selecting “My Account” > “Account Settings”. You can then scroll down and under Preferences and Personalization you should see the option to opt into email updates.
Deandra is the Content Sales Lead for North America, which is one way to say she sells eBooks for a living. When she doesn’t have her head in her eReader, you can find her on her yoga mat, watching every show that airs on Bravo, or enjoying a nice glass of wine (sometimes all three at once).
Episode Transcript
Transcription provided by SpeechPad
Stephanie: Hey, writers. You’re listening to the “Kobo Writing Life Podcast” where we bring you insights and inspiration for growing your self-publishing business. We’re your hosts. I’m Stephanie.
Joni: And I’m Joni.
Stephanie: This week on the podcast, we are talking to our coworker Deandra Lalonde, who is the content sales lead for North America. So what that means is that any book you see on the store or any books that you see, any promotional emails that go out to customers, she is in charge of that.
Joni: She was also talking to us about the new Kobo staff picks page, which is a project that she spearheaded, which basically takes the word of mouth fun of bookselling and puts that onto the Kobo store.
Stephanie: So she’s going to talk to us all about it and we hope you enjoy the interview.
Stephanie: Thank you, Deandra, for joining us on the podcast today.
Deandra: Hello.
Stephanie: So Deandra you’re a content sales lead for North America, and we learned 2 minutes before that you’re coming up 10 years working at Kobo. So can you tell us what you do here and your long history? Because you’ve kind of seen Kobo from the beginning?
Deandra: Yeah, I was saying before we started that when I first began, it was very much in its startup phase 10 years ago, and I started on the marketing team. And now I guess I am back on the marketing team. That’s where our department falls.
So every book that you see on kobo.com, if it’s not an automated list like our recommendations or our trending now, I’ve chosen to put there basically. Any new releases, any promotions we’re running in North America, specifically, they kind of all go through me. I’m the one that makes the decisions, what we’re running and when we’re running it. Of course, sometimes we have to pivot at the last minute as we did last year when the pandemic hit.
So while I sometimes plan things months in advance, sometimes we find out we’re gonna be changing our whole calendar at the last minute. So it’s a very flexible role, but it’s a lot of fun. Basically, I get to read and hear about books and then sell them.
Stephanie: And since you’ve been around for 10 years, what have you learned about bookselling during your time at Kobo?
Deandra: I’ve learned a lot about bookselling. I have had a few different roles and one of them before I was in charge of North America, I was running the Australian and New Zealand stores from here in Toronto, but that was really interesting to see what people read around the world to me because it is very different.
In Australia, they love reading books by Australian authors, which is so nice. They really love supporting their local talent and reading books about Australia so that’s always interesting.They also love, you know, rural romance. So cowboy books. At least when I was in charge of Australia, they did. Who knows if their tastes have shifted.
It is also interesting seeing certain genres kind of take-off and other genres fall back a little bit. So obviously our customer really loves romance books, that’s no surprise to anyone. But, you know, we’ve seen a real rise in psychological thrillers over the last few years, and also a lot more interested in I’d say sci-fi and fantasy, which is nice to see. So kind of keeps you on your toes a bit of, you know, what our customers are really looking for.
And then also seeing the differences as we’ve launched new platforms like audiobooks and seeing which customers go for an audio compared to eBooks. So that’s always been an interesting part of the job.
Stephanie: What customer goes for an audiobook? I’m curious.
Deandra: Well, non-fiction. People love listening to nonfiction more than I think reading it, or maybe that’s just me putting my own personal bias on it because I like to listen to nonfiction more than I like to read it, but I do think our trends show that as well.
So yeah, there’s slightly different customer bases that will end up going for audiobook and E. And there is crossover too, though. I worked very closely with our audiobook’s Elise, and so we try and run promotions together whenever we can, because there is that crossover, but we’re also not stepping on each other’s toes too much with the different customers.
Joni: So you know a lot about the Kobo customer, is there anything that you think our listeners would be surprised to hear?
Deandra: That’s a good question. Let me think about that.
Joni: Or on a similar note then so you’ve moved from going to doing Australia and New Zealand to doing North America, right, is there any big differences between those markets in terms of what people need or how they read?
Deandra: Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think the sub-genres, I think that could be interesting for your listeners is that the sub-genres within romance and mystery are very strong depending where you are. People are interested in different things and there’s certain sub-genres that customers are not interested in other geos, but they might love in another place.
So like I said, rural Western romance in Australia, but it has to be like outback romance. They’re less interested in North American cowboys. They want their cowboys Australian. At least again, when I was working there. That was a few years ago but also trends could have changed. I haven’t been following too closely, but when I was there, that was a big thing.
Also what was up and coming with even more specific of medical, rural romance. So doctors moving back to small towns where there is definitely a cowboy as well and cowboys and doctors together. So that’s like this super niche markets and it’s so interesting to watch them kind of grow. And all of a sudden, there’s a boom in those books and they’re all selling because people want to read them.
Stephanie: What are niche romance for North America? But I’m like, it’s just everything probably. Is there a niche North American romance genre?
Deandra: I mean, there is like the Western, the North American westerns where it’s like cowboys in Wyoming or something. There is that niche one. Sports romance is pretty popular in North America or like goes through ebbs and flows whereas like, you know, hockey romance would not be big in Australia. So yeah, it’s good that those ones are very specific for a country. And that’s not to say they don’t sell somewhere else, but there’s definitely like booms of them in certain locations compared to others.
Stephanie: We asked an author who wrote sports romance, like what’s the appeal of sports romance hero. And I mean, that’s just discussion for another day, but like what’s your opinion?
Deandra: Yeah, I don’t because I actually, I don’t think I’ve read a sports romance.
Stephanie: Deandra?
Deandra: I’ve been slowly getting more into romance, which, you know, if we’re talking about staff picks, mine usually won’t tend towards romance so it’s just not what I go for, but I have been dipping my toes in a little bit more than I have in the past. And so, you know, I’m looking to explore more within the romance genre. Maybe sports will be the next one I pick up so that I can answer that question.
Stephanie: So you revamped the staff picks page on kobo.com and it just released last week. So can you tell our listeners what that is, kind of the process behind why you wanted to revamp the staff picks page and where people can find it when they want to check it out.
Deandra: We’ve had many iterations of staff pick stage over my long tenure at Kobo, and they all have been very well done and beautiful pages, but the upkeep behind them has been a little bit hard on the backend. So they always kind of peter out. And then we have a general staff picks page that is just broken up by genre, your sci-fi and fiction mystery, which is great but also lacks a bit of that personal field to get to know the people behind the books.
So that was my goal with revamping it is we want our customers to get to know us and know that it isn’t robots using these books. We are real people and we all genuinely love what we pick for our staff picks.
So to kind of keep it manageable, we’ve picked six people to be our core group. And that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get staff picks from the rest of the company, but for these six people, you’ll learn a little bit more about them. So there’ll be a spotlight on one person each month, but then we also have a page that has a little bit about each person on it, as well as some of their current staff picks.
So we’ve tried to keep it as widely cast of a net as we can, where we have people who read every single genre across the six of us. So if you are a romance reader, a YA reader, if you love business books, if you love sci-fi fantasy mystery fiction, any of it, you will find what you’re looking for on these pages.
And then on the actual staff picks page, like I said, we have a spotlight on kind of one book and the person who is spotlighted that month and then a general list, which is comes again from across the whole company. And they are all real picks, they are not just put there. That is the big thing I want to get out there is, you know, these are all come highly recommended. These are the books that people can’t stop talking about within the company and to each other.
And then we have an audiobooks lists that will be on what audiobooks people are listening to right now. And then each month I would like to focus on one team within the company. So we start with our global booksellers team.
Like I said, tastes are very different across the globe so the good thing about the global booksellers’ stuff is you’re probably gonna find something that you don’t know about or haven’t heard of yet. And it could be from our content sales lead in Italy or France or England. So I think that will be very interesting and hopefully will let customers find stuff that they haven’t found before.
So I think we’ll probably link it in the description if that’s something we can do but it’s kobo.com/en/p/staffpicks. I don’t know if you need all the middle stuff in there, but it’s slash that staff picks basically.
Joni: One of my favorite things about working for Kobo is definitely that everyone talks about books at work all day and that we are always recommending books to each other. And how do you feel about that as a way of selling books? Like word of mouth and personal recommendations?
Deandra: I think it’s huge. I did spend a year working for Indigo, our big book chain in Canada. And I think that was something…that’s kind of where I was thinking about staff picks from was when I worked in physical stores and customers would come in and say like, there’s usually a staff picks wall at Indigo. And it’s like, this book is picked by Joni. And we would have customers come in and be like, I always like what Joni picks and so I want to read more of what she reads. And if Joni had picked up the book, we could direct them in that direction. If Joni was working, we could just say, there’s Joni, go talk to her.
Joni: I didn’t know they did that at Indigo. I know what you always see the little cards that say, but I didn’t realize that it was personalized every store, I guess.
Deandra: Yeah. It’s that again, this was like a decade ago that I worked there. So that might have changed since I’ve been there but when I was there, we would get these little stickers. And I can’t remember if you had to get approved to be able to put one on a book. You couldn’t have multiple people choosing the same book, but that was like a big thing to get your name, like staff pick.
Joni: I love that.
Deandra: Yeah, it was really cool. And it really did like spur a lot of conversations with, again, with your colleagues there and with the customers that came in. And so that’s kind of the feel I wanted through the computer screen to say like, here are some people, here’s a little bit about them and hopefully, you know, if you come onto our page and see all the books that I’ve read, and let’s say you’ve read three of the books and love them, the other three are maybe ones you would also like because chances are we’re reading kind of the same thing.
So that was the main goal with that here. I think word of mouth with books is so important. You can see a book promoted and you can see a book in the news or a review of it, and that’s one thing, but to have your mom or your best friend say like, oh my God, I could not put this book down this weekend, which is a refrain we hear all the time at Kobo and people come in on Monday or start slacking on Monday, we might say to each other like, oh my God, I was reading this weekend and it’s like the best book I’ve read in a year.
And I just want to share that with our customers, because I think that’s such a special thing that we have. And like I said, we’re just so passionate about it and you just want to talk about books all the time. So hopefully that’s the way the customers feel after visiting our page.
Joni: What upcoming releases are you most excited about?
Deandra: I’m glad you asked me. One of the perks of my job is getting to read advanced copies of some books. So there are books, even when I was putting this page together, I was like, oh, I can’t include that book because it’s not out yet but next week or in the next couple of weeks is Casey Wilson’s memoir “The Wreckage of My Presence,” which is a great title. I love Casey, and this book was absolutely incredible. It blew me away and she made me like cry sad and happy tears and laughing all at the same time so quickly between sentences.
And “The Other Black Girl” by Zakiya Dalila Harris, that book is one I read a few months ago when it comes out in June. And I can’t wait for people to read it because I just want to talk about it with everyone. “Animal” by Lisa Taddeo is another good one that I’ve read recently that comes out this year. Those are the ones like off the top of my head that I’ve read and love.
There’s other ones I’m definitely looking forward to. The new Colson Whitehead “Harlem Shuffle” comes out in September. The new Liane Moriarty comes out this year. I’m a big Liane Moriarty fan. I read everything she writes so I can’t wait for that one. Yeah, I think those are the main ones that I’ve heard recently that are coming out that I hope everyone loves and reads.
Stephanie: What book do you think you’ve recommended the most in your lifetime?
Deandra: “The Great Believers.” I recommended it to Joni recently, and she read it. “The Great Believers” by Rebecca Makkai. Oh, it’s an incredible story and I liken it to “A Little Life.” “A Little Life” is extremely, extremely dark and so sad, but “The Great Believers,” there is hope in it.
So I think it’s like a little less sad than A Little Life…it’s still very, very upsetting. You will still cry while you read it, which is why I didn’t pick it for my staff pick. So it’s like it’s maybe a little too upsetting, but it’s an absolutely incredible book. I just re-read it recently because I recommend it so much. I was like, I need to make sure that this does hold up because now I recommend it to everyone and it does, it definitely holds up. My mom’s reading it right now.
A bunch of people have read it recently because I mentioned it again after the show “It’s a Sin” came out this year because the show, I felt the same way watching the show as I did when I read that book. So if you’ve watched “It’s a Sin” and loved it, you’ll also love “The Great Believers.”
Stephanie: I haven’t heard of that book before, but I’ve added it to my library to read.
Deandra: You need to be in an okay emotional state to read it, I think.
Stephanie: Okay, maybe not.
Joni: It’s great, I loved it. My mom also read it when you recommend it, because I told her, read this I’m reading it. It’s great. But yeah, it’s definitely like, it’s a good book to read during the global pandemic in a way but if you’re in a good mind space, like yeah, maybe read something more cheerful. It is sad.
Deandra: But this is exactly the sort of thing where word of mouth works, where I recommended this book to Joni. Now her mom’s reading it. I’ve recommended it to other people. And, I mean, I’ve yet to meet someone who’s read it and didn’t like it, sadness aside. So it is a good book, I think pretty definitively, but yeah, it’s very, very upsetting.
Joni: But I think you’re absolutely right about word of mouth is the number one way that I read things. And definitely like for me as well, it’s a lot of backlist stuff. Like I, before I started working in bookselling and publishing, I didn’t really care what was recent. Like if you hear about something enough, five years on, you’ll be like, yeah, okay, this book got a lot of hype, everyone loves it. Like I’m going to read it now. Definitely.
Deandra: I find that those books too, I always have a bit of a fear with the books that have been so hyped up. I’m probably not going to like it compared to what people have been talking about, but there’s always a reason and they’re hyped up. It’s pretty rare that if there’s a book that has that much buzz around it, even if it’s not your favorite book, you’re still going to think it’s still well-written enough that you’re going to like it.
Especially the books that people do keep talking about a few years on like “The Great Believers” is from 2018, so it’s like three years old now and it still is holding up. Whereas, you know, there’s the books that get a lot of buzz when they first come out and then, you know, kind of peter off. They maybe don’t hold up as much or pretty timely to the moment. But the ones that people are still talking about years later, you’re guaranteed to be in a pretty good place reading them.
Joni: And I think that’s the difference between like, you can put a lot of money in marketing and like media buzz around a book, but if the content doesn’t hold up, if people don’t love it and they don’t want to talk about it, like it is going to die out. For sure.
Deandra: Exactly. That’s exactly it. Yeah.
Stephanie: Was there any book that was maybe not hyped up, but you were surprised how successful it was? Maybe it didn’t come out of the gate really successful, but over time it became a really big book maybe on Kobo.
Deandra: An example of that is definitely “Where the Crawdads Sing.” I think I wasn’t the kind of sales lead for North America at the time, so I didn’t quite see it all happen. But if I’m remembering correctly, I think when it launched, it was like a middling okay book, and then I think it was when Reese picked it, that it blew up and became this phenomenon. The only word for it. It became massive.
Now I’m doubting my history on that and watch it like, as soon as it came out, was like a best seller and I’m getting it wrong. But I think that’s how that one worked, where, again, it goes 2018. It came out and it had a couple of months of like, okay, and then it just skyrocketed. And I’m going to fact check that when we’re off, but that’s one that comes to mind.
Any book that’s picked by like a book club, like Reese or Oprah, does that. Sometimes books will be launched in time with her announcing it as the pick. So they kind of just either take off or do nothing, which is why I’m second-guessing myself. But yeah, there’s definitely a few books like that.
I feel like I can’t remember if “Gone Girl” was huge right off the bat as well or if it took some word of mouth, but those are huge, huge successes. There are definitely other books that kind of just start off like, okay, and then like really, really blow up throughout the year that they release and afterwards, like “Where the Crawdads Sing” always in our like top books and it released three years ago.
Stephanie: That’s pretty crazy when you think about how well a book can sell for years and years and years.
Joni: To me, it’s always made sense, Steph. I think because especially with libraries, like I just feel like this thing about books need to be new or they need to have been released recently, like doesn’t make sense with books. It doesn’t. It’s a really timely topic, and even then, it’s still going to be interesting for a couple of years, but I just feel like the way that we treat books, we keep them on our shelves and we’d pass them on to other people, and we have libraries and you know, like anywhere where you’re traveling like hotels and stuff will have people’s books that they’ve left and you can like easily pick up a book that’s a few years old.
Stephanie: I feel like it’s a mentality of…Deandra, you may know this better than me, but like publishing, they focus on their new like, frontlist coming out that year. And they don’t really, maybe they do, but they don’t spend as much time promoting their backlist. So I think that’s why we have the perception of books kind of have a shelf life of their first few months. Or like I see authors talking on Twitter all the time being like, my book didn’t do well in the first three months. Like, pre-order numbers matter a lot, and like that’s what decisions my publisher has made about me based on those numbers.
Deandra: Yeah. I mean, I can’t speak from the publishing side of things. I’m not sure how they’re looking at numbers or if that changes with the ebbs and flows of the industry, but from our end, obviously, we do promote new releases every week. We said no to new releases email, and we say, here’s the top new titles. Each month we have a best of month list that has the best titles that have been out just in this month.
But then when it comes to our promotions and what we put in like our daily deals and things like that, those are almost always backless titles. Sometimes we’ll have a frontlist title in there, but they’re usually backlist. And I think it’s a good way to get customers to read the backlist or, you know, you see an author like Liane Moriarty let’s say. If the publisher puts one of her titles on promo and it’s one you haven’t read yet, maybe it’ll entice you to pick up that copy of it.
We will also do…we have our author of the month every month, and that focuses on usually an author with a new release out, but we will price it out her or his backlist. And that will hopefully again, get customers to build up their library with an author that maybe has a new title out and maybe they don’t care about reading the new title, but they do want to read more of their older titles that they haven’t had a chance to yet.
So I think we do a good job of mixing both frontlist and backlist on our site. We certainly don’t try and bury anyone’s backlist or anything like that. Even in our staff picks, you’ll see the titles that aren’t new. “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is in there. Not under my picks, but it is one of mine as well.
Joni: I love that.
Deandra: It’s such a good book. It’s is timeless. It’s one of those ones people love forever. So yeah, we definitely try and promote a mix of both because I agree, like I think the frontlist is important.
The frontlist is great for people who, you know, like Liane Moriarty again, I’m just using this example because it’s in my head now, but I know I love every one of her books and I’ve read every one of her books. So that’s one where I’m like, I cannot wait to read her new one because I’ve now gone a few years without reading one of hers.
Joni: Also where I think a lot of people maybe read “Big Little Lies” because it got hyped, which is what happened to me and I read her whole backlist because I was like, oh, I want to read her stuff. So like that’s yeah. She’s a great example of how, I don’t even know if it was a new release when it was hyped or if it just got a lot of hype because it was a recent.
Deandra: I actually think “The Husband’s Secret” was our first really big one with her, which was, I believe pre “Big Little Lies.” And then “Big Little Lies” obviously got huge with this TV series and everything, but in Canada, at least I think she got quite large with “The Husband’s Secret,” but that was still like her third or fourth. Like that was not her first books.
So even then that’s interesting where there’s like, we each remember two different times she was like hyped up. So if people miss “The Husband’s Secret” as the first time, then they probably got on the train with “Big Little Lies” when the TV show came out. So I think that’s really interesting with authors who do have more than one title that, you know, there can be such an interesting ebb and flow of fame and popularity. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Joni: That’s also one of the best like TV adaptations I’ve seen I think. It’s so, so good. And it’s tied into the book, like it’s different enough that you can enjoy both separately and like the show is fantastic.
Deandra: That show, and I also really liked “Little Fires Everywhere.”
Stephanie: I never watched them. How do you feel about “The Time Traveler’s Wife” becoming a TV show?
Joni: Is it?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Deandra: As long as it’s better than the movie.
Stephanie: It kind of proves my point that that movie came out in 2009 and here we are over 10 years later doing it again, which is wild to me, which I have opinions on that but I guess people are into it.
Deandra: I think it’s like set in England or at least they’ve cast English actors, which is my only thing because it’s a very…I mean they do it with books all the time, but to me, it felt like a very American book, like where they set it and everything. So that seems weird to me, but “Big Little Lies” is extremely Australian and they put that in California.
Joni: That kind of bugged me though. I don’t know why I had to be in California. That was the only thing. It had a great cast, so fine.
Deandra: “Nine Perfect Strangers,” Liane Moriarty’s last book comes out as a TV series this summer and that one was extremely Australian as well, because like where they set it in, I think it was like the outback or it felt very outbacky. I think they were filming that one in Australia. I may be wrong about that, but I hope so. I hope that that one sticks to where they set it in the book. So, but clearly “Big Little Lies” did work regardless without it being there so I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Joni: Yeah. “Nine Perfect Strangers” almost seems like it’s written to be a TV show. It’s gonna be fun.
Deandra: Yeah, that one’s going to be good. I’m excited.
Stephanie: I need to read her because I haven’t.
Joni: They’re really so good. They’re really good on audio as well. They’re just like, they’re very absorbing, but they’re lighthearted enough that they’re kind of beachy reads too. They’re just…
Deandra: They’re like super, super well-written. I find her writing to be very compelling. She’s very good at characters and you get very drawn into each story. Her earlier stuff is now, this is just a Liane Moriarty podcast. Her earlier stuff is very different. I found “The Lost Husband” and “Big Little Lies” to be quite similar. And then her earlier stuff is all similar, but different from those two. And the “Nine Perfect Strangers,” it’s kind of its own thing.
Joni: That’s true. I think I read them all too close together that they’ve blurred a bit, but “Nine Perfect Strangers” definitely feels different. I feel like that leads us into one of our favorites, which is what have you been loving lately? And I know you’ve told us about books and stuff, but I know you have more.
Deandra: It’s true. I am in the middle of reading, I feel like all I talk about is Housewives and how much I love them.
Stephanie: Go for it.
Deandra: I know Steph will be okay with me talking about this. I just started an advanced copy this weekend of a book that comes out in May. That’s about The Real Housewives by Brian Moylan and it’s incredible. I consider myself quite “The Housewives” aficionado. I feel like I know a lot about them and could tell you most of their history, but I’ve already learned a lot from this book that I didn’t know, which was surprising.
I was like, this will just be a reiteration of everything I already know, but no I’m learning a lot. So if you’re a housewife, I highly recommend it when it comes out. Like I said, the Casey Wilson is another one that comes out, that is related to Housewive,s and comes out in a week. Otherwise, as far as TV goes, if I’m allowed to talk about that as well.
Stephanie: Yeah. Go for it.
Deandra: My partner and I outside of Housewives, which I’m always watching, my partner and I have recently been binge-watching old seasons of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” and that’s been like the greatest lighthearted thing to watch. I’m just laughing all the time when I’m watching that. So that’s been what I’ve been into lately.
Joni: So if listeners are interested in receiving our emails about recommendations and also promotions, how can they go about signing up and receiving those?
Deandra: So if you have an account, you can go into your account settings and there should be pretty easy to see email updates and you’d just click, yes please, and save. And if you don’t have an account, probably when you sign up, you will be asked if you want to receive them. I believe that’s the way to go about it.
And if you want to find staff picks specifically, there is a banner in the North American stores about halfway down the homepage that says our staff picks. And so you can click through there and Joni and Steph will also put a link in the description. This is to clarify also that the staff picks page is only currently available in North America. So if you are not located in Canada or the United States, you may not see it if you click through that link, but hopefully, you can.
Stephanie: I’m just going to throw it out there, you’re guaranteed to find a book that you want to read on a staff pick page. There you go.
Deadra: Guaranteed. Yes, exactly.
Stephanie: All right. Thanks, Deandra, for joining us today.
Deandra: Thanks, guys.
Stephanie: Thank you for listening to the “Kobo Writing Life Podcast.” If you’re interested in seeing the staff picks page, we’ll have a link to it on our blog, and we will also show you on the blog where you can sign up to receive email newsletters to get your promotional emails.
Joni: This episode was produced by Joni Di Placido and Stephanie McGrath, with assistance from Rachel Wharton. Edits are done by Kelly Robotham, music is provided Tearjerker, and big thanks to Deandra for being our guest today.
Stephanie: iIf you’re ready to start your self-publishing journey today, sign up for free at kobo.com/writinglife. Until next time, happy writing.
