What Makes a Perfect Book Club Snack?
Author Diary #7: Book Publicity, Part 1 - Collaborating with Other Authors
Hello, Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:
🤓 Reader’s Corner: What I’m Reading This Week
🥔 What Makes the Perfect Book Club Snack?
+ a tasty treat that pairs beautifully with The Incredible Kindness of Paper
👩🏻🍳 Recipe for Okonomiyaki Tater Tots
🙋🏻♀️ DEEP DIVE - Book Publicity, Part 1: Collaborating with Other Authors
🤓 Reader’s Corner: What I’m Reading This Week
One Two Three by Laurie Frankel - This is our “Read Like a Writer” Book Club pick for April! Told from the points-of-view of triplet sisters who are very different, this novel will be an interesting look at voice, perspective, and character development. I can’t wait to chat about it with you.
Reminder: Our Book Club meeting is April 20, 2025 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT
Details & Discussion Qs are here.
🥔 What Makes the Perfect Book Club Snack?
There are certain books that you read alone, and others that are perfect for book clubs. When that’s the case, it’s always fun as an author to put together a Book Club Kit for readers!
My publisher and I are still brainstorming how to reach out to book clubs for my upcoming novel, The Incredible Kindness of Paper… 🤓
But in the meantime, the lovely author Georgia Freedman reached out with a delicious idea—she wanted to share one of the recipes from her new cookbook, Snacking Dinners, which she thought would pair well with The Incredible Kindness of Paper and a book club meeting.
What makes the perfect book club snack?
Book-themed - inspired by the story (bonus points if it’s mentioned in the book itself!)
Shareable
Bite-sized
Potluck: Coordinate a mix of savory and sweet snacks for each book club member to bring
Introducing Okonomiyaki Tater Tots!
This Japanese-inspired snack fits so well with the origami in The Incredible Kindness of Paper, which was inspired by my own grandma’s childhood in Taiwan (the island was part of Japan at the time, and she grew up loving Japanese arts like folding origami.)
I can’t wait to host a book club with my best friends and munch on these tater tots—honestly, tater tots are one of my favorite comfort foods!
👩🏻🍳 Recipe for Okonomiyaki Tater Tots
(Excerpted with permission from Snacking Dinners by Georgia Freedman, published by Hardie Grant Publishing.)
Okonomiyaki Tater Tots
25 – 30 MINUTES
Okonomiyaki, the Japanese cabbage pancake, always brings back memories of late-night meals at street stalls in Tokyo. This recipe uses the same flavors as okonomiyaki, but instead of cabbage, I use oven-baked tater tots as my base—their centers are tender enough to be reminiscent of the original, but their outsides are lovely and crunchy. Then I pile on all my favorite okonomiyaki toppings: sweet-savory sauce, mayonnaise, furikake, fresh scallion, and katsuobushi (thinly shaved bonito flakes). The result is fast and easy enough to make any night of the week.
INGREDIENTS:
10 ounces (280 g) frozen tater tots
1 scallion, white and light-green parts only
Okonomiyaki sauce
Kewpie mayonnaise
Nori- and sesame seed-based furikake
1 handful katsuobushi
PREPARATION:
Cook the tater tots in an oven according to the instructions on the package. While they’re roasting, cut the scallion in half lengthwise and then cut it very thinly crosswise. When the tater tots are ready, arrange them in a single layer on a plate, snuggled close together, and make thin zigzags of the okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise over them. Sprinkle on the scallion and a generous amount of the furikake. Lastly, distribute the katsuobushi on top of everything; the shavings will “dance” as the heat from the tater tots moves them.
» For more easy, yummy treats for your book club (or your family), check out Georgia’s cookbook, Snacking Dinners: 50+ Recipes for Low-Lift, High-Reward Dinners That Delight.
🙋🏻♀️ DEEP DIVE - Book Publicity, Part 1: Collaborating with Other Authors
Once an author is finished writing their book—and copyediting and proofreading several times—what is next on their to-do list?
Book publicity.
Hey! I hear you groaning… and I get it. Sometimes making another Instagram graphic or TikTok video feels like shouting into the chaos, where everyone is fighting to be heard.
Enter: Fun and creative book publicity!
If book people are your favorite people, why not work together to help each other?
Cross-promotion with other authors is a great way to lift up other writers as well as find free publicity outlets for your own book.
See what Georgia Freedman and I did above? Collaboration!
You can do this on whatever platforms you prefer—newsletters or blogs like Substack, or Instagram, Facebook, etc.
How do you decide which writers to cross-promote with?
There’s no hard and fast rule, but here are some suggestions:
Release dates that are close together
Similar-themed books or genres
Neither of those, but you just like each other!
The latter is what happened with Georgia and me.
Author Collaboration Timeline: Behind the Scenes
I thought it would be helpful to share our thought process for how we cross-promoted our books, as well as our timeline:
February 2024 - Georgia and I didn’t know each other, but we both happened to be at a Substack writers’ networking event in San Francisco. We clicked and promised to keep in touch.
It pays off to meet other writers, whether in person at writing conferences or online in communities like ours!
Our “Read Like a Writer” Book Club is a particularly nice corner of the internet to get to know each other. 🤓
March 2024 - Georgia emailed to invite me for an interview.
She writes profiles about writers who love food, and she wanted to find out more about me—
when did I first fall in love with food?
how do I include that in my stories?
Why this works: Her Substack is focused on food writing. So it was important that we approached our collaboration with that in mind—the overlap of what her audience would be interested in + creating awareness of my book.
If I just wrote about mine and Tom’s real life love story and how that inspired The Hundred Loves of Juliet, that probably wouldn’t resonate as strongly with Georgia’s readers. Sure, maybe a few would be interested, but the goal was to serve them, not only promote me.
We scheduled a Zoom call and had so much fun! Afterward, I offered to help cross-promote her cookbook when it was released.
May 2024 - Around the time that the paperback edition of The Hundred Loves of Juliet came out, Georgia published her interview of me.
To tie-in The Hundred Loves of Juliet, she included my favorite, “cheater” Nutella cornetti recipe, since Nutella pastries play a recurring role in my novel.
December 2024 - We touched base on having her on my Substack, since her cookbook was going to come out in a few months.
Georgia offered to share a book club recipe that dovetailed with my next book.
Why this works: CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY is focused on writers and readers of fiction. A lot of our community are in book clubs. Many are also busy parents who crave easy dinner solutions.
Again, it was important to come up with a creative collaboration that served our community while also letting you know about Georgia’s wonderful book.
I browsed her recipes and chose the okonomiyaki tater tots.
Her publisher sent me the yummy photo from the cookbook, as well as the recipe with permission to reprint it for you.
April 8, 2025 - Georgia’s cookbook, Snacking Dinners, hit bookshelves everywhere. Happy release day, Georgia!
April 11, 2025 (today) - We cross-promoted her new book here on my Substack/newsletter.
Hooray for writers helping each other!!
Have you seen other creative or interesting ways that authors have collaborated with each other to promote their books?
Please share in the Comments so we can all continue to learn from each other! 💛
Next month: Book Publicity, Part 2
» This post is part of my year-long Author Diary series where I take you behind the scenes, from idea to publication of a book.
Catch up here:
Diary #1: How do Book Auctions Work?
Diary #2: The Secret Behind Book Cover Design
Diary #3: First Pass Pages and Why the Font in Books Matters
Diary #4: What are ARCs? And Why Does It Take So Long to Publish a Book?
Diary #5: How Authors Make Money: Advances, Royalties, Foreign Rights, Translations & More
Diary #6: What are Book Blurbs? The Gift (and Burden) of the Book Blurbing System
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What a fabulous break down of the joys of fun author collabs! So thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with you on this!
I loved this post--Once a year, when I was still living in SB, I used to try and host an "elaborate" book club dinner/get together. My favorite was the Bollywood Extravaganza (music, decorations and Indian food that I cooked for days) that was the companion to one of my favorite books: Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. I encouraged people to don their favorite saris--and they did! We had such fun and people still talk about it....That's too much work for the average book club, but it was so much fun to stage. Your snack approach (so creative!) is much more sensible!