The Trad Wife Marketing Handbook
What Jo Piazza learned about self-promotion from Ballerina Farm et al
Last week
released what might be the buzziest book on the internet. The Sicilian Inheritance has been everywhere from The New York Times to the NY Post and The Skimm, and it’s all OVER Bookstagram and BookTok.I read the novel early and I can tell you that the praise is well deserved. I wrote a little about why I loved it below, but truly it’s a delectable amalgamation of page-turner, immersive culinary adventure, and historical drama. I LOVED it.
If you’re in a reading slump, this is the book to get you out of it. The fact that it’s based on Jo’s own family lore is just icing on the cake. Oh, and if spicy scenes taking place in secluded beach caves are your thing, there’s ALSO THAT.
Jo and I became friends based on our joint interest in the multibillion dollar momfluencer industry. Jo had just launched her podcast, Under the Influence when I was putting together the book proposal that would eventually become Momfluenced (on sale here!). We “met” during a phone call in which we talked shop: Smeg fridges, Ruggable rugs, linen tunics. You know, standard momfluencer stuff.
Selling a book is selling yourself. It’s hard and weird and I’ve written about it here and here. While of course, selling a book is a specific type of performance, I think many of us (most of us?), regardless of whether they’re writers or not, can relate to the unique strangeness of putting together an online persona. And when Jo told me she had been inspired by trad wives in her approach to selling The Sicilian Inheritance, I obviously wanted to hear more. How? Why? Is there sourdough involved?
Sara
What IN THE WORLD have you learned from trad wives and momfluencers about selling a book? Please connect the dots for me.
Jo
Until very very recently authors didn’t have to be a brand. We were allowed to do what we do best, which is to write actual books. But now we have no choice but to be the main engine selling our books and reaching our audience and frankly no one does that better than influencers. You want something sold, you go to an influencer. We now live fully in the influencer economy for better or worse and we had better embrace it.
Trad wives made me realize that I get to choose my “brand” on social. So many of these women weren’t traditional wives before it became popular. They’re performing a role to make money. It made me a lot less scared to experiment and try new things to try to reach a new audience.
Sara
I think a lot of folks think trad wives are sort of anti-making money? How do they keep up their facade of “just a mom” and “just a wife” while also raking in cash?
Jo
I lost my mind in an appearance on the Tamron Hall show this week about this. Like truly lost it. A lot of the trad wives claim they don’t work. That they are totally submissive to their husbands and let them control the finances. But so many of them are making a ton of cash right now from sponsored deals and selling “courses” etc. It is all smoke and mirrors most of the time. That’s why we need to be critical consumers of this content and think about who are the sponsors and what the streams of income are and how this jives with their messaging.
Sara
I think there’s a tendency to equate online performance with something necessarily false or inauthentic. What do you think?
Jo
I hate selling myself. I have always hated talking about myself. I stumble if you ask me to write my own bio, but influencers have taught me that I am my best advocate. I have to own my brand and my book as much as Ballerina Farm is owning her barefoot-and-pregnant sourdough baking lifestyle.
Influencers are essentially creating their own mini media empires. So I thought to myself, what does a magazine version of The Sicilian Inheritance look like? I can do pieces on Sicilian food and travel and history. I can become a mini media empire for this book. If Ballerina Farm can sell me $49 flour, I can sell someone a book that I poured my heart and soul into.
Social media is now the dominant form of media. The train has left the station. 75% of people I talked to in the past week told me they got my book after seeing it on social media. That’s wild right? Just compare that to ten years ago, when nearly 100% of people told me they bought one of my books after hearing me on NPR or seeing me in People magazine.
Sara
Do you think there’s something particularly gendered about women feeling shame about publicizing their work and asking to be paid for it? How do momfluencers and trad wives play into this sticky equation?
Jo
Yes yes and yes I think women feel shame and guilt promoting ourselves and our work that men never feel. I have let go of all the shame of self promotion. I am here to sell books because I fucking love this thing and want to shout it from the rooftops. I think it’s likely easier in many ways for trad wives to self-promote because they’re doing it under the guise of traditional femininity, which is all about humility, domesticity, and submission. We’re so culturally grossed out by women expressing their desire to earn money for their work that it makes it easy for us to not see the ways in which trad wives are almost exploiting that anxiety.
Sara
You were just at Mom 2.0 right? This is the premier momfluencer conference - tell us about it!
Jo
It was intense. The talks and workshops are like going to a Wharton weekend workshop on how to sell, market and grow your brand on fucking steroids. I learned more about marketing in a single day than I did in an entire semester at Penn.
These women are entrepreneurs. We can think what we want about the world of mom influencers and what it is doing to our brains (and our souls) but we really can learn from this hustle.
We can also learn from the sense of camaraderie within the influencer world. I watched these women promote one another’s brands to increase all of their power. I see this with authors too but I also see a lot of fear from some authors that if they promote your book it will somehow hurts theirs. At its core, The Sicilian Inheritance is a book about strong, badass women supporting one another. And I see that in the influencer world and I wish I saw more of it in other industries, including publishing.
GIVEAWAY GIVEWAY GIVEWAY GIVEWAY GIVEWAY GIVEWAY GIVEAWAY
If you want a chance to win one of THREE copies of Jo’s book, just comment “Hot Sicilian” below. You need to be a paid subscriber to enter. I’ll choose a winner tonight!
I already have my copy, and it is great! I will say that Jo‘s book bonus was also genius— anyone who preordered got a lifetime “paid” subscription to her substack. I’d been wanting to go paid for a while but I am juggling too many right now. I thought that was such a clever and generous bonus! I snapped up the book and have gobbled up all of her newsletters. I am definitely watching her and taking notes for whenever it is time for me to promote my book. One day! 🤞
Hot Sicilian! I just got my copy of Worry that I also heard about from your substack, so thank you! I’m currently writing my first novel and it has a social media/momfluencer angle to it, so I love to hear about what else is being published in this area. Can’t wait to read it and this!