Apr 16, 2026
Mark interviews former publicist to the stars Isabelle Knight who is the founder of Build Your Author Brand, an online consultancy helping fiction and non-fiction authors to grow your readership, raise your profile and give your books the best chance of success.
Prior to the interview Mark shares that he is on the road at the Writers and Illustrators of the Future annual workshops and gala as one of the writer judges and is using his digital voice clone from ElevenLabs to record the introduction and closing reflection. He also shares a word about this episode's sponsor.
This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK10 at checkout and save 10% off your own personalized report.
During the interview Mark and Isabelle talk about:
- Isabelle's background as a publicist for film, TV, and books
- Recognizing how there's a real knack of knowledge for creating an effective brand/profile
- Teaching authors the basics of that branding without using the terms PR or publicity
- The idea of creating foundations of how an author can be able to pitch their books to an audience
- How talking about marketing can quickly fill authors with a sense of terror
- The importance of wanting to know, before helping an author, what makes them tick
- How the author's story is what tells us who they author is and ultimately "why do we care?" about your book(s)
- Finding the themes that can tie books together rather than what makes them different when an author has written more than one book
- The challenge of wanting, too much, to share the details from a book, the plot, the tropes, etc versus sharing higher level themes and patterns
- The misconception that PR and Publicity is only for celebrities or people who are comfortable being in the spotlight
- A misperception that authors have about how to provide content for social media
- How Isabelle doesn't work like a traditional publicist
- The course that Isabelle runs with a cohort about three times a year
- And more...
After the interview Mark shares a few reflections about the conversation.
Links of Interest:
- Build Your Author Brand
- Manuscript Report (Mark's affiliate link - use MARK10 to save 10%)
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- Mark's YouTube channel
- ElevenLabs (AI Voice Generation - Affiliate link)
- Mark's Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Newsletter (Signup)
- An Author's Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
- Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!: A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
- I Think It's A Sign That The Pun Also Rises
Former publicist to the stars, including titans of industry JK Rowling and the BBC, Isabelle Knight is the founder of Build Your Author Brand, an online consultancy helping fiction and non-fiction authors to grow your readership, raise your profile and give your books the best chance of success.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0