What do James Patterson, Taylor Swift, and Tesla have in common? One uses his marketing savvy to publish more than 400 million books. Another connects with her fans like no other performer today. The third goes from zero to sixty faster than anyone else.
All three have thriller novelist Jeneva Rose in common.
Jeneva who?
This young crime fiction writer may be the Millennial version of James Patterson with her marketing savvy and novel production. She’s the Taylor Swift of novelists for her connection with fans. And finally, she’s the speed demon of crime writers with her zero to more than 1 million books sold in just over three years. That’s right. In June 2020 she hadn’t sold a single copy.
Her unique trajectory wasn’t fueled by any agent or conventional publisher. Nor was it some poorly written, self-published, dark sex fantasy phenomenon. She did it her way with a little help from others around the fringes.
Her secret? She’s in control of her career. She works with her publishers. (That’s right, publishers—as in plural.) And she’s a social media maven.
It began with her thriller, The Perfect Marriage. launched in July 2020 with an indie publisher and no agent.
“I knew when I signed with a small publisher it was a risk,” Rose says. “I knew if that book did not sell, it would affect how other publishers looked at me…I was determined to put my all into that book. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed with small publishers.” Nor did she want the reputation early in her career of being self-published (although later, she self-published The Girl I Was.)
During her twenties she worked in digital marketing and rose to global social media marketing manager for Kimberly Clark. But she always wanted to write. Rose started working on a romance novel, but never got past 85 pages. She decided to try a thriller and wrote The Perfect Marriage. She then landed an agent who couldn’t sell it.
Before Covid struck, Rose attended her first International Thriller Writers ThrillerFest. During the conference she began realizing she needed to fend for herself in the publishing world. Publishing, as she originally envisioned, didn’t exist. So, a few months later she fired her agent and on her own landed a British publisher who accepted un-agented submissions.
Considering what she learned at ThrillerFest and understanding her new publisher had little to nothing to spend on promotion, she crafted her own marketing plan relying on her social media skills.
“I’ve always had a knack for marketing. I know a book is a product and if I can craft a pitch and marketing copy ahead of submission, then when it gets to a publisher, I’ve made it easier to figure out how to position it.” That, she explains, increases the chances of a publisher acquiring your book. “You have to win over all teams at a publisher, including marketing.”
By now she understood what publishers did and didn’t do to promote a novel. “I didn’t just rely on my publisher to market my book… A lot of their marketing is outdated.”
“The small publisher for The Perfect Marriage was never going to market the book because there was no budget for it and with my debut releasing in 2020, the marketing landscape changed due to bookstores being closed. You could only reach readers online and publishing hadn’t caught up with social media—specifically TikTok—as it was considered low brow at the time and thought of as an app for dancing. But I saw it was so much more than that and it was a place I could reach new readers. Publishing was slow to see the marketing potential that TikTok had.”
She started by giving 20 advance reader copies of The Perfect Marriage to Instagram influencers. She wanted to get her book into the hands of those with the biggest followings, but figured they’d never get around to reading it. Instead, she looked for second tier influencers, each with around 1,000 followers. To ensure a good fit, she went with those who enjoyed books similar to hers.
She also began producing her own promotional videos. “I did as much as I could and then it felt like I hit a wall. Then I looked at TikTok. It was not known at the time for books. I saw an opportunity.”
It was now September 2020, more than two months since publication. Her TikTok following quickly rose to more than 50,000 after she nearly a million views on one of her videos. Her fan base grew, and her novel bumped up to the top 100 on Amazon.
Rose produced more videos. She knew from her marketing experience she needed to grab her audience in the first three to five seconds of each video and thought a lot about what would keep them watching. She sat in front of the camera and pretended to be her protagonist, Sarah Morgan, from The Perfect Marriage. She earned almost five million views within 24 hours and sold 7,000 copies in four days. She ranked third overall in bestsellers on Amazon—not a category, not a genre, but all of Amazon.
Some viewers actually believed her husband was a murderer because they failed to watch the last few seconds of the video, which made clear they were promoting her novel.
“We created funny videos to keep the joke going. From there I kept doing more and they kept going viral.”
And then there was Scott, a lawyer in upstate New York. After reading The Perfect Marriage, he wrote her a scathing email questioning her talent and recommending she consider another profession. Naturally, she responded via social media and their repartee quickly turned into a social media sensation. Again, her book sales headed skyward.
“He was rude. He hated my book. He told me to switch careers. Typically, when I’ve gotten hate mail before, I never reply, but he crossed a line, especially having sent two nasty emails over the holidays…I thought his is so ridiculous I decided to do something about it…that video went viral. I never insulted him, and I never ridiculed him. But I was funny…He was just over the top…He was insulting.”
Their exchange became a cause célèbre. “Even bookstores were putting recommendation cards next to her novels on the shelf saying, “Don’t listen to Scott.” Mega-selling novelist Colleen Hoover even weighed in saying Scott would love Rose’s next novel You Shouldn’t Have Come Here.
Scott turned into a marketing godsend. Soon, Rose had 4,000 pre-orders for her next book launch.
“He finally stopped. I found out people were review-bombing his business,” Rose says. “I think he realized he’s not going to win this…I think that’s why he stopped…I always say you can turn a negative into a positive.”
She asked her fans to stop attacking him and remove their business reviews because, “we might be trolls, but we’re good trolls.”
Readers were creating Scott gear including sweatshirts mentioning him by name. All along, her books continued to sell, and her brand thrived on the attention.
“I did get a little concerned when I realized this guy is not playing into it.” Rose received angry emails from other readers who wished her ill. But she notes, “If you can make people feel like they are part of the club—that they are in on the joke—they love it.”
The experience, however, flashed a glance at the dark side of social media. “I am careful,” Rose says.
Now, podcasters were contacting her for interviews. The Daily Mail wrote about her and suddenly this 34-year-old Chicagoan realized she had a fan base in Great Britain.
To keep her brand moment going, she realized she couldn’t continue running only novel promos. “I needed to give people more.” So, she started creating videos about herself, her husband and even her dog. And it worked. “From there I kept doing more and they kept going viral.”
“We’re in the entertainment industry…The biggest hurdle is to get your point across quickly.”
“I think a lot of it is just being yourself,” Rose says. “I share the ups and downs. I don’t always look my best on camera. You don’t just want readers to follow you. You’re building your brand.”
She’s had a few fits and starts along the way, but she just kept going. “I’ve always been a person that has to learn things the hard way…and take the path less traveled.”
Today she markets on both Instagram and TikTok. Some 700,000 followers on TikTok and 65,000 on Instagram—and she’s still growing. She says she gets better results from Instagram because their algorithm is more robust. She also created a Facebook reading group of 5,000 who call themselves the “Silly Geese.” She is Mother Goose. Today, The Perfect Marriage has sold more than 1 million copies.
“It’s important to engage with your readers,” she says, but she acknowledges her fan base has grown so large she can no longer reply to everyone. “I’d never write another book if I did.”
When Hollywood came calling, she finally had to find an agent, but she did not allow that to alter her vision for building her career her way. One glaring example of her independent streak is her refusal to work with a single publisher.
“I actually signed a contract with Blackstone Publishing for one book One of Us is Dead. Then when I submitted my next novel, they offered a five-book contract, which I signed. I signed an audio comedy thriller series that I co-wrote with my husband with Simon & Schuster. I also signed a one-book contract with Montlake for a romance novel after they approached asking if I was interested in writing in another genre. I’ve since signed another two-book contract with them.”
To say the least, she’s a publishing dynamo, often writing 10,000 words a week. Recently, she published three books within six months. “I’m not going to do that again,” she says. Now, she’s pacing herself, dropping back to, well, just two or three novels a year.
“After my second thriller with Blackstone, You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, hit the New York Times bestseller list in May 2023, Big Five publishers came knocking. I was offered an exclusive contract with a Big Five but turned it down.” She declines to identify the publisher.
“This career is extremely difficult as it is,” she says, “so I never want to put all my eggs in one basket, and that’s been my mindset from the beginning when I signed with two publishers in a span of one month. Every publisher has their strengths and weaknesses and being able to work with more than one, means multiple teams are putting their best foot forward to grow my career. It’s also been an incredible learning experience, and now some of my publishers are even working together to cross promote my titles, which is truly amazing.”
That is. Most publishers won’t touch a novel if they think it might help a competitor, even if you’re a bestselling writer.
“I feel like these publishers know what I can do. They learn from me (due to her digital marketing experience). A lot of time when I talk marketing, they look to me.”
One publisher, who shall go unnamed, tried to tell her what marketing worked and what didn’t. “They didn’t want to listen to me.” But they do now. As well they should with her track record.
“I didn’t think that when I left my job in 2021 that I’d be here in 2023.”
She is. She’s come a long way in a short time. Now, she’s planning a sequel to The Perfect Marriage. To entice her, she’s earning a $1 million advance for the sequel and another novel.
As if she needed the encouragement.
If you were a subscriber to Rick Pullen’s Idol Talk newsletter, which dishes on your favorite crime novelists, you haven’t received a copy recently. The website crashed and the subscriber list went down with it. Idol Talk is now on Substack to assure smooth sailing. If you’d like to ride along again, please resubscribe (or subscribe for the first time) at rickpullen.com.
About Jeneva Rose:
Jeneva Rose is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including the million-copy bestselling thriller, The Perfect Marriage. Her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages and optioned for film/tv. Originally from Wisconsin, she currently lives in Chicago with her husband, Drew, and her English bulldog, Winston.
