Adrienne Sparks

Adrienne Sparks – Marketer

Book Marketing Consultant, Author Advocate, Avid Reader

Overview

I am an award-winning book publishing veteran with more than twenty years of experience marketing a wide variety of books by established bestselling authors as well as first-time and self-published authors.

After two decades working at HarperCollins, Bantam Doubleday Dell and Random House as well as the Nelson Literary Agency I now partner with authors and advise them on how to build their platforms, leverage their online and offline networks and generate buzz for their books.

From directing online initiatives to devising and implementing creative promotions, I advocate for authors by helping develop their book marketing strategy and author brand.
Services
Non-Fiction
Biographies & Memoirs History True Crime
Fiction
Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Mystery & Crime Thriller & Suspense Women's Fiction
Awards
  • Advertising Age Marketer of the Year for work on The Da Vinci Code campaign

Work experience

Self-employed

Apr, 2013 — Present

Help authors raise awareness for their books by advising on marketing strategies to build and leverage their platform and establish their author brand.

Nelson Literary Agency

Mar, 2012 — Aug, 2012 (5 months)

Evaluated publishing plans developed by major book publishers, updated NLA agents and collaborated with publishing teams to maximize effectiveness of the marketing and publicity efforts on behalf of the agency's clients. Advised author clients on strategies to develop individual marketing campaigns using online, social media, peer and professional network platforms.

Random House, Inc.

Jul, 1999 — Jul, 2011 (about 12 years)

Conceived and implemented innovative campaigns using a variety of media for literary, commercial and non-fiction books on the Doubleday list yielding more than twenty New York Times bestsellers. Received an Advertising Age "Entertainment Marketer of the Year" Award for my work on The Da Vinci Code campaign. Collaborated effectively with authors to leverage their networks, develop their online platforms and social media strategies and create original content for promotions. Recognized for creative promotions that generated industry excitement and increased consumer awareness.

Bantam Doubleday Dell

Apr, 1997 — Jul, 1999 (over 2 years)

Coordinated marketing campaigns and cross-promotional partnerships with movie studios for movie-tie in releases at Delacorte/Dell Publishing.

HarperCollins Publishers

Oct, 1992 — Apr, 1997 (over 4 years)

Assisted Marketing Director on the development of retail marketing plans for hardcover and trade paperback releases. Liaised with editorial, ad/promo, publicity, academic and sales departments collecting and disseminating marketing materials for successful book launches.

Portfolio

The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigm... read more
Daisy and the Missing Mona Lisa

Allen, J. T.

Marketing Strategy
Daisy in Exile (Daisy Tannenbaum)

J. T. Allen

Twelve-year old Daisy Tannenbaum, gets expelled from school for punching a bully and sent to live in Paris with her Aunt Millicent, who teaches math at The Embassy School. Daisy arrives to fin... read more
Marketing Strategy
Daisy and the Pirates

J. T. Allen

Eleven-year-old Daisy Tannenbaum, tomboy extraordinaire, doesn’t want to go back to school. So, when she ends up on an isolated island in the Indian Ocean after her family is accidentally kidn... read more
Marketing Strategy
Growth and Change Are Highly Overrated

Tom Starita

Growth and Change Are Highly Overrated is a classic coming-of-age story that takes a unique and comic look at what we all fear— having to grow up and abandon our dreams.For a charismatic man like Lucas James, life is a breeze because everyone else provides the... read more
Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival

Christopher Lukas

Tony and I are brothers across the stroboscopic echoes of the past: dissolving across black interludes into the next image, and the next, and the next, until all vestige of pure vision is destroyed. All that is left is memory, and we know how faulty that can b... read more
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

Candice Millard

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tribu... read more
Darkly Dreaming Dexter: A Novel

Jeff Lindsay

Meet Dexter, a polite wolf in sheep’s clothing . . . a monster who cringes at the site of blood . . . a serial killer whose one golden rule makes him immensely likable: he only kills bad people.Dexter Morgan isn’t exactly the kind of man you’d bring home to Mo... read more
The Altarpiece

Lauren Fogle Boyd

In the suffocating atmosphere of the Third Reich, art becomes a political issue. When the renowned modern artist Dietrich Junger is condemned by Hitler's puritanical artistic purge, his daughter Anke finds herself abandoned by the two men she loved most. One i... read more
The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience

Kirstin Downey

“Kirstin Downey’s lively, substantive and—dare I say—inspiring new biography of Perkins . . . not only illuminates Perkins’ career but also deepens the known contradictions of Roosevelt’s character.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air One of Franklin Delano Roos... read more
The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood takes the art of storytelling to new heights in a dazzling new novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist.For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of stri... read more
Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

Martin Dugard

With the utterance of a single line—“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”—a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Mor... read more
Crown Hill: Love Life and the Afterlife

Christina M. Abt

We think of a house as a place that we build and shape to reflect who we are. But what if the reverse were also true? What if a house could shape those who enter to reflect its own being? Cross over Crown Hill’s welcoming threshold. Enter into this home’s cari... read more
Dead Eye (Gray Man)

Mark Greaney

Ex-CIA master assassin Court Gentry gets hit with a blast from the past in the fourth Gray Man novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Greaney.Court Gentry has always prided himself on his ability to disappear at will, to fly below the radar and e... read more
Good As Gone

Douglas Corleone

Former U.S. Marshal Simon Fisk now works as a private contractor, tracking down and recovering children who were kidnapped by their own estranged parents. He only has one rule: he won't touch stranger abduction cases. He's still haunted by the disappearance of... read more
Pirates of Pensacola

Keith Thomson

The Cooke and Hood families have been at each other’s throats since the Spanish Main days. The latest chapter in their piratic rivalry takes place in present day, when an old treasure map turns up. None of this seems to matter to Morgan Cooke, a cowardly, land... read more
Once a Spy: A Novel

Keith Thomson

Drummond Clark was once a spy of legendary proportions. Now Alzheimer’s disease has taken its toll and he’s just a confused old man who’s wandered away from home, waiting for his son to fetch him. When Charlie Clark takes a break from his latest losing streak ... read more
The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga

Edward Rutherfurd

From the internationally bestselling author of London and Sarum -- a magnificent epic about love and war, family life and political intrigue in Ireland over the course of seventeen centuries. Like the novels of James Michener, The Princes of Ireland brilliantl... read more
Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Storyof World War II's Most Dramatic Mission

Hampton Sides

In this national bestseller, Sides renders a tense, powerful, grand account of one of the most daring exploits of World War II: the rescue of American and British POWs behind enemy lines in the Philippines. of photos. 2 maps.
Bee Season: A Novel

Myla Goldberg

Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidact father, Saul, absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant bu... read more
The Angel's Game

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man, David Martin, makes his living by writing sensationalist novels. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie documents hinting a... read more
South of Broad

Pat Conroy

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage” (The Washington Post) by the celebrated author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered—and shadowed—by tragedy. Lonel... read more
Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West

Hampton Sides

Praise for Blood and Thunder“Kit Carson’s role in the conquest of the Navajo during and after the Civil War remains one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of the American West. Hampton Sides portrays Carson in the larger context of th... read more

Adrienne has 3 reviews

Professionalism

Quality

Value

Responsiveness

Joseph B.

Joseph B.

Mar, 2022

Adrienne Sparks gave me great advice in a polite and timely fashion. She knows the publishing world well and I'm grateful for her help and assistance.
J. T. A.

J. T. A.

Aug, 2017

Simply put, Adrienne is a pro. Knowledgeable, pragmatic, detailed, and terrifically hard-working. So hard-working in fact that she made me work harder too. She's is very frank about identifying a core audience and targeting your resources to reach them. She made me think about my novel differently. I learned so much so fast from her that it kind of hurts to admit how much I needed her hel...
Read more
Tom S.

Tom S.

Nov, 2016

Adrienne has been fantastic! Her work is great, she's easily accessible and her quote was affordable. I recommend her to everyone and anyone. You would be a fool to pass her up!

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