Growing Romance with Tracey Suppo, Episode #23

Our guest on this episode of Mitlin Money Mindset™ is Tracey Suppo, CEO, and co-founder of Book+Main, an online platform that connects romance authors with readers. Tracy’s 25-year marketing career spans, fashion, cosmetics, live entertainment, and real estate. Prior to co-founding Book+Main, she held the position of vice president of marketing at a national commercial real estate firm for 18 years. Her clients included GE, Sunoco, BP, 7-Eleven, and many more. Tracey took her passion for reading romance books and her success as a marketer and combined them to form Book+Main which has had great success in a relatively short period of time. If you are interested in reading romance or simply looking to get tidbits about marketing or building a business… listen carefully!

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in…

  • Tracey’s path to founding Book+Main [2:15]
  • What’s Book+Main all about? [6:09]
  • The advantages Book+Main offers to readers and authors. [7:42]
  • Is Book+Main for romance only or is there an expansion in the future? [11:57]
  • Cultivating a safe community for the romance reader? [15:02]
  • What you can learn from Tracey’s journey [21:00]
  • What Tracey did today that put her in the right mindset for success? [25:10]
  • How Tracey is keeping comradery alive with an entirely remote team [26:11]

How Book+Main came to life and its synopsis

Tracey Suppo is a lifelong romance reader and a career-long marketer. In 2015 she discovered the social media arm of the book world. She said when she met this community of women she fell in love. Tracey felt like she had found her tribe. She started a blog and a Facebook group for readers that both grew very quickly. It was then she realized that there was a huge disconnect between authors finding the right readers and readers being able to find the right books. So after a lifetime of swearing she would never be a business owner, she co-founded Book+Main.

Book+Main allows authors to upload excerpts from their novels, called bites, and then attach five genre-specific keywords. It’s all built on a platform with an incredibly robust search engine that allows a reader to find exactly what they’re looking for, get a sample of the writing— chosen by the author— and then if they like the bite they can click through to Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, etc. and buy the book. There’s a social component too where they can follow the author and connect with their friends, make new friends, and share and recommend bites.

How Book+Main benefits authors

If you’re an author where can you share your work? You can’t post explicit content on Facebook, so if an excerpt is a little spicier, you cannot post it without it being deleted. That also means you can’t share it in your Facebook groups, even if you did, you’re only reaching your readers. If you were to put it into your newsletter or website you’re still just reaching the readers you already have instead of growing your following.

The power of Book+Main is that when an author puts a bite up and uses the right tags they’re exposing their excerpt to hundreds of thousands of readers that are coming onto the platform. When one of those readers searches for the tags that the author has used they’re going to find the bite. Tracey says they have bites that have been posted since the beginning (3 years) that are still selling today. There’s no shelf life to it and you’re reaching readers who are looking for what you’re writing versus looking for you. Check out the episode to hear more ways this new platform can benefit authors and readers as well!

Tracey’s biggest takeaway from her entrepreneurial journey

Tracey says the entrepreneurial journey is a rollercoaster. It can be brutal, filled with literal tears of both the darkest and brightest days. Every win that they have is made sweeter by the breakdown and the breakthrough. She says to keep going you have to be extraordinarily passionate about it. Tracey said she couldn’t have done this, and quite frankly, wouldn’t have done it without that passion that wouldn’t let her let it go.

On top of that, Tracey says you have to find people that support you. People that are just as passionate about it and who believe in the vision. It hasn’t been an easy journey but the majority of their team has been together since the first year. So through thick or thin the team has stuck through it and worked through it and supported each other through it. She boasts that they have a remarkable team and that if you can find the right people to join you on your journey, you’ve already won.

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Tracey Suppo & Book+Main

Tracey Suppo is the CEO and co-founder of Book+Main, an online platform that connects romance authors and readers. Tracey’s 25-year marketing career spans fashion, cosmetics, live entertainment, and real estate. Prior to co-founding Book+Main, Tracey held the position of vice president of marketing at a national commercial real estate firm for 18 years. Clients included GE, Sunoco, BP, 7-Eleven, and more. She is an avid traveler, a voracious reader, and a proud foster failure mom to two cats.

Guests on the Mitlin Money Mindset Show are not affiliated with CWM, LLC, and opinions expressed herein may not be representative of CWM, LLC. CWM, LLC is not responsible for the guest’s content linked on this site.

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