When Kima Jones, an independent publicist based in Los Angeles, agreed to help poet Tyehimba Jess with his publicity campaign for his second collection, “Olio,” she knew it would be a breakout work.
“I was still a baby publicist. I did not have a long list of clients. I didn’t have a long list of contacts,” Jones said. “But I believed in the book from the beginning, and what I really believed in was that it was genre-defying poetry.” In 2017, “Olio” won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
It would be easy to write off the story of “Olio” as a coincidence. In an ideal world there is no causal relationship between publicity and a book’s critical, or even commercial, success. But publicity plays an important and often misunderstood role in how a book and, ultimately, its writer live in the public imagination. And it’s why Jones is determined to use her company, Jack Jones Literary Arts, to change the way writers of color, especially women, and their work are received by the world.
“I think what drew me to publicity and marketing was I really want to see folks win,” Jones said. “At the time so many books that I loved weren’t getting critical attention, and those were always black books.”
Jack Jones is only in its third year of operation, and Jones has seen a lot of winners. She worked with Angie Thomas to promote “The Hate U Give,” and with Leesa Cross-Smith on her debut, “Whiskey and Ribbons,” which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
Since its founding, Jack Jones has expanded rapidly. In 2017, Jones hired her first employee and moved the company from her home to an office in downtown Los Angeles. She also added a writers’ retreat exclusively for women of color, which has garnered the support of heavyweights such as Roxane Gay, author of “Bad Feminist,” and poet Natalie Diaz. At the urging of Angela Flournoy, author of “The Turner House,” Jones is also starting a speaker’s bureau, which represents R.O. Kwon, author of “The Incendiaries,” and John Keene, who won a 2018 MacArthur “genius” grant, among others.
“People don’t really think about what goes into making a book successful,” said Flournoy, who is also a friend of Jones’. “And Kima is really revolutionary with the books that she has helped to amplify.”
Although Jones, 36, exhibits a personality preternaturally suited for publicity — always taking notes, smiling, talking, making new connections — her introduction to the literary world began with a more quiet endeavor: poetry. When she was in the fourth grade, Jones participated in a poetry contest in which the winners would read with Walter Dean Myers, best-selling children’s book author, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Jones won and did what she calls her “first public reading as a writer.” Later, in a signed copy of his book “Scorpions,” Myers wrote to Jones: “To Kima, my favorite poet and favorite writer.”
From that moment, Jones began writing in earnest, turning “anything into a story” and filling notebooks with adventures. She found power in these tales, which she says helped her through six years in the foster care system.
“You are changing schools two to three times a year depending on how often you leave a home. You just don’t tell people that you are a foster care kid,” she said. “You create a story around your life and what is happening to it.”
In 1994, when she was 12 years old, Jones was reunited with her family and moved to Poughkeepsie, New York. She stayed there for several years and enrolled at Dutchess Community College before transferring to Sarah Lawrence. For a variety of reasons, a combination of financial issues and bureaucracy, Jones did not finish her degree.
Jones went on to work a series of odd jobs: “Every working-class job in America that you can probably think of, I’ve done it,” she said. These included being a nurses’ aide, a 911 dispatcher and a saleswoman for leather goods and luggage.
In 2013, she was accepted as a PEN America Emerging Voices fellow. She moved to Los Angeles, where she immersed herself in the literary scene and began to lay the plans for her current career. The program was only nine months long and, with a one-time stipend of $1,000, offered little in the way of financial support. But at the end of her fellowship, Jones decided to stay in Los Angeles and continue writing.
Jones always knew she wanted to start a company related to publishing. Her love of small press books and her frustrations with the way published black writers were frequently overlooked, led her to settle on publicity and marketing. It would allow her to choose her own clients and be her own boss.
However, despite the independence it can afford, publicity is a difficult space for a woman of color to break into because like most of the publishing industry, it remains dominated by white women.
“For so long publishing has had a very white culture,” said Hannah Ehrlich, director of marketing and publicity at Lee and Low, a multicultural publishing house that conducts representative surveys of diversity across the industry. “You have huge markets that are being underserved or untapped because there is no one in the room to suggest going to those outlets for coverage.”
Jones started Jack Jones Literary Arts in March 2015, and her first clients were Tananarive Due and Dolen Perkins-Valdez. “Of course two of the most respected black women in African-American literature say, ‘Hey, I want to work with you on my book.’ It was instant credibility,” she said.
For Lilliam Rivera, author of “The Education of Margot Sanchez,” working with Jones was a “no-brainer.” The two were in the same PEN Emerging Voices cohort and bonded over being Los Angeles transplants. When it came time for Rivera to choose a publicist, she chose Jones.
“I didn’t have to explain, yes, let’s hit up all these outlets that are geared to Latino markets,” Rivera said. “It was really important for it to be tied to my community, to the people who needed to read the book, and Jack Jones just really understands that.”
“The mission was never just about publicity for me,” Jones said. “I want to work with not just authors, but also publishing houses and presses that are interested in new and profound literature that is taking different risks and challenges.”
When Jones meets with a client, she tries to figure out what they want for themselves. She still hits the same targets as other publicists, such as getting excerpts, interviews and features into newspapers and magazines, but she also creates campaign goals aligned with the client’s aspirations, which often reflect who they are or what they value.
“Everyone’s big dream is different,” Jones said. “Some people’s big dream is NPR, some people’s big dream is Oprah, some people’s big dream is their school deciding to use their book in curriculum.”
She also sends the books to her sisters, whom she calls her “barometers” and is very close to. “All of my sisters are moms; they are busy with their children,” she said. “If they can make time for a book and fit it into their lives and finish it, then I know other people will do that.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.