Petya Georgieva Miller · Marketing & Communications for Books and Ideas
Someone has to make the introduction. For fifteen years, across four countries, that has been my work: building audiences for more than 120 brands, an Emmy-nominated documentary campaign, and a cookbook published by HarperCollins. Books are where everything I know how to do comes together.
About
The first books I remember loving were Robinson Crusoe and The Count of Monte Cristo — stories about people who refuse to accept the world as it’s handed to them. I have been arranging my life around books ever since: as a reader, a writer, a bookstore explorer in every city I visit, and a marketer who has spent fifteen years studying what makes people click, buy, read, and believe.
I grew up in Bulgaria, studied mass communications in the Netherlands, and took a master’s in psychology because I wanted to understand audiences from the inside out — not what they say they want, but what actually moves them. That training runs under everything I do. Good marketing, like good fiction, begins with genuine curiosity about other people.
My career has crossed agencies, brands, nonprofits, and an author’s writing desk, in Europe and the United States. The through-line has never changed: take an idea worth caring about, find the people who will care, and build the bridge between them — with words, mostly, and with campaigns, partnerships, events, and patience.
Off the page: home chef, cat mom, incurable traveler, and a lifelong student of psychology, history, and languages.
Career Story
At Publicis Groupe, I worked as a digital PR strategist on some of the world’s most demanding brands — Philips, Renault-Nissan, Starbucks, Heineken, L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, H&M, Turkish Airlines — alongside pro-bono campaigns for the World Wildlife Fund, Food Bank Bulgaria, and breast cancer awareness. Agency life taught me how big campaigns really get made: strategy under pressure, creative collaboration, clients with high standards, and deadlines that do not move.
Then I spent seven years directing marketing for a major retail center — which sounds quieter than it was. The property functioned like a startup with more than 120 brands under one roof, and each one was, in effect, my client. I set the strategy, ran the integrated campaigns, managed the budgets and media buys, produced the public events, led the creative, handled the PR, and kept 120 sets of stakeholders aligned and successful at once.
A publisher’s frontlist is a portfolio of simultaneous launches, each with its own audience, partners, and stakes. So was mine.
In 2019 I did something deliberate and slightly terrifying: I stopped. A sabbatical, then a move to the United States in 2020, gave me the space to ask what all that experience was actually for. The answer turned out to be sitting on my bookshelf.
I wrote and self-published Healthy Earth, an environmental workbook for children — and lived the entire publishing process from the inside: writing, editing, production, design, launch, promotion, distribution, and the slow, honest work of earning readers one at a time. The book went on to be featured by the Guggenheim, The Good Trade, and National Geographic’s spokesperson for plastic-free living, Kathryn Kellogg.
Every author I work with now gets a marketer who has stood exactly where they stand.
In America, my work turned toward stories that matter: ocean health, sustainable food, climate. For Kvarøy Arctic and the Fed by Blue initiative I built content, campaigns, influencer programs, and retail partnerships — launching at SXSW, collaborating with Whole Foods Market, and helping carry a message from a panel stage to a PBS docuseries, Hope in the Water, nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award.
Along the way, publishing stopped being adjacent and became the work itself: I helped take the Blue Foods cookbook from proposal to a deal with Harvest Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, working closely with literary agent Jonah Straus. Today I’m the publicist for Samuél Lopez-Barrantes, a novelist in Paris — building his audience on Substack and Instagram and pitching indie bookstores, libraries, book podcasts, and media.
Selected Experience
Shaping long-term content strategy across Substack and Instagram and running outreach to independent bookstores, libraries, book influencers, podcasts, and media — growing a working author’s readership title by title.
Part of the team that carried a cookbook from idea to acquisition: co-developing the proposal and marketing strategy with the writers and literary agent Jonah Straus of Straus Literary, through to a deal with Harvest Books — endorsed by chef Eric Ripert.
Wrote the initiative’s website and social content and shaped its annual campaigns, from launch at SXSW 2022 on the “How Do We Save Our Seas” panel through the PBS docuseries Hope in the Water — nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Science and Technology Coverage.
Content strategy and writing, influencer outreach, and consumer campaigns including QVC; B2B communications, trade expos, and retail relations in close collaboration with Whole Foods Market, with sales analyzed through Nielsen. The team earned Fast Company recognition and a NEXTY Award.
Led marketing and communications for a destination of 120+ brands — strategic planning, integrated campaigns, public events, advertising, media, budgets, partnerships, PR, and creative direction, with every tenant a stakeholder whose success depended on the audience I built.
International agency work across technology, travel, FMCG, beauty, and social-impact accounts — Philips, Renault-Nissan, EasyJet, Turkish Airlines, Starbucks, Heineken, Mondelēz, L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, H&M, WWF, and Food Bank Bulgaria.
Publishing, Translated
Publishing has its own vocabulary, but the work underneath is work I have already done — repeatedly, and recently, inside the industry itself.
Two years inside a real acquisition: proposal, marketing strategy, agent collaboration with Straus Literary, and a signed deal with a HarperCollins imprint.
Currently the publicist for a working novelist — and a self-published author myself, so I know the anxieties and ambitions on both sides of that relationship.
Hands-on, right now: pitching indie bookstores, libraries, book podcasts, and book influencers to grow an author’s readership.
Fifteen years of launches — products, campaigns, events, and books — including taking a national initiative from a SXSW stage to an Emmy-nominated PBS series.
Managed consumer campaigns with Whole Foods Market and QVC; the muscle transfers directly to bookstore chains, indies, and special sales.
Fluent in Nielsen analysis — the same discipline publishers apply to BookScan: read the numbers, find the story, adjust the plan.
Built creator relationships across food and climate media; the playbook maps cleanly onto Bookstagram, BookTok, and book podcasts — where I already work.
Substack strategy for an author, Mailchimp programs for brands, and community building for causes — audiences owned, not rented.
Marketing Expertise
Small presses need one person who can do many things well; large houses need specialists who understand the whole machine. I have worked both ways.
Marketing, communications, and brand strategy; campaign planning; integrated and launch marketing; positioning; budgets and vendor management.
Copywriting, storytelling, editorial calendars, content marketing, blogs, newsletters, reports, and social media in a voice readers actually want to hear.
Audience growth, community building, email marketing, SEO, influencer programs, and digital campaigns — paid and organic, measured honestly.
PR and media relations, partnerships, stakeholder and author relations, retail and library outreach, and cross-functional collaboration across time zones.
Events and launches from mall-scale public programming to SXSW; expos, panels, readings — anywhere an audience meets an idea in person.
Analytics and reporting with Google Analytics, Nielsen, Mailchimp, and Airtable; presentation design and public speaking to make the numbers persuasive.
Daily tools: Substack · Mailchimp · Hootsuite · Canva · CapCut · Google Analytics · Nielsen · Airtable · SurveyMonkey · every social platform that matters to readers.
Featured Projects
Book · HarperCollins / Harvest Books
As part of the Fed by Blue team, I helped shape the book proposal and marketing strategy for the Blue Foods cookbook, collaborating with the writers and agent Jonah Straus of Straus Literary through to acquisition by Harvest Books, with an endorsement from chef Eric Ripert.
Why it matters: I have been inside the exact process — proposal, agent, imprint, marketing plan — that publishing runs on.
Campaign · Fed by Blue
I wrote the website and social content and helped strategize the annual campaigns that carried a new ocean-food initiative from its 2022 SXSW launch to the PBS docuseries Hope in the Water, nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award.
Why it matters: long-arc storytelling — sustaining a message across years, formats, and partners — is exactly what a book’s life requires.
Book · Author & Publisher
I wrote, produced, and launched an environmental workbook that teaches children practical sustainability through art and play — without eco-anxiety. Featured by the Guggenheim, The Good Trade, and National Geographic’s plastic-free-living spokesperson Kathryn Kellogg.
Why it matters: one person, every role in the publishing chain — and national press earned without a publicity department.
Brand · Kvarøy Arctic
Content, influencer outreach, QVC campaigns, expo presence, and retail relations with Whole Foods Market for a Norwegian family salmon farm — with Nielsen data guiding the plan. The brand earned Fast Company recognition and a NEXTY Award.
Why it matters: this is midlist marketing in miniature — modest budgets, big retail partners, and results that had to be measurable.
Author Platform · In progress
For Paris-based writer Samuél Lopez-Barrantes: a long-term Substack and Instagram strategy, plus steady outreach to indie bookstores, libraries, book podcasts, and media — the patient, relationship-driven work of author marketing.
Why it matters: author marketing is not theoretical for me. It is my current job.
Writing & Books
Writing is not a skill I list; it is how I think. I wrote a children’s book that museums noticed. I wrote two years of web and social content for a national ocean campaign. I wrote twenty-five consecutive blog posts for a salmon brand and made people want to read about aquaculture. I contributed to a cookbook proposal strong enough to win a HarperCollins deal.
A master’s in psychology keeps the writing honest: I write for how people actually read — skimming, hoping, deciding in seconds — and I respect them enough to be clear.
Community & Volunteer Work
I volunteer with 350Brooklyn, contributing communications and campaign support to local climate organizing. At Publicis, I worked on pro-bono campaigns for the World Wildlife Fund, Food Bank Bulgaria, and breast cancer awareness. Mission-driven communication is not a category of my work; it is the reason for it.
In Their Words
Selected Results
Why Publishing
Publishing runs on the things I already do daily: launches that must land on time, partners who must be kept close, audiences that must be earned title by title, and stories that deserve better than generic promotion.
And because I believe books do work nothing else does. They are how people practice understanding one another. An industry built on that is worth my best years — and it is the only industry where my reading life and my working life are the same life.
Why Me
The agency side, at Publicis. The client side, for 120 brands at once. The retailer’s aisle, with Whole Foods and QVC. The author’s desk, with a book of my own. The agent’s process, on the way to a HarperCollins deal. The publicist’s phone, pitching bookstores this month.
Years of working across cultures and time zones taught me to listen before I write, to translate between people who think differently, and to stay calm when a launch gets loud. You get a marketer who reads the acknowledgments — and answers her email.
Next Chapter
I’m open to full-time, part-time, freelance, and consulting roles in book marketing, publicity, communications, brand, social media, and audience development — with publishers, independent presses, literary agencies, authors, and mission-driven organizations.