Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive

look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't

have to.

Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day.

For more information, go to zibbimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens.

Welcome back to totally booked live.

I am so excited to be here today with Morgan Pater.

This is so fun.

She is the author of The Art of Vanishing, a novel, and I am just so

excited to have you here. I'm so excited to be here. I'm going to read your official bio really

quickly, if you don't mind. Okay. Has anybody heard of at NYC Bookgirl? Because that is Morgan,

which is super exciting. Okay, getting settled here. Morgan Pager is the director of marketing

and social media at Atria Books and the content creator behind at NYC Book Girl, a graduate of Duke

University. Morgan lives on the Upper West Side with her husband and their cat. The Art of Vanishing

is her first novel. Welcome. Thank you. Yay. So I have to say when I started my podcast in 2018, you were already up and running at NYC Bookgirls. I want to hear when you started that. And she had all these followers and was posting the coolest things. I was like, how does somebody do that? And then I ran into you in Seck Harbor.

Yeah. I was like, oh my God, you're like a celebrity. Let me take your picture. So I made her

take a picture with me. And now here we are. Very fun. I get recognized in very bookish locations

exclusively. So a bookstore inside Harbor was exactly the right place. I was there for it.

Okay. Well, back up at NYC Bookgirl. Tell us how you got started and then we'll end up

with your novel. Absolutely. So I started NYC Book Girl in 2017. I was working at the time as an assistant

to a Broadway producer and was loving it, but the job was very hurry up and wait. So when she needed me,

she needed me and when she didn't, she was the only other person in the company. So it's just the two of us. And so I felt like I needed something that was my own creative outlet. And I kind of got into the world of Bookstagram and heard that people were getting books sent to them by publishers. And I was making nothing at the time. So I was like that would be a great way to

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