Longtime Knopf Exec Paul Bogaards Launches New Public Relations Firm; LBJ Biographer Robert Caro, Joan Didion Estate On Roster

Longtime Knopf Exec Paul Bogaards Launches New Public Relations Firm; LBJ Biographer Robert Caro, Joan Didion Estate On Roster

Paul Bogaards, whose departure from Alfred A. Knopf earlier this month brought a close to his 32-year career as a publicity and marketing exec at the publishing house, is already on to the next chapter: Bogaards announced today the launch of his new company, Bogaards Public Relations LLC.


Clients already lined up include authors Robert Caro, Dani Shapiro and Clémence Michallon, The Joan Didion Estate and The Sonny Mehta Fellowships in Creative Writing.


In an email to colleagues today, Bogaards describes the model for the new company as “a long runway business, not a quick fix shop.”


“If you are looking for someone to book a tour – that’s not us,” he writes. “Think of us as project managers – with you, your work, or your company as the project. Our mission is to help writers broaden their readership through careful analysis of their work and by developing long arc campaigns for their books and identities.”

Bogaards will be joined in the new venture by Stephanie Kloss, a Knopf advertising and marketing executive before she relocated to Vermont several years ago. “We were partners on many bestselling campaigns at Knopf,” Bogaards writes, “and we are partners again at BPR.”


As is typical of Bogaards’ frequent letters to colleagues, the latest shares some candid insights. He traces his decision to leave Knopf to the day he “was scheduled to attend a meeting about meetings.”


“Stepping away from a good job at a great company and the security attendant with it after three-plus decades is a leap for sure,” Bogaards writes, adding that, in addition to the meeting about meetings, the “other prompt had to do with the job itself: when you assume a position of management, you often become removed from the work you love doing most. I have always loved the architecture of title publishing. Taking the work of a writer, helping to identify an audience for it, and then figuring out a way to access said readership….With the launch of BPR, I’ll be able to help authors in both a granular and a big picture way once again.”


Listed as clients in today’s launch announcement are:


  • Robert Caro, author of the acclaimed multi-volume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson. “Happy to report Bob is continuing his work on LBJ volume five,” Bogaards writes;

  •  The Joan Didion Estate. “I had the great fortune of working with Joan Didion for over two decades,” he writes. “She is among a handful of writers whose books I turn to again and again. Our job at BPR will be to assist in keeping her work front and center with readers.”;

  •  The Sonny Mehta Fellowships in Creative Writing, which are endowed by Gita Mehta and designed to “support aspiring writers from underrepresented countries.”;

  • Clémence Michallon, author whose debut thriller, The Quiet Tenant, will be published by Knopf in 2023;

  •  Dani Shapiro, whose new book Signal Fires, will be published by Knopf in October;

  • Tertulia, a company that uses data and technology “to capture word-of-mouth book talk. Tertulia will enable readers to discover books through all the lively and enriching conversations they inspire.”

Additional information on the new company can be found at the Bogaards Public Relations website, launching today.