Page One Education is a membership platform founded by publishing veteran Sarah Russo to give authors at every stage — and every budget — direct access to the same strategic thinking our agency clients pay for. Here's the story of how it came to be.
In 2019, I thought I was leaving my in-house job to launch author education. I'd spent nearly 20 years in publishing at that point — I understood every part of the business, from my sphere of corporate communications, publicity and marketing to sales, production, acquisitions, rights, and legal. And I also knew, with each passing year, how much harder it was getting for authors to truly collaborate with their publisher. That was largely because of some degree of fear in-house. Our budgets were shrinking season by season, and every time an author asked for something — tour cities, advertising, a launch party — all we could see were dollar signs and staff time we didn't have to give.
But I also knew there were things we could do for an author, if they could ask the right questions. I knew how to teach authors to get to "yes" with their publisher. I started writing lessons and building a curriculum, thinking about where I would host in-person workshops, talking to other professionals who would teach alongside me. As with many things in life and business, it was all much slower going than I expected.
Six months went by and I was still building a curriculum when the pandemic began, and authors started reaching out in a panic because most in-house staff didn't have laptops. They were all sent home and couldn't be expected to leap into working right away under the circumstances. Many were also caring for children (so was I, although mine weren't babies, thankfully!). I felt compelled to answer that call — authors needed help and I wanted to give it. Page One Media was born.
Today, we're a small team of six incredible publicists and marketers working on all kinds of books and helping authors build their platforms in the media and in their communities, both online and in real life.
But the original idea of providing education for authors never went away. I kept thinking about how expensive agency-level support is, and it's not just expensive for the hell of it. We spend many hundreds of hours on every campaign we work on and there are only so many work hours in a year. Nevertheless, that leaves many authors without access to the best industry professionals and knowledge that could help them succeed. I still felt pulled to the mission-based work of providing access to insider publishing knowledge for all authors, no matter their finances.
In the fall of 2025, I was accepted into the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program. In a room of 39 other small business owners, I realized how many of them were writing a book, or wanted to, and had no idea where to begin to get that book published, or where to begin to promote it. That's when I knew we needed to move forward, and Page One Education was reborn.
Page One Media has spent the last year figuring out how to support a mission-oriented author education platform and community: updating and revising all of the resources we provide to our agency clients, rethinking and rebuilding that curriculum we started all those years ago, launching a free podcast, and so much more.
It is very important to us at Page One Media to help build more equity in publishing. In practice, that means the same strategic thinking our agency clients pay for, built into a platform every author can access — across three membership levels named for a stage in the manuscript-to-published-book journey: Draft ($99/month), Proof ($399/month), and First Edition ($799/month).
Now, instead of having to turn away authors who can't afford the agency and continuing to be the party of "no," through Page One Education, we get to be the party of "yes, let us show you how."
If you're interested in Page One Education, I hope you might take our survey and show us what you want to learn and the ways you'd like to learn it. If you're eager to get started and want to come along with us during the beta testing phase, use code FOUNDERS for $20 off all three levels for the first three months of your membership. You can find Page One Education right here: page1m.com/join-page-one-education.
What is Page One Education?
Page One Education is a membership platform founded by publishing veteran Sarah Russo. It gives authors at every stage and budget direct access to the same strategic guidance Page One Media's agency clients pay for, through three membership levels: Draft ($99/month), Proof ($399/month), and First Edition ($799/month).
Who founded Page One Education?
Page One Education was founded by Sarah Russo, whose work leading publicity, marketing, and corporate communications at Oxford University Press crossed all functions of the business from sales, editorial, production, design, acquisitions, rights, and legal in the publishing industry for 27 years. She is also the founder of Page One Media, a full-service author publicity, marketing and strategy agency.
How is Page One Education different from hiring a publicity agency?
Page One Media spends many hundreds of hours per campaign, which puts agency-level publicity out of reach for many authors. Page One Education was built to make that same strategic thinking accessible through an affordable membership platform, education sessions, and opportunities to ask questions in large, small, and 1:1 formats (depending on which tier you choose), where you can learn through other authors questions and ask your own.
How do I join Page One Education?
Join at page1m.com/join-page-one-education. New members can use code FOUNDERS for $20 off all three membership levels for their first three months during the beta testing phase.
________________________________
Sarah Russo is the founder of Page One Media® and Page One Education™ and a publishing professional for over twenty-five years working across multiple facets of the industry. You can connect with her on BlueSky @sarahrusso.bsky.social, Instagram, Substack and LinkedIn. You can follow the work of Page One on LinkedIn, @pageonem.bsky.social on BlueSky, Substack, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Follow our podcast, The Publishing Playbook, on your favorite podcast app.