Email — can’t live with it, can’t live without it
Last week, The Bad Pitch Blog, recognizing the prevalence of email, posted some rules to consider when sending email. I don’t agree with all their points — like answering all email messages within an hour — but they do provide some valuable tips such as, “Answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions.” (In book publicity, for example, a good pitch will answer — and pre-empt — questions like what the author can talk about, where they are located, what their availability is, how they can be reached, etc.)
And on Friday, Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists, also recognizing the prevalence of email, posted What to do when your email goes down!
Don’t know anyone on Twitter?
Last week a college friend posted a question about Twitter as his Facebook status. He’d just signed up, he said, and was having trouble finding friends who use Twitter. Several of his friends — Facebook veterans, obviously — said they’d tried Twitter but “didn’t get it” or couldn’t find anyone. (Although Oprah, who finally got on the bandwagon and started tweeting, picked up almost 500,000 followers in less than a week.)
Just in time, Wendy Kaufman of NPR’s Morning Edition explored, earlier this week, how businesses are using Twitter as a marketing tool and how individuals use it to keep up with the news in Thumbs To The News: Public Turns To Twitter. Yesterday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd debated — in her typical sardonic fashion — To Tweet or not to Tweet.
The dirty, little secret of Twitter is that it’s really basic: it lacks the bells and whistles of Facebook or LinkedIn, no photos, no audio or video, no groups, just 140-character status updates. The Twitter website isn’t pretty. It crashes all the time (displaying the much hated “fail whale”). Still, it works well enough that fire departments use Twitter — among other tools — to track wildfires, doctors use it to share information and L.A. foodies use it to hunt down mobile taco trucks. (Not to mention it’s a handy tool for those of us in book publicity, allowing us to follow the news and network with authors and others in the industry.)
Guy Kawasaki, Internet guru and How to Change the World blogger, showed How to Demo Twitter earlier this week, covering why one would want to use Twitter, how to find people to follow and what desktop applications can run Twitter. (That’s the summarized version; for more, check the Twitter section of his news aggregation site Alltop.)
For more Twitter basics, I’ve posted about how to get started on Twitter and how to figure out the Following / Follower lists.
And for a glossary of Twitter terms, try this recent post from Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists.
Lastly, for those of you inclined to regurgitate at another mention of Twitter but who understand that one must nevertheless adapt to change, Dave Fleet suggests (non-Twitter) Social Media Baby Steps.
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For those of you in the publishing industry, don’t forget that Jennifer Tribe of Highspot maintains a directory of bookish tweeps.
Best-laid plans
A lot of publicists focus on how to book interviews since, after all, this is our job. But anything scheduled can fall through. What then? So I was interested to see this post by Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists about what to do when those hard-earned interviews … don’t pan out.
I also wanted to point out that scheduling an interview isn’t just about scheduling one interview on one day; the interview is merely one link in the chain, so missed interviews have ramifications. There are, of course, legitimate reasons for cancellations — breaking news, insane flight delays, illness and other personal emergencies, etc. — but when an author decides at the last minute they simply don’t feel like doing an interview (or when a host decides at the last minute they feel like bumping one guest for another), book publicists are left scrambling either to placate producers with whom we’ve carefully tried to cultivate relationships or to fill sudden gaps in the schedule. Not. So. Fun.
As a book publicist (or as an author or producer), what’s your craziest story of a missed interview? And how have you resurrected missed interviews?
A new era
That’s right — Gossip Girl just announced their new spin-off series. Battlestar Galactica is in its final season, again. And we have a new president.
For those of you glued to your television sets for the Inauguration, you may be interested to know that the online world is encroaching on not just the print but also on the broadcast world. Today, the New York Times reports record online viewership of the inauguration. Of course, traffic was so high that viewing live video footage on sites like CNN and MSNBC was difficult (or for yours truly, impossible), although the Timessays that might be the fault of individual offices’ Internet services rather than the bandwidths of the media companies. (At any rate, having decided to boycott my office viewing of the Inauguration — which utilized the Civil War technology known as the “teevee” — I was stuck listening to it live streamed on NPR and then catching the video on YouTube later in the afternoon.)
I find it encouraging that a lot of people in the publishing business are coming around and realizing the influence of online media (helped by posts like this one at Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists about the increasing influence of online media. Phenix & Phenix notes that online coverage means not just online book reviews, but also commenting, links, blogs and more).
For many, now, the question is not “Is online promotion worthwhile?” but rather, “Which site(s) are important?” given that there are now dozens of social networks and hundreds (or thousands, more likely) of publishing blogs and websites. Which makes the social networking numbers GalleyCat posted last week particularly handy. Also of note: according to TechCrunch, Twitter surpassed Digg in traffic last week. (Twitter is a micro-blogging site that allows a user to tell followers what they’re doing 24/7. Because you really want to know what I had for dinner last night. Digg is an aggregator that posts the most popular online stories according to readers in various categories.)
If you are pretty handy with social networking sites, you might consider heading over to Booksquare’s social media survey if you haven’t already done so. You could win a free pass to the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference (sort of the BEA of the social media world). Deadline is tomorrow, January 22, so step on it if you’re interested.
The moral of the story is that we need to view the online world with a new appreciation. Although most of us do indeed have at least some understanding of online and social media, we all need to take the next step and follow through on that with acceptance if we are indeed going to usher in a new era.
Morning Brief — Tuesday, November 18
I was walking to the subway station this morning when I spotted an ad for American Airlines on the side of a bus that was promoting non-stop flights to London. Now, I live in New York City. Which begs the question: where exactly could a flight from New York to London stop?
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Yesterday, Publishers Weekly reported on the PubWest conference in Portland, noting that one popular panel was “Authors Breaking Out” that focused on three authors discussing book tours and online marketing. It’s great when authors are willing and able to promote their books, even better when they work hand-in-hand with publicists. Conveniently, Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists recently posted some handy tips from an author about how authors can best work with book publicists. (The author, Wendy Kays, spoke about her book, Game Widow, on the Dr. Phil Show, so clearly something worked.)
Morning Brief — Monday, 9/22
I sure am glad the weather has finally cooled down — I ran my my fastest half marathon to date in Philly on Sunday. Fall is marathon season and that means road closures, often until the early evening. Here’s a list of some of the major fall marathons. If you have an author leaving town on marathon Sunday in one of these cities, it’s worthwhile for them to check with the hotel before they leave to make sure they don’t get stuck in traffic.
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Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists advises authors about soundbytes and otherwise preparing for talk shows.
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Jon Greer of Catching Flack posts six suggestions for tweaking your email subject headline when pitching.
Afternoon Brief — Tuesday, September 16
Phenix and Phenix Literary Publicists is posting this week about booking authors on and preparing them for national talk shows. Yesterday, Tolly Moseley offered a peek into the booking process.
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Michael from Algonquin passes on the following unfortunate news from the Cincinnati Enquirer’s book editor Sara Pearce:
I took a buy-out and am leaving the Cincinnati Enquirer at the end of the month. They are not replacing me. So, please remove me from your mailing list, as well as anyone else from the paper, including – but not limited to:
- Jennifer Schwertman, the books copy editor, who is also taking a buy-out.
- Margaret McGurk, who should not be on your list by now but is on some and is also buy-out bound.
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Daniel Green of The Reading Experience posts about lit blogs and “crit blogs.”
Morning Brief — Thursday, August 21
I’m somewhat embarassed to admit that I actually missed Usain Bolt’s epic sprint last night. The coach of my running group was, of course, in a tizzy about his performance, but when I called my mother — who considers touching one’s toes exercise — and *she* asked if I’d seen Bolt run, I realized the magnitude of this Olympic event. Thank goodness for YouTube.
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Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists offers some helpful tips for authors about to embark on media campaigns.
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I was having lunch with a friend of mine the other day and she mentioned she was disappointed that a lot of the businesses she sees using Twitter simply post their press releases on the site — which isn’t really the point of a microblogging site like Twitter. (Think “blog post,” but in 140 characters.) So it was particularly convenient when yesterday Chris Brogan posted 50 tips on how to best utilize Twitter to promote your business / product.
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And Copyblogger lists five ways to keep blog content fresh.
Morning Brief — Monday, July 21
I grabbed some Chinese takeout at a friend’s place before a Friday night showing of The Dark Knight (did anyone not see that movie this weekend?) and it occurred to me that all Chinese takeout food is … exactly the same. Everywhere. Tell me — what dark magic is at work here?!
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Bella Stander from Reading Under the Covers posts about book trailers. It’s an informative and comprehensive post that includes links to book trailers and Bella’s take on the advantages and disadvantages of creating them. Some authors comment about their book trailers here.
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I’m a big fan of email, but sometimes the phone is the best way to go. Tolly Moseley from Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists posts about how you can make phone pitches work for you.
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Portfolio.com’s Mixed Media blog reports that Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume will step down after the November elections.
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MediaPost talks about the dominance of Web 2.0 (texting, social media, blogging). I have to say, I recently had an author on tour whose schedule changed pretty much every day, sometimes several times during the course of the day as I arranged / rearranged interviews. So it proved pretty handy when I was able to text interview details to the Author / Producer / Media Escort at once rather than having to call numerous people with the information.
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Not a good time for newspapers. Massive newsroom layoffs / anticipated layoffs at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Baltimore Sun, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, the Honolulu Advertiser, the Orlando Sentinel and the (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat. And by now I think we’ve all heard that the last stand-alone book section of the Los Angeles Times will run next Sunday. After that reviews will be folded into the Calendar section.
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Unfortunately, folding book sections affect not only book editors and reporters on staff, but freelancers as well. Ed Champion, whose well-known podcast The Bat Segundo Show attracted hundreds of authors over the years, may be forced to end the show (which he largely bankrolled himself) because so many of his freelance gigs have dried up. There may be a Save Segundo Plan in the works, though, so make sure to check back on Ed’s site for updates.
Morning Brief — Thursday, July 10
Today is a sad day. One of the best spinning teachers I’ve found is leaving for med school. Alas. But life goes on.
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Rusty Shelton Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists posts some suggestions for how authors can work successfully with publicists.
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Bella Stander from Reading Under the Covers has an interesting post about the importance of an author posting the name of his / her publishing house on websites and other materials. It’s easy to forget the most obvious information, sometimes. Whether author or publicist, when we put together press materials or follow up with journalists, we should always make sure the important information — title, author, publishing house, publication date, contact information – is in a prominent place. I always put the ISBN up high too, since some (okay, maybe only a few) editors log in books that way. Pub date, of course, is another popular way that books are logged in by reviewers.
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More blogging tips from social media whiz Chris Brogan.
