Citizen journalists are in the best possible position for promoting books. They're not receiving book promotion opportunities. They're creating book publicity opportunities for themselves. Along with pitching reporters (and, of course, producers), they're becoming reporters themselves.
The latest entry into the citizen journalist media category is CivilBeat. The Associated Press reports (via MSNBC) that CivilBeat, which has just launched, was started by the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar.
Omidyar believes that citizen journalists will be willing to pay a monthly subscription fee for the opportunity to participate in the news reporting process. As a book publicist, I hope Omidyar is correct.
Every time an author can create a news story rather than become part of an article or segment that some other media decision maker is creating, that author has transformed book promotion from a passive process into a proactive book publicity opportunity. That's the type of book promotion effort this book publicist can get behind!
