Book Publicity Indispensible Tool

By Stacey J. Miller, Book Publicist
S. J. Miller Communications
bookpromotion@gmail.com

Believe it or not, here's a book publicity tool you once had and will probably want again for the duration of your book promotion campaign: a landline.

Yes, as a citizen of the world (besides being a book publicist), I know that just about everyone has traded in his or her landline for a cell phone. It's the economical and reasonable way to go. Why pay for landline telephone service that you don't need?

But for authors who are planning book publicity campaigns, here's an unwelcome surprise. You probably will need a landline to participate in radio interviews. Some radio show producers still check to ensure that the phone number authors provide are landline phone numbers and not cell phone numbers. Those radio show producers, certainly, are becoming relics, and they do sound strangely archaic trying to convince authors to find landlines to use.

However, this book publicist's motto is: the radio show producer is always right. If the radio show producer will book a radio interview only if the author has a landline available, then guess what? You need a landline to do the interview. You're not going to talk the radio show producer, who doesn't accept cell phone numbers for radio interviews, that your cell phone line has never been garbled or gotten disconnected. The radio show producer has heard it before, and it's nothing personal. It's just that every radio producer has had problems with other interviewees' cell phone lines and isn't willing to risk bad on-air audio again -- for any author, even for you.

So, even though you may not keep the landline telephone service at the conclusion of your book publicity campaign, you'd be wise to have a landline -- or access to a landline -- available for the duration of your book publicity campaign. Don't miss out on opportunities because you're unwilling to hold onto old technology! What's old to some people is still an indispensable book publicity tool.

A lesson for this book publicist.

By Stacey J. Miller, Book Publicist

S. J. Miller Communications

bookpromotion@gmail.com

A radio producer sent me a positive response to an email pitch yesterday. Eager to book the radio interview for my client, I read the email from top to bottom -- and, unfortunately, I noticed that the producer had prematurely hit the "send" button, so the email was truncated. I let the radio producer know, so that we could get that book publicity interview locked in, and I expected an instant reply. It took about 24 hours to hear back from him, though, and that taught this book publicist a lesson.

Book publicity is my world, and it takes up most of the space in my head, day and night (and weekends and holidays, too). But that's not true for everybody.

Somehow, that was refreshing to learn. The whole world does not always move at a break-neck, it-has-to-get-done-this-second-or-else pace, just because it can. Just because I want to get media interviews for my clients does't mean that producers and editors and journalists sit by their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops thinking about nothing except my authors and their book publicity needs. People still have lives beyond book publicity and book promotion. It's an important reminder -- for this book publicist!

Lost book promotion opportunity

Yesterday, one of my clients nearly lost a book promotion opportunity. I'd set up a radio interview for the author with the producer. It was to be the author's first radio interview ever -- not only for this book promotion campaign. So I was eager to hear the interview and listened to the radio show online as it streamed live.

The host didn't promote the interview, but I wasn't terribly concerned. The producer had just confirmed the interview the day before, and the author had the studio line as a backup in case anything went wrong.

A few minutes after the radio interview was to take place, the author called me to let me know the producer hadn't called her. "Why are you calling me," I wanted to know. "Why aren't you calling the backup line that I gave you?" The author said, "Oh, is that what you meant by 'backup line?' I thought you meant that was the line I'd call if there was static during the interview and we had to find a different phone line." (I'm still puzzling over the author's reasoning.)

The author called the studio line and hooked up with an apologetic radio show host who said the producer had never put the information about the interview on her calendar, and she knew nothing about the book or the author or the topic. However, the radio show host felt so guilty that she agreed to do the interview immediately, and the author got about 2 minutes of air time (instead of the 6 to 8 minutes she'd been promised by the radio show producer).

Lesson learned. As a book publicist, I sometimes assume that authors will ask for clarification about anything they don't understand about any instructions that I provide for media interviews. However, not every author is a veteran of book promotion campaigns, and some authors need a bit more hand-holding than others. The takeaway, for me, is that I will spell everything out to authors at the start of book promotion campaigns, and if I'm explaining too much, then I will wait for my clients to tell me so.

What could have been a wonderful book promotion opportunity for this author turned into a truncated, brief radio appearance because of a misunderstanding. I take responsibility for that, and I will work hard to ensure that, going forward, clients don't miss book promotion opportunities (or find their book promotion opportunities are truncated) because of their lack of understanding the book promotion process.

And, yes, scheduling mishaps and missed phoned calls are a recurring occurrence with book promotion campaigns. That's one of the things about media interviews that you can nearly always count on: somewhere, somehow, a miscommunication will occur. Have a backup plan! That's my new motto.