Guest Articles: The New “It” Media Opportunity

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Around the time blogs first started catching on, writer Julie Powell decided – just for the heck of it – to cook every recipe in Julia Child’sMastering the Art of French Cooking and chronicle the experience on her blog.

We all know her story’s happy ending.

Soon every writer was launching or joining a blog. So was every mom, every foodie, every fitness buff, bibliophile and investment guru. For fun and fulfillment, but also, quite often, in the hopes of increasing discoverability. And we also know this story’s ending: a blogosphere that wound up as bloated and oversaturated as any literary agent’s slush pile.

Luckily the one constant in today’s media, which includes the online world, is change. And as media outlets have gone increasingly digital, a whole new category of outlets has emerged: the highly visible, online-only publication. Think, The Millions or The Huffington Post. These outlets have all but replaced personal blogs as a means for getting your name out there. Most offer superb opportunities for writers to submit and publish articles, opinion pieces and blog posts. And publishing one guest piece in an outlet like The Huffington Post can be equal to years of blogging in terms of the number of readers who stop by, comment and tweet.

In fact, as the media landscape continues to change, contributing pieces to

How Publicity Helps Writing Careers: A Case Study

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At some point, almost every writer asks: How will publicity help my career?

The truth is, like with so many other writer’s life issues, there is no single answer. But there are some general scenarios that can help guide our thinking, and this past month I had the privilege of seeing an author I’ve helped live out one of the success stories we all can hope for.

In early January Joe Burgo, whose self-published book Why Do I Do That? Psychological Defense Mechanisms and the Hidden Ways the Shape Our Lives I publicized, landed an impressive publishing deal from Touchstone for his next book, The Narcissist You Know.

Before getting to the story of the role publicity played, I have to gush about how superbly top-notch Joe’s writing and expertise are. Why Do I Do That is a page turner that sheds light into something we should all be aware of: the little lies we tell ourselves to hide from pain. Joe – who’s a practicing, Ph.D. psychotherapist – works round the clock, not only writing books and helping clients, but also blogging at his personal site, AfterPsychotherapy.com, writing articles for The Atlantic and blog posts for Psychology Today.

(The last two are are gigs that came from our work together.)

Joe’s story of catapulting from self-published to “featured deal” on Publisher’s Lunch Deluxe – at auction no less — is exactly the type of scenario

What it Takes to Get on NPR

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Recently I heard a snippet of Terry Gross’Fresh Air interview with Eat, Pray, Loveauthor Elizabeth Gilbert. Gilbert has a new book out and was on the show to talk about it.

A bit earlier in the same week, an author client had asked if I’d pitched her to NPR shows, including Fresh Air. My answer was, “Yes, of course.” It always is, because I always pitch the authors I represent to NPR — and to all the other dream-caliber, A-list outlets. But does that mean I expect interviews to pan out there for them?

Sadly, no. Not at all.

It’s an uncomfortable dilemma. Authors want to know their publicist is reaching out to A-list, dream outlets like Fresh Air, The New York Times, Oprah and The Today Show. Isn’t that one reason they’ve hired a publicist in the first place? And it wouldn’t make sense to simply leave those outlets off the list of places I reach out to even though the chances for the overwhelming majority of authors are virtually zero. For one thing, there’s the crucial dream factor for authors. As I’ve said before, I’m all for dreaming big! I also feel that as a matter of principle those outlets should continue hearing from all authors who’d like a fighting chance at recognition. They should be made aware again and again of these authors’ utterly staggering numbers, the variety of stories they’re writing about, their talent, their accomplishments.

But people like Terry Gross aren’t just looking for a good read to talk about: they’re looking for news. News, by definition, is something that’s not only new and timely, but is some combination of the following:

Simple Promo Tip: Call Your Book By its Name

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It’s a funny thing, being both the creator of such an intimate and personal product as a book and the one who has to do most of its peddling. This contradiction — asking authors to throw what’s often deeply private smack into the public realm for commercial purposes — can have strange effects on behavior, such as making us go suddenly tongue-tied when we actually have to use that one-line description we’ve practiced ad nauseum. (Sound familiar?)

And that’s just one example. At two recent events – the AWP conference in March and Grub Street’s Muse & the Marketplace conference this past weekend, I was reminded of another that’s been a bit of a pet peeve of mine, since it’s a big publicity faux pas: It can be summed up with these two simple words. “My book.”

On panel after panel, I heard authors talking about this amorphous…thing…they referred to as “my book.”

Each time, I cringed. “Doesn’t it have a name?” I wondered, “A title? Something to give it an identity beyond: ‘a very personal endeavor I’ve slaved over for years that’s become inseparable my very existence?’”

Which leads me to this quick, ridiculously simple promo tip for every writer out there (bonus: using it is cost-free!):

Always refer to your book by its title.

Or by an abbreviation of the title if it’s long. Especially when

Why Your Publicist Should Think Like a Novelist

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It probably happens each time you sit down to write: You have a plan, an idea of where you want your story to go. But as soon as the words start to flow, your idea changes slightly or another one pops into your mind. Since you’ll be obsessed with it unless you at least explore it, your plan has to change.

This is a lot like the process good publicists go through when planning and leading a campaign. That’s because fundamentally, PR is a creative story-telling exercise. Think about it: a publicist’s job is to find ways to tell the media and readers about your book.

The first step is crafting a brief but grabbing story about it. But this writing project is just the beginning of the creative journey involved in figuring out who among the gazillions of reporters and readers out there might want to hear this story, which particular aspects of it some might be more interested in than others, and how to re-tell the story in various ways depending on this.

Most often, ways to retell and re-frame a story come to mind only after a campaign has begun, once real reporters and real people have become engaged in live conversations about your book. And with each new conversation, new ideas spring up about other people or news outlets to contact beyond the initial list built for this purpose. For yes, there really, truly are gazillions.

Soon this creative process takes on a life of its own. Just like with

Marketing & the Spirit of Giving

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Marketing is about finding ways to tell people about your book so that they’ll buy it, right?

Technically, yes. But in the unpredictable and often mysterious world of books, it turns out that one of the very best marketing tools, particularly à propos in this holiday season but equally valid year-round, is…giving.

Perhaps this is because unlike so many other products, books are social by nature. They spark ideas, memories, questions and conversations we want to share. They can trigger a whole gamut of emotions from wrath and disgust to adulation and joy, making readers want to reach out and connect, see who else felt the same way. And everything that’s social has sharing — giving — at its heart.

For authors, this means thinking not in terms of what others can do for you (“Buy my book!” “Click on my link!” “Write a glowing review!”) but in terms of what youcan do for the reading community. What hands-on advice or unique insight you can offer in articles, guest posts or on your own blog? What nugget of humor might help a peer through a bad day? Do you have an answer to a question weighing on somebody’s mind? A contact a friend might find helpful? Offer it. Stay open to helping, no matter what the request is or who has made it.

A few other ways to give as an author are:

Share others’ blog posts and book news on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

Interview people on your blog. Invite them to write guest