NPR Books Watch — 2/19-2/25

Turns out that blizzard thing the other week was not actually Snowmageddon, because this one is Snowmageddon.  (At least until the next time it snows.)

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Anyone who emails me the imprints of all the books listed (or houses if no imprint is available) will win the NPR Books Grid for the prior week that includes, in addition to the information below, interviewer, pub date, imprint, genre, post-interview Amazon ranking, pre-interview ranking (if the book was mentioned on Shelf Awareness and I was able to look up the number before the interview), and interview hyperlink.

* indicates the interview is a rebroadcast.

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TOTAL book stories for the past week: 15 (22 last week)

All Things Considered: 4 (6 LW)

Diane Rehm: 2 (2 LW)

Fresh Air: 2 (4 LW)

Morning Edition: 2 (3 LW)

NPR.org: 3 (3 LW)

Talk of the Nation: 1 (2 LW)

Tell Me More: 0 (1 LW)

Weekend Edition Saturday: 0 (0 LW)

Weekend Edition Sunday: 1 (1 LW)

All Things Considered	Slow Death by Rubber Duck	Bruce	Lourie
All Things Considered	Privileges, The	Jonathan	Dee
All Things Considered	Union Atlantic	Adam	Haslett
All Things Considered	You Must Read This … / Riddley Walker	Russell	Hoban
Diane Rehm	Making Toast*	Roger	Rosenblatt
Diane Rehm	Sky Train	Canyon	Sam
Fresh Air	86’ed	Dan	Fante
Fresh Air	Genius on the Edge	Gerald	Imber
Morning Edition	Good Value	Stephen	Green
Morning Edition	Union Atlantic	Adam	Haslett
NPR.org	One Amazing Thing	Chitra Banerjee	Divakaruni
NPR.org	What We’re Reading, Feb. 23 – Mar. 1
NPR.org	Star	Peter	Biskind
Talk of the Nation	Death of Josseline, The	Margaret	Regan
Weekend Edition Sunday	Bloodroot	Amy	Greene

NPR Books Watch — 2/12-2/18

Yesterday I fell asleep on the subway dreaming of the slopes and woke up at West Fourth Street — ah, well.  Life’s not perfect.  At least today is Friday.

Anyone who emails me the imprints of all the books listed (or houses if no imprint is available) will win the NPR Books Grid for the prior week that includes, in addition to the information below, interviewer, pub date, imprint, genre, post-interview Amazon ranking, pre-interview ranking (if the book was mentioned on Shelf Awareness and I was able to look up the number before the interview), and interview hyperlink.

* indicates the interview is a rebroadcast.

*** TOTAL book stories for the past week: 22 (30 last week)

All Things Considered: 6 (7  LW)

Diane Rehm: 2 (3 LW)

Fresh Air: 4 (2 LW)

Morning Edition: 3 (4 LW)

NPR.org: 3 (5 LW)

Talk of the Nation: 2 (1 LW)

Tell Me More: 1 (2 LW)

Weekend Edition Saturday: 0 (2 LW)

Weekend Edition Sunday: 1 (3 LW)

All Things Considered	Bargaining with the Devil	Robert	Mnookin
All Things Considered	Love Poems	Lon	Otto
All Things Considered	Unnamed, The	Joshua	Ferris
All Things Considered	Making Toast	Roger	Rosenblatt
All Things Considered	151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen	Leonard	Maltin
All Things Considered	Gladiator	Dan	Clark
Diane Rehm	Making Toast	Roger	Rosenblatt
Diane Rehm	Autobiography of an Execution	David	Dow
Fresh Air	When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win	Carol	Leifer
Fresh Air	Remembering Congressman Charlie Wilson*
Fresh Air	Routes of Man, The	Ted	Conover
Fresh Air	Death of American Virtue	Ken	Gormley
Morning Edition	Bag Lady Papers, The	Alexandra	Penney
Morning Edition	Dead Hand, The	David E.	Hoffman
Morning Edition	Man from Beijing, The	Henning	Mankell
NPR.org	Baba Yaga Laid an Egg	Dubravka	Ugresic
NPR.org	What We’re Reading, Feb. 17 – 22, 2010
NPR.org	Point Omega	Don	DeLillo
Talk of the Nation	Immortal Life of Henriette Lacks	Rebecca	Skloot
Talk of the Nation	Bag Lady Papers, The	Alexandra	Penney
Tell Me More	Black Writers: Where Is The Love, Communication?
Weekend Edition Sunday	Beneath the Lion’s Gaze	Maaza	Mengiste

Book publicity FAQ: book events

Last week I posted about book publicity FAQs that pertained to the media.  Of course, book promotion also involves scheduling author events, which is another area in which book publicists often get questions.  Here are a few of the most common.

Can you add [city(s)] / [bookstore(s)] to the book tour?

Sometimes it simply isn’t possible to make changes to a planned book tour; in cases where it might be, we need to approach additional opportunities strategically.  (You may have heard that Seattle has great bookstores, but that doesn’t mean we’re automatically going to add Seattle to a book tour — or that you would get a good crowd at a Seattle bookstore.)

What you need to know: First off, book tours are scheduled after very careful consideration about whether a tour will help sell books (or whether this is a media-driven title), potential local interest in an author / book, a store’s / venue’s history with a certain type of book / author, media possibilities in the market,  budget (of course) and with input from sales representatives and from stores themselves.  Second, book tours are typically scheduled three-six months in advance of the book’s publication.  If you have any questions about the tour (or if you are wondering whether there will be a tour), your best bet is to ask about it early.  If you’ve been assigned a publicist, talk to them; otherwise ask your editor.  (A month — or even two — before the book’s publication is really too late in most cases.)

Sometimes authors do a fair amount of traveling on their own.  If it happens that your personal travel will take you to certain cities at certain times and you’d like to see if a bookstore talk can be arranged at the same time, talk to the publicist as soon as you can.  Keep in mind that bookstores are most inclined to host signings for authors with recently-published books (“recent” being in the month or so before the event) and  will want to know if an author has local connections — friends / family in a city who will attend an event (and buy books) — or if the book would otherwise be of local interest.  Stores spend time and money promoting their events, so they really need to be selective about scheduling author talks.  Do keep in mind that even if it’s not possible to schedule a book talk, you can always stop by stores to sign copies of your book(s).  Signed books, particularly hardcovers, always go over well with readers, and some bookstores may order additional copies of a book (assuming they think they can sell it well) if they know in advance that an author will sign copies.

Can you arrange for books to be sold at an off-site event?

Possibly, if we find out early enough.

What you need to know: Rule of thumb — most booksellers will ask for an anticipated audience of at least 100 people in order to consider selling books off site.  Arranging for books to be sold at off-site events can be time consuming for the book publicist and unless an event is expected to draw hundreds of people, selling books off site often isn’t particularly lucrative for the bookseller.  (The bookseller needs to send at least one staff member to the event, which means they’re now shorthanded at the store and people who buy books at lectures don’t browse and make additional purchases at the store.)

For details about off-site book sales (including options for selling books if it’s not possible to find a bookseller), check my post What you need to know about off-site book sales.  And again, contact your publicist early so they (and the store) have time to make arrangements.

How do virtual events work?

With fewer authors traveling on book tours, more bookstores are trying out virtual book events these days, for example Skyping in authors or having authors participate in Facebook or Twitter conversations.

What you need to know: Being something of a technogeek myself, I’ve talked to a number of bookstores about the possibility of them hosting virtual events.  For the most part, stores have found that while virtual events can be successful for big-name authors, it can be hard to entice a large audience to interact virtually with lesser known authors.  (Truth be told, it’s hard enough enticing people to interact IRL.)  Which doesn’t mean that it’s not possible if you target the right readers for the right author, but generally speaking, stores seem far more willing at this point to experiment with virtual events with known quantities.

Needless to say, virtual events will be much easier for authors with some technical savvy, but most people with a computer and the ability to follow instructions can probably muddle their way through.  (FYI regarding Skype events — Macs have built-in webcams; otherwise you can find one at an electronics store for under $100.)

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As a book publicist, author, agent, or other publishing industry professional what other book event questions come to mind?

NPR Books Watch — 2/4-2/11

Anyone who emails me the imprints of all the books listed (or houses if no imprint is available) will win the NPR Books Grid for the prior week that includes, in addition to the information below, interviewer, pub date, imprint, genre, post-interview Amazon ranking, pre-interview ranking (if the book was mentioned on Shelf Awareness and I was able to look up the number before the interview), and interview hyperlink.

* indicates the interview is a rebroadcast.

***

TOTAL book stories for the past week: 30 (27 last week)

All Things Considered: 7 (6 LW)

Diane Rehm: 3 (3LW)

Fresh Air: 2 (5  LW)

Morning Edition: 4 (3 LW)

NPR.org: 5 (5 LW)

Talk of the Nation: 1 (4 LW)

Tell Me More: 2 (1 LW)

Weekend Edition Saturday: 2 (0 LW)

Weekend Edition Sunday: 3 (0LW)

All Things Considered	Immortal Life of Henriette Lacks	Rebecca	Skloot
All Things Considered	Country Driving	Peter	Hessler
All Things Considered	Ransom	David	Malouf
All Things Considered	Lost Books of the Odyssey, The	Zachary	Mason
All Things Considered	Sexually, I’m More of a Switzerland	David	Rose
All Things Considered	Postmistress, The	Sarah	Blake
All Things Considered	Wintry Literature For A Snowy Day
All Things Considered	Making Toast	Roger	Rosenblatt
Diane Rehm	Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy	Eamon	Javers
Diane Rehm	Bomb Power*	Garry	Wills
Diane Rehm	Curfewed Night	Basharat	Peer
Fresh Air	Autobiography of an Execution	David	Dow
Fresh Air	Animals in Translation	Temple	Grandin
Morning Edition	Point Omega	Don	DeLillo
Morning Edition	Staying True	Jenny	Sanford
Morning Edition	Wrong Place, Wrong Time	John A.	Rich
Morning Edition	Conspirata	Robert	Harris
NPR.org	What We’re Reading, Feb. 9 – 15, 2010
NPR.org	Shadow Tag	Louise	Erdrich
NPR.org	Comics That Have A Nice Beat And Are Easy To Dance To
NPR.org	Wake Up Dead	Robert	Smith
NPR.org	Three Books To Take A Bite Out Of Valentine’s Day
Talk of the Nation	Next Hundred Million, The	Joel	Kotkin
Tell Me More	Why I Stayed	Gayle	Haggard
Tell Me More	As Time Goes By	Abigail	Trafford
Weekend Edition Saturday	On the Brink	Henry	Paulson
Weekend Edition Saturday	Trout Fishing in America	Richard	Brautigan
Weekend Edition Sunday	Birthright	A. Roger	Ekirch
Weekend Edition Sunday	Shadow Tag	Louise	Erdrich
Weekend Edition Sunday	I’m Still Standing	Shoshana	Johnson

Book publicity FAQ: Media

Follow the Reader, an incredibly informative publishing blog, has been running a series of posts entitled Fine Arts of Marketing, Publicity + Advertising in which they discuss, well, book marketing, publicity and advertising.

Here on the publicity end, there are a number of questions that we book publicists often get from editors, authors and literary agents, so I’m listing a few FAQs here.  I initially had tackled a number of questions in this post, but decided it would be easier to break it up into two, so this post deals with media questions.  Next week I’ll post book tour FAQs.

Can you book me on [show] tomorrow?

Pretty much, no.  (Unless the author can address a breaking news topic, in which case we might book an author with a few hours notice.) 

What you need to know: Broadcast producers (and their print and online counterparts) need time to receive books and prepare for interviews which means that typically their lead times are between two and four weeks, sometimes more.  Typically, we’re booking interviews two-four weeks out, although some shows will book guests for the next week.

Can you book me on Oprah / The Today Show / The Daily Show / Fresh Air?  Will my book be reviewed in the New York Times Book Review?

Some books really are a good fit for these shows / newspapers and you can be assured that the publicists are heavily pitching those titles.  Many others are “maybes” and we still pitch those titles just in case.  But be realistic about your expectations based on the coverage you do see — before you start clamoring for a Daily Show appearance simply because your friend told you that it really sells books, watch the show.  When was the last time Jon Stewart interviewed a novelist?  How often does Terry Gross cover personal finance?  (And publicists — be realistic with your authors.)

What you need to know:  There are hundreds of thousands of books published annually; most shows that interview authors cover, at most, four books a week, often less.  (To see what books are covered on the national NPR shows, you can check my NPR Book Watch.)  This doesn’t mean you won’t get a national booking, but it does mean we all have to work harder to fine tune and personalize pitches — this is where input from authors can be really handy — and to research which shows / correspondents cover (or like) a topic.

On the print end, book coverage has largely been reduced to token reviews (or more often mentions) although many blogs and websites have picked up the slack.  (What remains to be seen, of course, is whether a blog review can generate the sales that print reviews in major national publications can.)

What you should also know is that publicity departments are in touch with the editors and producers of many major publications and national shows (and some local ones) months in advance of a book’s publication.  At the start of each season, publicists mail out catalogs to thousands of editors, producers and reporters and subsequently meet / talk with many to review the season’s titles.  Three to six months before a book’s publication, galleys are sent to major editors and producers nationwide.  Finally, four-six weeks before a book’s publication, finished books are sent to the media.  We’re not kidding when we say we blanket the media.

The downside to aggressive media outreach campaigns is that when hundreds of publicists are promoting thousands of titles, the media to whom we are aggressively reaching out have progressively less time to respond to each request we make.  This means that we often don’t get responses from editors and producers (try as we might to be selective about what we pitch to whom).

All around, it’s not an ideal situation, but that’s the reality these days.

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What book publicity / media questions would you add?

NPR Books Watch — 1/29-2/4

So apparently J.D. Salinger died last week.

Anyone who emails me the imprints of all the books listed (or houses if no imprint is available) will win the NPR Books Grid for the prior week that includes, in addition to the information below, interviewer, pub date, imprint, genre, post-interview Amazon ranking, pre-interview ranking (if the book was mentioned on Shelf Awareness and I was able to look up the number before the interview), and interview hyperlink.

* indicates the interview is a rebroadcast.

***

TOTAL book stories for the past week: 27 (19 last week)

All Things Considered: 6 (3 LW)

Diane Rehm: 3 (1 LW)

Fresh Air: 5 (6 LW)

Morning Edition: 3 (2 LW)

NPR.org: 5 (3 LW)

Talk of the Nation: 4 (2 LW)

Tell Me More: 1 (0 LW)

Weekend Edition Saturday: 0 (0  LW)

Weekend Edition Sunday: 0 (1 LW)

All Things Considered	Voodoo Histories	David	Aaronovich
All Things Considered	What I Thought I Knew	Aiice Eve	Cohen
All Things Considered	Sleepless	Charlie	Huston
All Things Considered	Impact	Douglas	Freston
All Things Considered	Citizens of London	Lynne	Olson
All Things Considered	Get Me Out	Randi Hutter	Epstein
Diane Rehm	Being with Animals	Barbara	King
Diane Rehm	Making the Most of Your Money Now	Jane Bryant	Quinn
Diane Rehm	Bomb Power	Garry	Wills
Fresh Air	Game Change	John	Heilemann
Fresh Air	Get Me Out	Randi Hutter	Epstein
Fresh Air	Quants, The	Scott	Patterson
Fresh Air	Immortal Life of Henriette Lacks	Rebecca	Skloot
Fresh Air	More Than a Game	Brian	Billick
Morning Edition	Meeting J.D. Salinger — Courtesy Of A Rainstorm
Morning Edition	Can They Do That?	Lewis	Maltby
Morning Edition	Conspirata	Robert	Harris
NPR.org	When Compared To Salinger, A ‘Thank You’ Will Do
NPR.org	Wild Child	T.C.	Boyle
NPR.org	What We’re Reading, Feb. 2 – 8, 2010
NPR.org	Wish Her Safe at Home	Stephen	Benatar
NPR.org	Unnamed, The	Jonathan	Ferris
Talk of the Nation	From Eternity to Here	Sean	Carroll
Talk of the Nation	Spartacus War, The	Barry	Strauss
Talk of the Nation	More Six Word Memoirs	Smith	Magazine
Talk of the Nation	Mark Twain	Michael	Shelden
Tell Me More	Woring in he Shadows	Gabriel	Thompson

Facebook profile or fan page? Who should set it up — author? Publisher?

The other day I was discussing an author’s Facebook fan page with a colleague — we’d set up the page, but months after the book’s publication, we didn’t have time to maintain it.  So what to do?  Shut down the profile?  Post an “out of office” status message?  I’ve blogged about this before, suggesting that book publicists not maintain Facebook pages and profiles for authors.  And in fact, while we did establish the page, we made it clear that it was set up by the publishing house … except no one saw that.

This raises two issues (at least for those authors and publishers interested in promoting a book on Facebook, which often is a good idea — but not mandatory — for all titles):

1) Do you set up a profile (typically for people), or a fan page (for people or products)?

Profiles and fan pages allow you to connect with friends or fans in different ways.  (For example, if you friend request someone, they need to accept your request; on the other hand, anyone can become a fan of a book or author.)  But what it really comes down to is that there needs to be a real person, i.e., not a book publicist or marketing team, behind a profile — with more and more authors on Facebook these days, users automatically assume that any author profile or fan page is maintained by the author.  (If you as a book publicist or author are getting pressure to do otherwise, send the powers that be the link to this post.)

There’s a little more leeway for a book, i.e., product, fan page — for example, I assume the folks behind the Red Mango fan page to which I belong are on its marketing team, but that doesn’t make the suggested flavors / toppings any less yummy.

Some authors choose to set up both profiles for themselves as well as fan pages for their books, which is great as long as an author has the time to maintain both.  The advantage is that a user looking up either an author’s name or the book’s title will find something.

2) Who should set up and maintain the Facebook page or profile — author or publishing house?

Although I am advocating authors getting involved in their Facebook profiles / pages (if they are interested in social networking), there’s still plenty that the publisher can do.  A book publicist (or someone else at the publishing house) can help set up a profile / page by:

— providing content about the book (text, JPEGs)

— adding information about in-person and virtual author events

— helping to update the page / profile with links to coverage of the book or author

In addition to any of the above, an author should:

— maintain the page / profile by interacting with readers

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Facebook, realizing the increasing popularity of its service, has published its own tips for creating pages and profiles.  Also, Buzzmarketing Daily offers good social media tips.  Do you use Facebook profiles?  Or fan pages?  If you’re a book publicist, how much do you and how much does the author do?