A Day in the Life of a Book Publicist

Forty-one authors on virtual book tour in November

Happy TGIF!

The end of another long workday draws to an end but I have the wonderful weekend ahead to catch up on things like BLOGGING.

Pump Up Your Book is setting a record amount of authors touring in  November which is so exciting!  Forty-one authors have put their trust in us to get the word out about their books.  But it doesn't come without a price - loads of work, although I'm making great headway.

In November, the authors I will be representing personally are:

Joel M. Andre, author of Black Chronicles, Cry of the Fallen

M.M. Bennetts, author of Of Honest Fame

John L. Betcher, author of The 19th Element

Judi Moreo, author of Life Choices: Putting the Pieces Together

Valmore Daniels, author of Forbidden the Stars

Hana Samek Norton, author of The Sixth Surrender

Dina Kucera, author of Everything I never Wanted to Be

Sheila Roberts, author of The Snow Globe

Robert Seymour, author of Wig Begone

Vincent Zandri, author of The Remains

Mark Oetjens, author of The Staff of Rahgorra

K.D. Hays & Meg Weidman, authors of Toto's Tale

Bronwyn Storm, author of Ethan's Chase

Shelly Frome, author of The Twinning Murders

Kristy Haile, author of I Am Santa

LeAnn Neal Reilly, author of The Mermaid's Pendant

Nicholas Oliva, author of Finding God: To Believe or Not to Believe

Is that an unbelievable group of authors or what?  In the upcoming days I'll be blogging about each one of them to give you an inside glimpse of who they are as a client and as a talented and gifted author.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

How do we determine who reviews our books?

Cheryl Malandrinos, one of the power players at Pump Up Your Book, wrote a cute little ditty this morning (and posted a quite unbecoming picture of me...or was it?) at one of her blogs, Book Tours and More, today.  It's called 3 Ways You Can Make a Virtual Book Tour Coordinator's Day. 

The link is http://booktoursandmore.blogspot.com/2010/09/3-ways-you-can-make-virtual-book-tour.html but be sure to come back as I promise you it'll be worth your while.

I wonder sometimes if when people hear what we do, they get a mental image of a woman at a computer doing her thing over a cup of cappuccino, only to take a few breaks to take the kids to soccer practice, cook dinner for their family and maybe jump back on before they hit the sack. I don't know why but I'm getting a mental picture right now of someone I would love to be.  Except my kids are grown so thank God there's no soccer practice and I barely am the cook (oh shame on me) because the truth of the matter when you have this much responsibility, you're lucky if you can get someone to cook you a cup of Oodles of Noodles and take the dogs out.

So really, it's far from the truth of what really goes on behind the scenes when you have at least 25 authors each and every month who depend on you to help them sell your book.  There's little time to waste and most of it is spent scouring the blogosphere to find just that right reviewer's blog. 

Most of the stops on our author tours are on reviewer's blogs.  I say most, but it's probably more like half.  The thing about Pump Up is that we believe when an author goes on tour, it needs to be well-rounded.  You need to cover all the bases.  Reviews are great and authors love them, but we also include interviews and guest posts, podcasts, what have you to make it a well-rounded tour.

Getting back to review blogs, someone asked me the other day how do we determine which review blogs are going to host our authors.  She was under the impression it was a first come,  first serve basis and I quickly told her that whenever we get a review request come in, no matter if it's a new blog host or a seasoned one, we still have to have them pass  certain criteria. If they are new to us, their blog must be updated frequently and they have to have a full set of archives.  This is for SEO purposes.  They also have to be author friendly and must make books their main focus, although if a blog is highly trafficked but reviews products, too, we might give them a try.  Lots of factors to into why we choose blogs and no, it's not a first come, first serve basis, like I have seen other PR people from publishing houses do which I can only shake my head when I see it.  If the blogger has hundreds of followers, that's another plus.  If a blogger tells me they're going to post the review at Amazon, GoodReads, Library Thing, etc., that's an even bigger plus.  If a blogger has been known to use the social networks - Twitter and Facebook to name a couple - to talk about these books and promote their reviews, that's another brownie point or two or three.  Lots and lots of thought goes into who we choose if it's a new blogger.

As for seasoned blog hosts, they must pass the same criteria.  If they query us for a book, we check them out.  If they haven't blogged all month, then we have to decline.  If they agree to review a book and an emergency arises, we give them the benefit of the doubt and reschedule.  If this happens continuously, we have no recourse than to decline their requests.

The reasoning behind all this is why Cheryl posted her little ditty this morning.  Our job is not as easy as it sounds but thank goodness, we do have a file cabinet full of reviewers' information who have provided our authors with wonderful reviews and have made our clients very very happy.  A happy author is a happy tour coordinator.

Now excuse me, my Oodles of Noodles are calling my name...

Ahh...the weekend

I bet a lot of you think that an online book promoter must have some free time.  After all, she's her own boss, right?  If she wants to slip out to Starbucks and grab a cup of mocha delight and shoot the breeze, she can, right?

What little do people know but the work doesn't end just because it's the weekend.  Sure, I find time to walk down to the dock with the pooches or maybe I might slip out to the beach and take a stroll along the water's edge, grabbing seashells along the way. Or I might even take a few long trips during the year, but the work is still there waiting for me when I get back, for a book promoter's job is never done.  Just when you think you've caught up, there's still more waiting around the bend.

Since we don't run tours on the weekend at Pump Up Your Book, I use these valuable two days to try to catch up on email.  As I have 80,448 emails in my inbox (this is no joke), I try to whittle it down (and never really putting a huge dent in it).  Today I'm setting one of my tour coordinators up with a client, fielding emails both to her and the author, and making sure the transition goes okay. 

As for myself, I'm happy to announce Nick Oliva will be returning in November and December.  Wonderful book - Finding God: To Believe or Not to Believe.  He toured back in August '07 with a book called Only Moments.  We had just opened our doors a couple months earlier so he's one of our debut authors here at Pump Up Your Book and we're so happy he's come back to us to help him spread the word about his new book. 

Joel M. Andre is also returning for a second go around at Pump Up.  He toured with Kill 4 Me in September '08.  This time, he's promoting two books.  We'll be setting up stops for him in October and November for his horror novel, The Black Chronicles: Cry of the Fallen, then in November and December, he'll be touring with another horror book set at Christmas called A Death at the North Pole.  BTW, if anyone wants to review either, visit our reviewers page at Pump Up Your Book by clicking here.

Speaking of returning authors, John Knoerle is also coming back to his roost at Pump Up with his new book, A Despicable Profession.  John toured with A Pure Double Cross back in February '09.  And of course we can't leave out Vincent Zandri who has made us proud by becoming an Amazon bestseller for his Kindle edition of The Remains.  Vincent toured with us back in July with the Kindle edition of his book, now he's back touring in November and December with the print edition. 

So happy to have authors return.  When you consider their book, your book, it makes the world of difference. 

Until next time!