Bulletproof Publicity

Last year, every other day brought a new article or weblog post about writers’ dire, dire need for independent publicists. Lately, though, the topic’s become less of a constant — even if, as Quinn Dalton argues on beatrice.com, there’s still a constant need for indy publicists’ supplementary services.

“I thought I could be pretty effective doing publicity for High Strung,” Dalton writes of her first novel. “I had been the director of public relations for an advertising agency for a number of years, and I figured that after getting great coverage for my clients, I’d do fine getting some for myself.”

[But] It’s a funny thing: Publishers want writers to be more media friendly, even savvy, but when writers promote themselves, they run the risk of being perceived as arrogant or grabby. I learned this, painfully, on a couple of occasions. So when my novel came out in paperback last July, I prepared a short but detailed media list, complete with pitch angles for the targeted journalists, and asked the in-house publicist assigned to me at the time if she would call these people–and not just leave a voice mail, but try to catch them on the phone, because a voice mail, like email, generally just gets deleted. The publicist could not see my point. “I just don’t think calling will help,” she actually said to me.

This is when I decided to hire an independent publicist for Bulletproof Girl.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.