In an essay for mediabistro.com's main site, Joel Schwartzberg offers tips on how to manage your own book publicity:

"No one in the media is interested in selling your book for you, unless you have blood family in the media. Professional and amateur book reviewers will review your book if they feel so inclined, but your book has to get in a very long and competitive line. For the rest of the media world, you need to sell them on something more instantly interesting then the book itself: your mission. If you haven't already defined a mission, consider how your book uniquely and superlatively counsels people, fixes an institution, saves the world, enlightens the public, or performs some compelling function other than holding up short table legs and pressing flowers."

Schwartzberg's "Develop Your Author Platform" online workshop begins next Monday, July 27, at mediabistro.com.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you're not a member yet, you can register for $55 a year, and start reading those articles, receive discounts on mediabistro.com seminars and workshops, and get all sorts of other swell bonuses.