"I helped make Joel Osteen a best-selling author"

And other lies I was told while an inexperienced book publicist.

AI-generated image of “a business man in a suit and his pants are on fire.”

Welcome to all my new subscribers! In addition to book reviews/analysis, I also share stories about my first job out of college as a book publicist. You can find previous stories here and here.

I once had to endure regular contact with an author’s friend/business partner who had graciously agreed to share his vast knowledge of book publicity. Pro bono, of course. Once, during a torturous conference call, the man (we’ll call him “Tom”) made several eyebrow-raising claims:

• He had helped several authors reach the New York Times bestseller lists.

• He could get our book in front of Ann Romney (this was shortly after the 2012 presidential election).

• He had played a large role in making Joel Osteen a best-selling author.

My boss had worked in sales for Simon and Schuster, Joel Osteen’s publisher, during the time Tom was claiming to have helped Osteen become a bestseller. When we got off the call, my boss said, “I’ve never heard of this guy.”
 
You know who had heard of this guy? “Everyone.” When asked who he might be able to get in touch with, he said, “Just name someone, I probably have a connection.” His romantic partner was a Z-list “celebrity” who interviewed her peers in Hollywood on a weekend entertainment show. He knew people, and people knew him.

He once called me out of the blue and launched into a story about how he was at an event recently with Lou Ferrigno. Given that I wasn’t even born when the star of the late-70s show “The Incredible Hulk” was on TV, I was perhaps less impressed than he expected me to be. I waited for him to drop a few more names (while I Googled each one) before asking him what he was actually calling about.

I could tell this would be a rough working relationship when Tom decided to, unsolicited, send some edits to the marketing materials we had put together. THERE…were random uses of Capitalization, italicizing And “Punctuation” that…MADE no SENSE “at all.” Words WOULD be underlined for no APPARENT “rhyme” or reason.

Not to toot my own horn, but I got some pretty decent publicity for this book. I booked the author on two morning TV shows in the massive Los Angeles market (the first and only time that happened). I also got the author mentioned in a story that appeared on the home page of aol.com (this was the early 2010s). Meanwhile, after weeks of working with this lunatic, Tom had produced absolutely zilch.

But that all changed one fateful day. We got a “missive” (what people in the biz like Tom call emails) with the BIG NEWS that Kevin Sorbo might endorse the book. My first reaction was, “who?” This was before the megahit “God’s Not Dead” breathed new life into Sorbo’s acting career. At the time, his most recent on-air role was “security guard” in the unrated spoof film “Paranormal Movie” with a Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score of 0%.

Barely able to contain his excitement, he concluded his email with “Kick it Guys…send addl bks and pdf.” A few days later, I got an agitated phone call from Tom. It was then I realized that “send addl bks and pdf” was obviously to be understood as, “I have several important meetings this week and expect you to overnight an entire package of books and press kits from Texas to New York City to an address I have not specified.” Despite his many years in publicity, communication was not his strong suit.

In an email exchange with my boss, who tried to smooth things over, Tom reminded us that his only motivation was to help the book “reach the highest heights…and beyond.” One would think there was nothing beyond the highest heights because they were, well, the highest. But I digress.

Thankfully, after several weeks of working with a real professional like Tom, the book was a big hit. All that publicity—and Kevin Sorbo’s electric star power—catapulted the book to “the highest heights.” Just kidding. The book was a total flop and thousands of unsold copies of the first and only printing sat in the warehouse long after publicity ended. At least I got some good stories out of the experience.