Why haven’t you heard back from the Today Show!?
And other questions I received as an inexperienced book publicist
My first job out of college was as a publicist for a nonprofit book publisher. We took our nonprofit mission very seriously in that we never got close to making any profit. Having an inexperienced recent college grad in charge of publicity probably played a role in that.
It was a good first job. I worked there for three years and got plenty of “real world” experience—mostly in the form of learning how to manage the expectations of authors. Once, a brand-new author with a book on a very generic topic emailed to ask, essentially, “When does my book go viral?” I had to find a way to diplomatically explain this wasn’t something we scheduled.
“Get me on Montel,” was another rather direct request I got from an author one time. “I know I would be great on his show.” Well, I know I would be great as head of publicity for Random House Publishers, but here we are. After absorbing the initial request, my first step was to Google, “Is Montel Williams still on TV?” since that might impact whether the author appeared on the program (among other factors).
My short-lived career in publishing began in the early 2010s. Social media was becoming an increasingly important tool for promoting products, personalities and presidential campaigns. A new author was insistent that I get him verified on Twitter (he had maybe 1,000 followers). Some authors had a decent following (or “platform” as we called it in the biz) but plenty did not, and some were surprised to learn that creating, managing and growing their personal social media accounts was not one of the few services we offered.
New authors often had the greatest disconnect between expectation and reality, but seasoned authors could be equally guilty of unrealistic expectations. One of the first authors I worked with had achieved some publishing success in the early 90s—20 years prior—and struggled to adjust to the idea that she was no longer a household name (not that she ever was). Why haven’t you heard back from the Today Show!?
This particular author was very important. People knew her. She had a PhD from Georgetown. She once left an agitated voicemail for me (she almost always called during the lunch hour) incensed that a U.S. Congressman friend of hers had not received her book. Emailing her the tracking details and that the package was signed for by someone at the Capitol Mail Room did not assuage her. How could it be that a package sent to a building with an incredibly high volume of mail, with numerous security measures post 9/11, had not reached its intended recipient? What, had it somehow gotten buried under a mountain of constituent mail!?
Perhaps an intern who had been living under a rock the past two decades hadn’t immediately recognized her name and rushed to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to hand deliver this package.
The large majority of authors were wonderful people and delightful to work with. But those handful of authors with sky-high expectations but rock bottom name recognition nearly broke me. When I cut short what was sure to be a promising career in publishing after only three years, I didn’t look back.