Publicist Extraordinaire

Every day I spend fooling with book promotion, I become more convinced that absolutely nobody has any idea how to do it and that I can't trust anyone to help me.

I spent a nice wad of cash on radio PR. And the company I hired is doing its job. However, the selection of spots they've given me is like a bowl of Jujubes with all but three red ones removed. I started out with an offer so bad I complained until they withdrew it. That was the lady whose show reached 32,000 people, assuming everyone in the county had the radio on. Then I got a guy who--I am fairly sure--is more of a podcaster than a radio host. Since then, it's been up and down. Good spot in Miami, iffy spot sort of near Denver, and so on.

Naturally, I've been trying to find out if they're working on getting the big dogs, like Mancow and Imus. But I don't get much feedback.

I eventually decided to find out exactly how hard it is to line up radio spots. I got on Wikipedia and got a list of the biggest US metropolitan areas. I made a top-down list, starting with New York. I looked at Arbitron's site and picked stations that attract a lot of listeners. I started emailing shows and calling their producers. Guess what? It's not that hard. I landed a big show in Minneapolis, and I may have one of the top shows in LA. A reader hooked me up with WRKO in Boston, which seems likely to use me, and another reader wants to connect me with a station in Gainesville, which is a fairly big town.

I got cocky after seeing my results, and I decided to call The Colbert Report and get an address and a name to send the book to. No problem. I may send one to The Daily Show, too. After that, I felt so good I contacted Mancow's syndication company, whatever it is, and I got an address from them, too.

Some of these inquiries are going to pay off. Cost? Zero. And the bonus is that I get contacts I can reuse later. Some are already inviting me back.

I have to wonder. If I can do it, starting from scratch, why don't the publisher's PR people do it? It would certainly be more efficient. I could be writing while I'm looking up radio station contact information.

The logical question after all that is, if I can do this, why can't I syndicate a column? If I can call radio stations, I can certainly call newspapers.

It's amazing how crazy the world is. I shouldn't have to do this stuff. If the world made sense, I'd be doing my job--writing--and someone else would be doing his job--PR. But apparently publishers and syndicates sign writers and then, as a matter of policy, do nothing at all to promote them. If that's all they do, you have to wonder why they continue to exist.

The big answer, at least with regard to publishers, is that it's hard to get bookstores to stock a POD title. But newspapers are perfectly happy to print self-syndicated columns. And thanks to email, distribution ought to be as simple as creating and using a mailing list.

By the end of the week, I should have some idea whether I should ever even think about paying a dime to another publicist.

I hate this, because I am not an outgoing person, and I do not enjoy spending the day on the phone and writing emails. But if it works out, I guess I should be happy, because A) it worked out, and B) I won't be shelling out five thousand a month to someone who doesn't do PR as well as I do.

I told Moxie today that if this works, and she puts out a book, I'll be more than happy to use the contacts I develop and spare her the horror of having no PR. It would be so easy. Why would I NOT do it? Don't ask me. Ask her connected buddies who apparently do nothing.

I can see this is going to be a long battle. This entire year is going to be devoted to putting me in position to publicize my second book. The effect on the current book will be almost incidental. An excuse for learning the process and developing the contacts.

If I'm going to screw with syndication, it seems to me that I ought to put a weekly or biweekly column up and establish a mailing list. I guess I should do that here and at my hub site, just to get in the swing. I don't have the slightest clue how to put a mailing list form on a WordPress site but I guess I can figure it out eventually.

This means 800- to 1000-word columns, at the very longest. And I can't write like a blogger any more. I'll have to write like someone whose kids might see the columns at the breakfast table. That's not a problem. I pretty much had to make that change anyway. I can always post additional stuff in other places.

I'm so mad about all this, I could spit. Honest to God, it seems like you can't trust ANYBODY to do anything for you any more. No matter what the job is, if you want it done right at a price you can afford, you have to do it yourself. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe the quality of the spots I'm buying is going to skyrocket, and maybe getting my own spots is harder than I think. But I have a simultaneously optimistic and sick feeling that I'm right.

Even stranger, this is going to make me a thousand times more appealing to syndicates, periodicals, and publishers. Simply because I'll be "pre-promoted" when they buy my work. None of that dreadful business of doing their jobs; let Steve handle EVERYTHING, and get back to looking at online porn on office time.

Tell me life could be any weirder. I dare you.