Archive for May 10, 2018

Publicity

Preparing for the Press

Next week, I’ll be going to the Nebula Awards conference. I’m not up for an award, but the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has turned the awards event into a conference for writers. There is an awards banquet and ceremony, but it’s surrounded by other activities, including workshops for writers.

I’ll be doing a workshop on dealing with the press. This draws upon my pre-writing background. My degree is in journalism, and as a student I worked in radio, television, and print. I ended up getting a job in media relations, where I used my journalism experience to pitch stories to reporters and help doctors prepare for interviews. That then got me a job at a public relations agency, where I was involved with our media training workshops to help our clients get ready for press interviews, and I continued that in my next job, where I traveled around the country doing media training sessions for clients.

Since I became an author, I’ve been on the other side of things, being interviewed by reporters. I’ve even been on a TV studio interview segment.

Now I have to distill all that into a half-hour session. Whew!

But doing that has made me realize how weak my own PR efforts for myself have been. I haven’t been doing the things for myself that I would have advised clients to do. I haven’t thought a lot about my key messages or what I want to say about myself and my books. I haven’t delved into all the opportunities that are now available for promotion, like podcasts, to pitch myself and my books. I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that I really don’t like doing public relations. There’s a reason I write full-time, in spite of the fact that it comes with a lot of financial uncertainty. I hated my old job, and doing it took a lot out of me. I’m great with the strategy and with coaching others in how to do it, but the actual day-to-day activity of implementing a strategy was utterly soul-sucking. My last couple of years were probably my happiest (minus the last few months). After I tried to quit because I was so miserable, my boss helped me essentially create a job that involved the things I liked to do and none of the things I hated, with a flexible schedule and mostly telecommuting. It only fell apart when that boss left. I doubt I’d find that kind of opportunity again.

I guess what I need is a minion to implement a strategy I come up with, but I’d have to do a lot of publicity work to sell enough books to be able to afford a minion. And I’m not sure that really ramping up any publicity I could do for myself without the backing of a publisher’s publicist would actually move the needle all that much in selling books. I’m better off spending my time writing and getting more books out there.

But even if you aren’t pitching yourself for interviews, there may come times when people ask you for interviews, and for that, you need to be prepared. And I need to be prepared. And thus, the workshop.