98% of the publicists I’ve had the pleasure to work with have been extremely friendly and considerate. I appreciate their efforts to get books to me in time to review them and for interviews. I am respectful of their position and they are respectful of mine. I realize they are under the gun, that they are often underpaid and just barely getting by, and that getting their authors out there in a crowded marketplace can’t be an easy task.
Recently, I called back a publicist who didn’t follow through with me about a possible interview. I had emailed and telephoned her about it, but I hadn’t received a reply in a week. And I figured that if she really wanted to get her author out there, she would have contacted me in a timely manner or responded to my email.
Meanwhile, other publicists, perspicacious enough to understand that I needed to get my interview times nailed down a few weeks in advance so that I could plan out my prep time (The Bat Segundo Show is, after all, something I labor very hard over), set up interviews and got the books to me immediately.
Now when I called this publicist, I had already lined up about seven interviews over the next ten days. That’s a lot of books to read. And my policy is to never talk with an author unless I have read her book(s). Otherwise, what’s the point? This may seem an archaic position for some folks to parse, but the point of all this is to do serious legwork and to give a damn about what you’re doing.
Now I try to be as courteous as possible. And where some journalists might have disregarded the publicist, I called this publicist back to tell her that I was unavailable. I explained to her in very polite terms that I was extremely sorry but that I was overextended. Instead of giving me a chance to launch my goofy “We’ll always have Paris” routine, this publicist took great offense to my courtesy call, claiming that she did call me back and suggested that I was the discourteous one.
“Well, I didn’t hear from you in a week. And I called and emailed you. If you had talked with me last week when my slate wasn’t so full, we might have nailed this down.”
The publicist huffed and puffed at me and then demanded that I reschedule another interview at the last minute — one that she hadn’t been involved in setting up. I told her that this was unlikely, given that I had moved several things around to make this particular interview happen, which I had confirmed twice already.
Now I’m thinking that maybe this publicist was having a bad day. As an interviewer, I’ve often found myself regarded as some intellectual equivalent to a bartender or a cab driver — treated like an invisible man, if regarded at all. I don’t mind this. If anything, I find this amusing and it affords me a great opportunity to observe.
But when there’s an immediate assumption that I am expected to interview an author, when a publicist cannot understand that I am juggling about six thousand things and cannot devote all of my attentions to her author and that I have a life I’m managing on top of this, what kind of message does this send to me? Or another journalist? For an author wanting to build word of mouth, how can this be good for them? If you’re an author, do you really know your publicist?
I’ve been turned down by many authors and I certainly don’t take it personally. The least one can expect from a publicist is the same kind of professional courtesy. And maybe a few more Casablanca references.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
I agree, it is up to the publicist to be professional!
I wonder if situations like this then cast an unfavorable light on the author? It would not surprise me to know that most or at least many authors wouldn’t know how their publicist works or their reputation in the biz.