When Being a Publicist Takes on a New Meaning

I have officially been in publicity for roughly four months. Hardly long enough to be called a seasoned pro, but what happened to me tonight made me realize that all this hard work I'm pushing myself to do for my little virtual book tour company has already paid off in ways I'd never dreamed possible.

There comes a time in one's life when you suddenly realize that yeah this is what I am supposed to be doing. Might take almost a lifetime to realize, but when it hits, it's like the best feeling in the world.

And this realization hit me tonight when I saw someone blog for the first time. Now, you would think there's not a thing phenomenol in that. We've all had our first times.

But, this was different.

I'm talking about watching someone who didn't even know what a blog was actually make his first post, then email me to ask when he could put his second one up. I had created a monster and this was my intention.

I've told everyone how important blogging is to promote your books. I've suggested putting up book blogs and adding tags. I ran a workshop in here not too long ago (look in archives) about how to promote your book blog and why it was so very important to have one.

To refresh your memory, a book blog is another vehicle to sell your book, but by adding tags and learning how to promote your book blog, you can up your search engine ranking dramatically.

I received an email tonight from Cheryl Malandrinos over at The Book Connection. Cheryl is one of my blog hosts who so graciously hosts my authors at Pump Up Your Book Promotion on their virtual book tours. Cheryl has been there for me so many times, I owe her my firstborn child, haha.

Anyway, she went on to tell me to hop over to StoryCrafters, another blog she writes for, that she mentioned my company and thought I'd like to read it. Of course, I drop everything and go over. If you'd like to go see what she wrote, go to http://storycrafters.blogspot.com/2007/08/promotion-is-full-time-job.html.

"Promotion is a Full-Time Job" was the title of her post and she goes on to say how she realized that it's almost impossible to promote right and write, too. We're all doing it, but somewhere along the line, editing doesn't get done because someone sent you a few links of places you could promote your book for free and you just had to get yours in. Or, that manuscript that was supposed to go to the publisher months ago *waving hand* is still sitting in files because you're out there either promoting yourself or in my case promoting other people.

You need to be Wonder Woman, but you just can't.

Something suffers.

But, there are some of us who think smart and hire someone to help us promote to save some time to write. And that's where I come in.

I love doing what I do. I simply love it. But, tonight, everything just came to a head why I love what I do and it was all because of Dwayne G. Anderson.

Now, Dwayne is a new client who will be going out on a virtual book tour next month. He's all excited because he's finally found someone who can help him promote his book in ways he hadn't thought of. He's a very young author - only 24 - and has three books already. A phenomenol young man. I wasn't even published until I was in my early forties, so for Dwayne to have three at twenty-four, it was just a phenomenol thing to me.

When he sent in his application, I had no idea how old he was. I could sense the enthusiasm radiating from his email, but nothing to indicate his age. I liked the sound of his book and took him on.

I asked him if he had a blog as that was pretty necessary to have for these tours to work and he said, "No." I asked him if he had ever blogged and he again said, "No."

So, I set him up a blog at http://www.partiallyhuman.blogspot.com/ tonight.

And he made his first post.

Now this is also someone who has Asperger's Syndrome. I asked him what it was and he said his brain perceives things differently from other people. Talking to him, I would have never known it. Whatever way his brain perceives things must be a good thing because he's a very talented young author.

So, I gave him instructions on how to post and waited. A few minutes later, he wanted to know when he could make a new post.

This is what I'm talking about. This is what I get up in the morning for.

And, this my friends, is when being a publicist takes on a new meaning. It's these kinds of things that you can't put a pricetag on.

Do check out his blog and leave him a comment. I have a feeling you're going to hear a lot about Mr. Dwayne G. Anderson. If you'd like to host him on his tour next month, send me an email at thewriterslife(at)yahoo.com. Better get in early...I have a feeling he's going to be booked to the max. ;o)

Tags: How to Pump UP Your Book Promotion, online book promotion, author publicity, book promotion, book promotion tips, virtual book tour, author interviews, Dwayne G. Anderson