Welcome to the Wacky World of Book Publicity! - Ron Charles

Screenshot of Ron Charles' Facebook Profile used with permission

I think my favorite part of my internship experience so far has been the contacts I have made in the book publicity business that could be beneficial for both my author, for whom I am working, but also for myself with future projects.

The author with whom I am writing, Kay Hardy Campbell, kind of shifted gears from what we had planned to do together before the semester began. Something people ought to know about that I did not know is that Goodreads actually charges authors to have book giveaways on Goodreads. I have done one giveaway event there years ago, and it was free, except I had to pay for the cost of the books I was giving away. Since Amazon bought Goodreads, though, they have instituted I think a $200 fee just to give away books there!

I could hardly blame Kay for deciding not to do a giveaway through Goodreads when I learned that detail.

Instead, Kay decided to try to drum up more reviews for Caravan of Brides by getting copies of books into the hands of reviewers of large and not-so-large newspapers. She needed me to contact a list of newspapers and find out who would receive them, as well as contact information.

To date, I have contacted the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal, Washington Post, Bangor Daily News, and the Boston Globe. I would bet there will be more later in the semester, as Kay has planned to do a couple small book tours, including one in the Midwest, which would mean that I will be reaching out to newspapers in that region, I suspect.

It has felt good for me to establish a rapport with some of these journalists since I teach journalism, but also because I have been out of the daily newspaper business since 1996, and it feels good to be around people who are doing the job at a high level.

One of these people is named Ron Charles, the book editor at the Washington Post. When I wrote to him, he wrote back saying, “Welcome to the wacky world of book publicity!” That kind of made me feel at ease, because it was not the kind of reaction I expected from him, writing for a major paper like the Post.

Unfortunately, Kay’s book is actually too old for a review in the Post, because they actually look for pre-release copies to do reviews before the books even come out. That was useful information for me, because when I release my next book, I could have it set up, order proof copies before it ever goes live, and ship it to a guy like this, and then wait to approve the book at let it go live after the review runs.

I am a bit behind in hours at this point in the internship, but it is manageable, and as I presently have no plans to go away for Spring Break (since I already live in Florida!), I have told Kay that we can use that time off to get caught up on hours.