I enjoy hearing from publicists–by email preferably. When they drop by the house for a minutes of “fellowship” or whatever they call it, it gets a bit intrusive, but I enjoy getting emails and book offers from them. Some of them send books without checking first. That is, I got such a book the other day. Teen romance, not my thing. Written by three authors, unless the one author had a very long, comma-ridden name. Flipping through it, I saw preppy lifestyles, casual drug use, open air sex–my good wife said I needed to get it out of the house quickly.
Still, I appreciate hearing from publicists. It makes me wonder if this blog is discussed at those little meetings they have up in New York City.
“Yeah, I sent that one to Phil Wade at Brandywine Books.”
“Oh, you did?”
“Had to get rid of somewhere.”
“Isn’t he the guy who blogs with Lars Walker?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“D’you actually read that stuff?”
*cough* “Nobody around here actually reads it. We just know about it.”
“Walker has a new book coming out. Wonder if we can do the rounds for it?”
You can see where the conversation would go from there.
Given the economics of publishing, the cost of getting you the review copy isn’t much more than shipping. That being the case, I don’t think they ever talk about you at all. They just run a query for active blogs with “book” in their title, and have a mailroom flunkie send books to the right addresses.
Sort of like teenagers who try to fight for putting a book they haven’t read in their high school library – but without the excuse of acting rashly because one is a teenager and naturally given to rash behavior.
That would make sense in this case. I should have given that book to my school library.
ahhh, and we knew you when…. >grin
Very funny. Great sense of humor. The three-author part really almost killed me as I tried to eat a fried mushroom. Like Bush with pretzals over here.
Somehow I have the impression that my name rarely comes up in publicists’ conversations. Yours, Phil, is of course a different matter.
But that’s because they have the vague impression that you blog with Alice Walker.