The rain drops picked up speed as I headed west along the highway. They hit the windshield, hesitated, and then sought each other out, going from individuals to a series of streams flowing upward— until the wipers arrested their development, cleared the deck, and new drops hit and started up again. A drop, a hesitant movement—Which way up?—and then convergence. And Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge” title landed in my head. Everything that rises . . . Earlier in the week, Steve shared a project on which he was working, a few days later he and I received…

I spent a few hours this week going over interview strategies with a friend. My favorite play is “the pivot.” It goes into play when the interviewer asks his or her guest a question that the guest isn’t interested in answering. That’s an interesting question, but there’s another question that I’ve been thinking about . . . Why not answer it? Could be a few different things. The guest might have something to hide. Though it didn’t come in the form of an interview, interviewers asked Lance Armstrong the “What are you on?” question for years. His pivot came via…

“As the nation’s largest physical bookseller, Barnes & Noble supports publishers who support our bookstores.” —B&N spokesman, as reported this week in Publishers Weekly What does that mean? We support publishers who support us? Remember the scene in the movie You’ve Got Mail, when Indie bookstore owner Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) sells books at full price to Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), whose newest mega-chain Fox Books store is opening around the corner? Fox is surprised by the cost of the few children’s books he buys from Kelly, for his young relatives. The books in his store are sold at a…

I was upset when I read the title of Steve’s Writing Wednesday column the week before last: “Opportunities Are Bullshit.” My thought process ran this route: Really, Steve? There have been tons of great opportunities. What about that interview with Mark McGuinness that just went up? Wasn’t it an opportunity? Or not? When you have an interview with someone you’ve gotten to know as a friend, is it less an opportunity and more a chill session with friends, something above commercialism? No. Not it. Hanging with friends is an opportunity. I rarely get to chill with mine. Hanging with Mark…

Screenwriter and director Frank Darabont “received solicitations from several actresses about playing the lead” in the film Shawshank Redemption, an adaptation of the Stephen King story Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. They read the title of the story and thought it featured Rita Hayworth as the lead. A publicist’s book package ended up in the hands of Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten—ten years ago. A decade later, I still remember reading the column he wrote about it. Following the death of Kenneth Lay, Businessweek received a press release that used Lay’s death as a pitching platform.

I’ve reread Bob Garfields article “Suffer in Silence” a few times since it was posted. Short version: Garfield’s piece is a call to brands, cautioning them to restrain from inserting themselves into news stories about the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary school.

If you watched our show, you’d know we didn’t cover that. Yes, but I – Click. Just out of college, my Rolodex was limited to family, friends, and take-out restaurants. The senior publicist charged with training me through my first PR job forwarded me to the company database and suggested I pull a call list off of it, and start pitching. I still remember the awful black screen and green type of the database, full of names and addresses, void of information about the outlets and contacts. It didn’t occur to me to dig deeper, go outside the company’s list.…

Two weeks ago I watched a work-in-progress version of Josh Hanagarne’s book trailer. It’s one of the best I’ve viewed. Why? It tells a story—and left me with something I wanted to share. That thing that stuck with me the most? His mentions of those people who wouldn’t let him fail—those friends and family members who encouraged him to move into today. AND: the images of him bending nails. In the June 2011 post “Do Book Videos Work?” I wrote: We don’t need videos—but they do help. If I was writing the post today, I would amend that line: Book…

To learn more about the individuals being featured in this series, visit Outreach, Part I: The Introduction. “What’s your home base?” is the question that follows “What-do-you-want-to-accomplish?” Where are people going to learn about you? While the answer is Facebook for some, my preference is a blog. In this case, I’m a pessimist. We saw what happened to MySpace. Don’t rely on Facebook’s existence to share your work. Set up a blog. Own it.

This series is rooted in the one question I’ve been asked more than any other—Should I hire a publicist?—and my frustration with the many articles I’ve read about how to do outreach campaigns. The articles tend to offer up examples of people with household names, who can rely on monster followings that most people don’t have, to share their new projects—or they are based on general suggestions, without any specific examples. The goal for this series is to share specific examples of what has/hasn’t worked for different individuals, via what they’ve done on their own and what they’ve accomplished through…