Why are publicists super cool?
Finding your way home.
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| Jolly Fish Press |
I do not
remember ever being lost. In my youth, I
roamed the trackless wastes of the Mojave Desert, but those wastelands weren't
trackless to me. No matter what new byway my friends and I explored, I always
knew how to get back to where we started.
I have an accurate sense of general directions, north, south, east and
west. More importantly, I think
visually, so as our old truck or dune buggy bumped and jarred over the rugged
terrain, pictures of the landscape were continuously stored in my brain—a looming
joshua tree or mesquite bush, a scraggly rock formation, a twist in the road, a
set of animal tracks. All were duly recorded
as pictures that my mind could easily recall later for orientation and reference
purposes.
When we had explored as much as we
wanted, shot through our ammo, eaten all our Hostess cherry pies, gotten as
dirty as possible, and generally had a great time, my mind pictures guided us
unerringly home. I easily distinguished between old roads previously traveled
and new roads not yet explored. I always
knew which fork in the road to take, which direction to go.
Unfortunately,
when I signed a three-book contract for the Dimensions
in Death series with Jolly Fish Press, those homing skills did not cross
over into the untamed wilderness of social networking and book promotion. I had entered into an alien world with
landmarks and signposts that I didn’t see, or when I did, I didn’t understand. Up to that point, I might have glanced once
or twice at my wife's Facebook page and heard the words “Twitter” and “Blog,” but
I did not think those things would ever be part of my world.
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| Green Death Hangs Heavy |
Suddenly, I was in a new land with
unfamiliar terrain, and I was lost. I
could not visualize the road, or how all the roads connected with each other,
or even which way was up or down, let alone north or south. While there were many crisscrossing, bumpy roads
in this new wilderness, there was no need for a rifle with lots of ammo or a
box of dynamite, and though a Hostess cherry pie still helped smooth the
adventure when the going got rough, I was woefully ignorant of the real
weaponry needed in this strange, alien wilderness.
Enter Chris
Loke and Zach Power, publicists for Jolly Fish Press, and I discovered how cool
a publicist could be for newbie authors like Andy and me. In what I know now were tentative first
steps, the JFP Publicity Group helped us set up our Facebook and Twitter
accounts, gave us a logo from the JFP design department, and directed us toward
Blogspot. As we took our first tentative
steps down these strange roads, they stayed near to coach us in our new
adventure and warn us of the dangers along the way. Whenever we began to fear that we were lost, they
were always there to gently calm us with the wise counsel, "If you don't
understand it, just Google it." JFP
Publicity has been a faithful and trustworthy guide through a dangerous and
wild country.
So, what
are publicists good for? In our
experience, the publicist is a fountain of clear water in the desert, a source
of invaluable information, expertise, innovation, encouragement and a nudge
(sometimes a shove) when necessary.
By forming a Facebook group binding the Jolly Fish Press authors and
management together, JFP created another avenue for encouragement, blowing off
steam, sharing information and ideas, and supporting each other. Of course, behind the scenes, JFP is also doing groundwork which we only occasionally glimpse in the news we get of media
contracts, contest information, publishing sub-contacts, as well as overseas,
film and TV contacts, and much more.
When it
comes to promoting our books, Andy and I don't pretend to be savvy or to
understand where all the social media paths might lead. But from what JFP tells us, we’re on a path
that will allow us to keep writing books.
That's all we care about. Thanks,
JFP Publicists! You’re super cool!
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