Kids and Teen Blog

Tag: Moma

Notes From A Children’s Book Publicist- Volume One

by Crystal
Kids + News + Picture Books + Vancouver + YA Fiction / May 04, 2011

Hi! I'm Crystal! Your friendly, neighborhood, Raincoast Children's Book Publicist. Recently my dad said to me

"Crystal, What does a Children's Book Publicist do? What is a day in your life like?"

I realized that a lot of people probably have no clue what a book publicist does. I am currently reading What The Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcom Gladwell and am finding it fascinating reading about what different professions do in their day to day life. What The Dog Saw and my Dear Old Dad have inspired me to start this weekly blog column to fill readers in on my crazy, fun, never enough hours in the day, work life.

What does a Children's Book Publicist Do? A book publicists job is to earn free media. We do this by sending our books to editors of newspapers and magazines, bloggers, television and radio producers and websites. We also try to meet with these people as often as possible to "pitch" (aka talk about) our favorite books from our list each season that we feel would be a good fit for their readers, listeners or viewers.

Here are a few of my recent mailings. 

Alice in Zombieland mailing. This copy was headed to Karen at The Magazine. Look for a review of it in an issue of The Magazine coming this summer. 

Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Sight mailing. (Do you have a truck and digger tot in your life? If so this book is a must have!) This copy was headed to Susan Perren at The Globe and Mail.

This mailout was being sent to the winners of The Liar Society Contest that was on MyJellybean.com. We do a ton of contests with MyJellybean so if you love teen fiction make sure to check out their website and enter to win some great upcoming teen fiction reads. 

Canadian Family Magazine turned 15 this year! To help them celebrate we gave them a big box of MoMA products to give to one lucky winner. 

Meeting with media is one of the most fun parts (in my opinion) of the job.Later on this month my cohort  co-publicist, Danielle and I are heading to Toronto to meet with media. I will make sure to report back on all of our adventures from TO.

We also work quite closely with the publicists from the different publishers that we represent and we get to work with a bunch of really wonderful authors and organize media appearances and events for them. Recently I have worked with Kristi Yamaguchi for her book Dream Big Little Pig. She appeared on Canada AM and did some great interviews including this one with MySweetBaby.

Bindi Irwin also toured recently for her new series of  books Bindi's Wildlife Adventures. Bindi and her mom Terri did a great interview for Canada AM.

I have also been working with Janet Gurtler who will be doing a ton of events in Alberta to promote her new book I'm Not Her and who did this fantastic interview with the Indigo Teen Blog. I just read I'm Not Her a few weeks ago, if you are a fan of Jodi Picoult or Sarah Dessen you should definitely check it out!

So that's it in a nutshelf. Life as a Children's Book Publicist. Check back each week for my latest adventures. If you have any questions I would love to hear them.

Happy Reading!

Crystal