8:30 am, every day I work from home

8:30 am. She seems so innocent, yet she's only a couple of minutes away from releasing her pent-up energy on the hand that pets her.

Even your font sends a message

From Ban Comic Sans:

Around 4:30, they show examples of logos replaced with Comic Sans. Some work, but a lot just look silly.

Should we really be reachable 24/7?

Awhile back, Yen over at the Book Publicity Blog posted about including full contact information in e-mail signatures. One commenter suggested always including your cell phone in your e-mail signature when pitching the media. This made me wonder whether or not people expect all publicists to be reachable at all times.

I understand that certain types of publicity and industries lend themselves to 24/7 accessibility (crisis communications for instance), but do most books really need that from a publicist? In the business category alone, Jack Covert at 800 CEO Read says 11,000 books are published each year. So, unless the book is written by a major news figure, embargoed, or ties-in with breaking news, is it really necessary to reach the book’s publicist during Sunday brunch with friends and family?

There have been times when I’ve checked in on voicemail and e-mail when a book/author related to breaking news, especially if I was actively pitching the media that day or right before the weekend, but I worry about the implications of being on-call 24/7. And it’s not just the cell phone. Increasingly, it seems as though an immediate response is expected to e-mail (not a realistic expectation), and that with the popularity of devices like the Blackberry and the iPhone, it’s often assumed that people are using them after regular business hours to check in on work.

The current business environment, where individuals are more likely to have the workload that used to be handled by another person (or more) on top of their regular duties, certainly encourages being more connected to work. However, I think a better balance can probably be struck by checking in to see how tomorrow morning is shaping up (hmm…3 important e-mails to answer before that 10 am meeting. No hitting the snooze button three times tomorrow!), rather than feeling like it’s necessary to respond after hours.

Disconnecting from work is essential to refreshing yourself (helping you be more productive when you are actually at the office!). Unless there really is something urgent that requires your attention after regular work hours, turning off that Blackberry when you’re out with friends or spending time with family seems, to me anyway, necessary to be fully in the moment.

I think this also extends to how we use technology outside of work. How many of us have met a friend for a drink or dinner, excused ourselves for a moment, and come back to find our friend busy texting? (Or worse, they start texting while you are actually talking to them?) We all have those friends who do it every. single. time. Or answer every call they receive on their cell phones while they are catching up with us. What’s wrong with just focusing on who you’re with, and not communicating with others for bit?

Worse yet, is the cellphone that is answered only to say “Hi, I’m at the gym (or on the train and about to go in a tunnel), can I call you back?” I always wonder, why didn’t they just let it go to voicemail? Isn’t that what voicemail is for? When did having a cell phone turn in to a requirement to answer that phone every single time it rings? At times, of course there are people you’ve been trying to connect with so you want to answer no matter what, or there are people who call so rarely you wonder what’s wrong, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on most of the time when someone answers their cell phone right before the N train descends under the East River. And you know what they are going to say (loudly): “Hi! I’m on the train right now, and we’re about to go in a tunnel…we’re about to go in a tunnel…a tunnel….Can I call you back? Can I call you back? Can I…”  At which point they will have lost the signal.

Okay, but back to work. I think there’s a number of things we can do to keep technology at bay (as best we can):

1. Think about the message your actions send. If you routinely answer e-mails at 10 pm, it suggests that you are reachable and working at 10 pm. If you have clients, this seems problematic. Especially if they start to think that kind of availability is to be expected. If you have direct reports, doesn’t working that late suggest to them that they should be similarly available? Even if you are answering e-mails at 10 pm (and I’ve done it later than that, during an occasional bout of insomnia), why not save it as a draft and send it first thing in the morning? I can see though, wanting your boss to know you’re a hard worker and willing to put in extra hours when needed, so sending an e-mail at 7 pm – to your boss – seems like a good idea to me.
2. Remember that e-mail is not IM. We all want a reasonable amount of time to answer an e-mail, and we have to give the same kind of time to those we e-mail. 24 business hours seems reasonable to me. If it’s urgent, mark the e-mail as urgent, and it will get looked at right away (just make sure it really is urgent. We all know the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, right?)
3. Recognize that e-mail overload is very real. I have all my e-newsletters sent to a Yahoo address. I use an RSS reader. Yet, I typically receive 40-70 e-mails a day. Sometimes more. Imagine that on average, I spend 5 minutes on each e-mail (keeping in mind, some e-mails take 40 minutes to write a response to, some are just deleted). That’s more than 3 hours each day spent on 40 e-mails. What I get on a slow day. So, we all agree that if someone hasn’t responded to an e-mail, sending another e-mail to follow-up probably isn’t helpful, right?  Far better is a quick phone call to bring it to someone’s attention. Or maybe it’s in the Spam folder, and the person you’re trying to reach hasn’t checked in a couple days.
4. We all have to prioritize. I’m a publicist, so media typically get my top priority. But even in that category, not everything warrants an immediate response. If someone is just asking me for a review copy, I can file that request away and answer it at the end of the day, and then get back to writing press material/creating a review list/pitching media contacts. If they’re asking for a review copy to be messengered so the book can be reviewed in The New York Times in two days…well, that gets answered and dealt with right away. Higher-ups in the corporate food chain get a high priority as well. An independent publicist gives clients as well as media a high priority. I think recognizing the need to prioritize, for yourself and for others, reminds us why giving people enough time to respond is essential to all of us getting our work done. And done well.
5. E-mail subject lines are your friend. Make them mean something.
6. Delete people who have been Cced, who don’t need to be Cced. They’ll be grateful. Really. Similarly, beware of “Reply to all.” Think about it, does everyone really need to know your response, or just the sender?
7. Be willing to turn off your Blackberry after work, over the weekend, on vacation, etc. (And don’t feel bad about it). Okay, I’ll admit for some folks in certain positions, they can’t cut themselves off 100 percent. But, if you’re out to dinner with your better-half, you can probably turn it off then, right? And, junior staff probably don’t need to be that accessible. And, just because you have that Blackberry for work, doesn’t mean you have to use it on Labor Day weekend to answer non-urgent e-mails/phone calls. (I say this as a publicist who has on more than one occasion been on the bus, on my way to a holiday weekend getaway, arranging interviews with major media. So, yeah, it is part of the job sometimes.)

So, what do you think? What are some of your pet peeves about how technology has changed your work/life balance? How do you disconnect? Do you disconnect? How do you handle expectations of immediate response? What did I miss?

Understanding Newspapers – Watch The Wire, Season 5

If you haven’t heard about HBO’s The Wire, I would suspect you might have been living as a hermit a little over a year ago. The critically acclaimed show ended last March, with a final season that examined the news media.

Now, since it is the final season, if you really want to know what’s going on, you’ll have to watch the other four seasons. Do it. It’s a great show. (And to those who have watched the show, were you as thrilled as I was to see Stringer Bell putting his business acumen to work for Dunder-Mifflin?)

The show’s creator and head-writer, David Simon, spent 12 years as reporter for The Baltimore Sun. He also wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which later became the basis for the NBC show Homicide: Life on the Streets. Season 5 of The Wire focuses on The Baltimore Sun, examining the effects of budget cuts – an understaffed newsroom, the loss of institutional knowledge when seasoned reporters are laid-off – as well as the effects of corporate ownership and a focus on winning awards.

I worked on an interesting book a couple years ago that tackled this very issue: Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism is Putting Democracy at Risk, written by Buzz Merritt, a former Knight Ridder employee and retired editor of The Wichita Eagle. Listen to an interview with Buzz on NPR’s On the Media here. 

This past year, I received update after update reporting 20 layoffs at one paper, 40 buyouts at another, 30 more at another paper, etc. Recently, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased print publication and is now online only. The Ann Arbor News will cease publication in July.  Many newspapers have cut publication days and home delivery. As someone who studied journalism in college and really enjoyed classes like Newswriting, Feature Writing, and Magazine Editing & Production, the current state of newspapers saddens and concerns me.

As a publicist, I understand this means reporters are now covering beats that a colleague used to cover. Or those beats just aren’t a part of the paper’s coverage anymore, and the paper may be relying more and more on wire services and syndicated writers. This in turn means that scoring ink and arranging face-to-face interviews has become harder than ever (not to mention just getting a reporter on the phone. They’ve always been busy, but are even more so now.)

All of this underscores the importance of online promotion. It’s here to stay, even if efforts like  The Huffington Post Initiative Fund (read an analysis of it as a business model here) take off and are duplicated. So here are some things you can do to promote yourself online:

• Set up that RSS Reader (I use Google professionally, with LOLCats thrown in just to break up the day, and Bloglines for most of my fun stuff or hobbies), add blogs that you find engaging, insightful, and relate to your area of expertise. You will save a TON of time with an RSS reader.
• Set up a news alert so you can follow the latest news in your industry/area of expertise (I use Google News Alerts). Pick key words, and you’ll receive a daily e-mail of news articles. This will help you follow trends, see who is covering your subject area, etc. Make sure you share any relevant articles with your publicist.
• Participate in the discussion. Leave thoughtful comments on blogs or news sites that add to the conversation (don’t be overly promotional).
• Set up a profile on Twitter, search for people in your industry, follow them, and just watch for a couple of weeks. Start to participate once you have a sense of what the community is like. 
• Consider setting-up a blog. If you’re passionate about something, you should have plenty to say that someone will be interested in. You don’t have to post every day. Once a week is alright, twice is better. If you’re an author, posting once a month after the initial push for your book is done is fine. I’ve heard from authors that post once a month that they’ve received queries from major media after finding their blog. This is a very good thing! I can speak from my own experience, and I know it seems intimidating at first, but you can literally have a free blog on Blogger or WordPress in minutes. It’s just an investment in a bit of time to set it up. After that, well, you do have to write something interesting.
• Consider the social networking sites. Maybe you already have a Facebook profile. What about GoodReads? LibraryThing? LinkedIn? MySpace? I’m not suggesting maintaining a profile on all of these (you wanted to turn off your computer at some point, right?), but having a presence on one or two is doable. Just keep in mind the focus of the networks. LinkedIn is for professional networking, but Athlinks is for endurance athletes. 

And remember, you don’t have to do it all. Just do what makes sense for you, your audience, and what you can reasonably handle.

Here’s some resources to get you started:

• The basics of Twitter, via The Book Publicity Blog
• 6 Steps to Starting Your First Blog and even more advice, via ProBlogger
• A list of niche social networking sites, via Social Media Answers
• Understand privacy settings on Facebook, via All Facebook Blog. Look at your privacy settings for every social network you are on.

And finally, don’t forget to put The Wire on your NetFlix Queue.

Working with Your Publicist/Targeting Media

I’ve always been interested in the media. Okay, maybe not always, but I think it’s telling that one of my earliest memories is of playing in the living room while someone was watching the evening news, and a news story about the Shah of Iran came on, and I wondered what was so special about that “shawl.” (Kids!) I grew up in a household that subscribed to three newspapers (morning, evening, and one that covered just our small town). On a Friday night, as a teen there was a good chance I watched Nightline as well as Friday Night Videos.

So, I guess it’s only natural that I became a publicist (or I could have gone in to journalism). Of course, not everyone analyzes the media like a publicist does. Probably every publicist spends some time explaining to clients (or authors) why a certain media outlet or journalist isn’t right for their product/service/book, or why s/he is pursuing another. (My background is in publishing, so I’ll talk in terms of authors.)

Authors are experts in their subject area, and publicists knows what the media wants/needs and how to evaluate their need, so I’ve always viewed the relationship as a partnership. Authors should share which media they think would cover their book, as well as their dream coverage. However, your publicist may have different ideas. I’ve worked on a lot of business books, and occasionally an author of a how-to business book will be surprised I’m not sending his/her book to book review sections at daily newspapers. When I explain that daily newspapers don’t cover those types of books, it clicks.

Oprah probably holds the top spot in dream media (and with good reason). But one should realize that Oprah is a really hard booking, so if that’s the only way you define success, you’re likely to be disappointed. Also, even though friends and family may say your book is “perfect for Oprah,” it might not be quite the fit they think. Here’s an Are You Oprah Worthy? quiz I found a few years ago.

So my advice to authors is to send your publicist a list of specific columnists/reporters/bloggers you’ve noticed cover your subject regularly or recently (your publicist likely already knows them or has them in mind, but no publicist can be all knowing). Share your “hope fors” but also listen to your publicist’s feedback. Understand that a publicist’s success rests on their relationships with the media, and off-target pitches undermine that relationship (which can lead to e-mail addresses being added to spam blockers, avoiding phone calls, unreturned or unlistened to voicemails, or packages that are never opened or given the least priority).

Your publicist wants your ideas. Authors often have really great ideas, can remind a publicist about an overlooked segment of the media, may be familiar with niche media that isn’t on the publicist’s radar, or spur other ideas from the publicist.

If you’ve hired an outside publicist, even if your book isn’t a perfect fit for your dream media, focusing on your background or professional experience might do the trick. But think about your ROI. If the angle is too far removed from the focus of your book, it might not be included. Even if it is, will the mention drive sales in the context of the article/show/blog post? If the answer is no, think about if it’s worth your publicist’s time (and your money) to pursue this when s/he could be working on other media that’s more directly aligned to your book’s message. It might be worth it to you if it could help bolster your career or business.

Now, for a bit of fun. Thinking about all the newspapers we had delivered when I was a kid got me thinking about the paperboys (and girls) that collected the subscription. Anyone else remember the movie Better Off Dead?

Introducing…Lilliput

Yes, I’m a cat person. I like dogs and even had one as a kid (and sometimes wish a cat was trainable like a dog), but I’m a cat person at heart. This is Lilliput. She may make occasional appearances here.

Her glamour pose.

Her past times include watching birds and squirrels from the front window, all-afternoon naps, jumping in to every box that enters my home, drinking from the fish bowl (and only the fish bowl) while leaving the resident fish alone, knocking every single toy I leave out for her under the ottoman, leaping in to the air after feathers on a stick, and racing out the door to the stairs leading to my apartment on the days I am in a rush.

She also greets me every evening at the door, usually wants to be near people (not necessarily in their lap) but has also been known to spend the entire day sleeping under the bed, and has never met a forgotten roll of paper towels left sitting on a coffee table that didn’t immediately become a toy to rip apart.  In these hard economic times, she has sacrificed Fancy Feast for Friskies wet cat food (and seems to prefer the cheaper Friskies). Her greatest enemy is the ironing board.

Depression Cooking with Clara

You have probably seen YouTube sensation Clara Cannucciari. The 93 year-old grandmother has been posting videos on YouTube about Depresion Cooking for about two years. She’s been featured in AARP Bulletin Today, Good Morning America, wowOwow, and bunch of blogs.  Today with the bad economy and more and more people losing their jobs, her recipes (and tales of surviving tough times) have a poignant relevance. And I just find her comforting. Like the grandma I don’t have anymore.

I’ve undergone some belt-tightening lately (though, I’ve been pretty mindful about living below my means since the last economic downturn in 2000), so I gave Clara’s Egg Drop Soup a try.

I had a little vegetable stock on hand, as well as some celery that wasn’t meant much longer for this world, so in they went. The broth was still pretty meh, so I also added a cube of chicken bouillon. All in all, with some bread, it turned in to a fairly tasty and satisfying meal. I’m not suggesting I’d want to eat this way for a month straight (I’m a fan of vegetables and their nutrients), but in tough times, Clara’s recipes can help us put food in our bellies on a budget.

What are you doing to live frugally?

Hello world!

Welcome to my blog! I’m here to write about media, books, publicity, living in New York (especially Queens, the most diverse borough), missing some aspects of small town life, and whatever else strikes my fancy.