My books have always attracted a wide range of readers. Many of them are Democrats and many are Republicans so on my Facebook newsfeed I can see a wide range of emotions in response to the results of the election. Most of it is predictable. The Dems are jubilant, overwhelmed with relief and pumped up by victory. The Republicans are angry, devastated and scared.One of my earliest memories is of the election of Ronald Reagan. My mother was very focused on nuclear disarmament and in the months leading up to November she invited people over to show them films of the effects of Hiroshima. I was so young but I still remember the pictures of mutilated children. They terrified me. And I understood my mother's message. If Reagan wins we will all die. So when he did win I ran into my bedroom and hid under the covers shaking and crying. My mother immediately came to me, comforted me and walked back her words, assuring me that we probably wouldn't die after all. Again, I was a little kid. I didn't understand nuance. When people I trusted alluded to the idea that life as we know it depended on the results of an election I believed them and when things didn't go the way I wanted them to I freaked out. Like I said I was very young and naive so it took me years before I realized...
I didn't buy it. If Eminem and other people of comparable fame were having parties at this club why wouldn't the Paparazzi be covering those events. They didn't need to cover the party of a little known author. If people did know about me it was because of Susan Schwartzman, the woman I hired (with my own money) to do the publicity for my first novel, Sex, Murder And A Double Latte. Susan had gotten me into Cosmo, The New York Times, The Washington Post, regional television shows across the country, the list goes on and on. In fact she had done such a good job I had assumed that my publisher would contract her to do the publicity for my second book but because of some "in-house" politics that didn't happen. So I hired Susan to essentially supplement what the publisher-hired-publicist was doing. But I only gave Susan a small stipened. It just didn't seem pragmatic to have two publicists doing two full blown campaigns. Plus I had heard (off the record...oops) that my publisher had contributed less to the campaign for my first book because I had hired a publicist for myself. I essentially saved them money by taking initiative. So I put away my checkbook and put my faith in this new publicity strategy. These people were professionals, they had to know what they were doing.
But they didn't. I have no doubt that the woman contracted by my publisher is a fantastic publicist. She knew how to boost celebrity profiles and she knew how to pimp the hell out of fashion designers, she just didn't know how to market books. My publisher spent close to thirty thousand dollars on that campaign, the majority of that money went into that party. When I got to The Hamptons and got a better idea of what was going on I began to get a little panicky. I knew I had to build on the success of my first novel and I could see that what was planned wasn't going to do that. My only hope was that A) the fantastic reviews my second book was getting would generate buzz and B) my editor, who told me flat out she saw the problem, would be able to fix things. Unfortunately by the time she was given more input into author publicity it was too late for my campaign to be redirected and the fall out of bad book publicity is low book sales and nothing protects an author from that. But that was all information I got in the days and months after my launch party. Before my launch party all I really knew was that my publisher was showering me with attention, they were throwing me a party in the Hamptons and that meant something even if the party didn't serve the purpose it was supposed to serve.
Oh, and if I do have another red-carpet party thrown in my honor you better believe that I'll be running to Timoria asking her to do my make-up. I really did love my glamour lashes.
