|
FOREWORD “Where are you headed?” he asked, as though he was driving a taxi and I’d just hailed him from a city sidewalk. Except he was driving a limo hired by the department store that had bought a few hundred copies of my first book to give away at several area customer appreciation events. “Aren’t you supposed to know that?” I asked him, exasperated. It had been a very long month. First, the original publisher for my book pulled out just two weeks before the publication date, even though Parenting magazine had already plugged it and Parents was about to excerpt it. After landing another small publisher, my book was published, but, as I soon discovered, only available in a few bookstores and online. Then I drove three hours to a book signing only to discover that – whoopsies! – the store manager had forgotten to promote it. And now the limo driver didn’t know where we were going. So, I called Robin. Robin Blakely had signed on as my publicist just a few months before my first book was to be published, and she was already proving to be more than a tireless promoter of my writing. She was my PR Therapist. “The limo driver doesn’t know how to get there!” I sobbed into the phone. “Okaaaaay,” Robin soothed. “Let’s see how we can fix it.” And then she did. In the years to come, she’d fix many more PR situations for me, not all of them requiring Kleenex. Since then, Robin has not only helped me promote my books and my web site, she’s helped me build a brand. Nowadays, it’s essential to carefully and strategically add planks to your platform – the very foundation of your following, the basis of what makes you and your work marketable. Thanks in no small part to Robin, I went from a newbie author of a book with distribution problems, lost in a limo and flying by the seat of my pants, to the owner of a successful web site, spokesperson for major corporations, web consultant, blogger for top media outlets, media source and author of several books, including a three-book series branded to my web site, MommaSaid.net. But it didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t always easy. Yet with Robin’s help, I was able to keep an eye on the bigger picture – the one with a view of next month, next quarter, next year and beyond – while working diligently on what absolutely had to be done today. And I did it all pretty darn fast. Robin taught me to always think through exactly how our publicity efforts, no matter how small, could bring me something bigger down the road. If I appeared on a radio show in Chicago, for example, she’d ask are there any PR firms, publishers or corporations who should know about it, affording me even more opportunities. When I get booked on a national TV show, she thinks through who we should tell in case there’s someone who might hire me to write something or someone who needs a spokesperson out there. She taught me to look beyond the adrenaline-pumping excitement of the PR “get” in the short run, and think of it as another piece of my platform. Most of all, Robin taught me to consider all of my PR efforts in the context of what’s truly important to me. For instance, I knew that I didn’t want to travel a lot while my kids were little, so we put speaking engagements on the back burner. And know that the thing I like the most about my career is the opportunity to write, so we always place writing jobs at the top of my annual PR plan. Finally, Robin is simply one of the most honest, caring, smart, creative and kind people I’ve ever worked with, and I’m fortunate to know her. Her book is a collection of classic Robinisms put on paper, a big taste of what it’s like to get to work with a brilliant mind that’s filled with compassion, wit and humor. And even if you never get to call her from the back of a limo, sobbing, you will learn a great deal from her in the pages of this book. I know I sure have.
Jen Singer |