Fiction author Robin Brande talks about writing, reading, and other vital matters

Thought you might like a little behind-the-scenes glimpse of a radio interview. Today and tomorrow I’m doing a mini radio tour of five morning shows. The way it works is that the same studio in New York where I did my TV satellite tour last month has now set up radio interviews in various parts of the country. The producer at the studio, Kara (who totally looks like a young Demi Moore, only taller) calls me, then patches me through to the radio station, where I do a quick live interview and hope I don’t say anything too inarticulate and garbled, although there are no guarantees this early in the morning. It’s a little after 7:00 AM here, and tomorrow’s interviews start even earlier, at 6:00 AM. Coffee, coffee, coffee.

So the glamorous part of all this is that I’m sitting here in my sweat pants and t-shirt, hair all askew, and my husband has taken the dogs with him to go get bagels because last time I did a radio interview (which was taped, not live like today’s), the interviewer had to stop part-way through and ask me if I could please make my dogs shut up. Because, toddlers that they are, when they see I’m on the phone they have to come in here and fight right underneath my chair. And even when I kicked them out of my office and closed the door, they still had to bark and frolic right outside it, until I finally got off the phone, at which point they promptly fell asleep. Yeah.

I love radio. It’s so visually forgiving. No need for someone to do my hair and makeup (although that was, as you know, my favorite part of the TV tour). Radio also rewards fast talking, which I can certainly do. When you tell me I only have four minutes to get it all out, I’m like a wind-up toy.

The studio should be calling me soon. Time for me to pee for the hundredth time (because you can’t be too careful, and you certainly don’t want to sit there all jiggly), then get a drink of water and try to get the fuzzies out of my voice.

“And we’re live in three, two, one–”

[UPDATE:] I started to answer Patrick’s question below in a comment, then realized it’s too long and probably deserves some space of its own, since maybe some of the rest of you are wondering how a lot of these publicity events get set up.

So first of all, today’s event: The Random House Children’s Division publicity department hired the studio as an outside contractor. The studio set up the TV and radio tours, but I had one stand-alone radio interview that was set up directly by the RH publicity department.

Now for these events in general. So far I’ve been involved in five different scenarios:

1. Random House publicity sets up an interview or a public appearance. For example, they sent me on a 5-city pre-publication tour in March, where I had two events each day–an afternoon book talk with teens who had read an advance copy of the book, and a dinner with booksellers and librarians each night;

2. Random House publicity hires an outside contractor to set up an interview–for example, these TV and radio tours;

3. A bookstore or school or newspaper approaches me directly. The best example is Faith at Changing Hands Bookstore contacting me after reading an advance copy of my book, and asking me if her store could throw my book launch party for me. Oh, my gosh, yes, please! Since then I’ve also taught writing workshops at the store, and next week I’ll be doing some school visits set up by Changing Hands;

4. I approach a bookstore or school to see if they’d like me to do an event while I’m in town. This always feels a little weird to me, and it’s not my favorite method;

5. Someone like Molly Krichten, the librarian in Pennsylvania who had me up there last week, invites me to town, then sets up a lot of different events with local schools and bookstores. This was fabulous for me, since Molly had some genius ideas and lots of energy to carry them out.

So far my favorite events are those where someone has asked me to come, versus ones I’ve tried to set up myself. Also, the school events have been much more successful than bookstore events (except the launch party at Changing Hands, which was very well-attended) because no one really comes out to a bookstore to meet an author they’ve never heard of. That’s just human nature–I know I hardly ever go to book signings unless I really want to meet a particular author. But at schools you have a captive audience and don’t feel any pressure to sell a stack of books like you do at a bookstore. It feels more fun (at least to me).

I hope that answers some of your questions and curiosity. I’m happy to answer any other questions any of you might have about how this all works–at least the part I know about so far. I always appreciate when other authors have shared their experiences with me, either in their blogs or in conversation. So ask away–I’ll tell you as much as I can.

And thanks, Patrick, for your question.

Technorati Tags: Radio Tours, Author Tours, Radio Interviews, Author Radio Tours, Author Publicity, Book Publicity

Posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 7:22 am under Writing . Subscribe to responses: RSS 2.0 Comment Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.