Last week, we offered a few thoughts to consider as you are publicizing your new book. It’s not easy work, and sometimes requires sacrifices to get the word out. This week, we will focus specifically on radio interviews, which are still one of the best ways you can get your message out about your book. If you haven’t read part one, please go back and take a look at the introduction. A fact: Most authors are not morning people. (And truth be told, some publicists aren’t either and are sympathetic.) However, morning drive time is the best time to reach a large number of listeners. That’s when most people are driving to work and listening to the radio. Morning shows are where you want to be. And yes, if the program is on the east coast, that’s really early for the rest of the country. It is a sacrifice that you need to be willing to make if you want your book to sell. You didn’t spend all that time working on your book for your book not to sell, did you? We promise that you will not have to get up every morning to do early morning interviews. Even if it may not seem like it if you live in California, anything after 5 AM is reasonable from time to time. We’ll try to get you the latest time that we can, but it’s just a sacrifice you have to make for having the beaches, palm trees and nice weather year round. We’ve had authors tell us, “If I have to do an interview at 5:30, it really messes up my schedule and my whole day.” We just ask you to consider, will it really mess up your entire day, and if so, does it really outweigh the opportunity to share your message? Now that many people have iPhones and BlackBerrys, there is a trend to not having a land line at home. If you work from home and do not have an office to go into, you really need to get a land line, even if it is just for three months. Radio stations need the clearest connection possible. Think of how many times you’ve gotten disconnected or had to tell the person on the other end “I don’t have a very good connection.” Think of trying to work through that for 30 minutes. Would you want to listen to the radio and try to decipher someone talking on a bad connection for 30 minutes? You would probably change the station. Here is a true story witnessed first hand. One time an author was in Dallas for media, and a member of our staff was escorting the author to her interviews. The author was also a music artist and had a representative of her publishing company with her. The author insisted on a little shopping trip around the time of a phone interview.  Our staff member was not in a position to demand the author be in her hotel room for a radio interview that had been scheduled by phone. Instead, we were at the mall shopping for shoes. If you’ve ever been in the downstairs of a Macy’s at the mall, you know you aren’t going to have any reception. So, we ran out of Macy’s and headed towards the parking lot as the station called the author’s cell phone. All was ok for a little while until we got on the highway and lost connection right in the middle of the interview. The station and author had a really hard time reconnecting while the host is on the air floundering to fill time while they reconnected. Normally, when that happens, the show goes on and you don’t get to end with the program with your best lasting impression. A member of our staff was recently encouraged when she received the following email from an author who had been doing a lot of traveling and had not had much time open for interviews: “Here is a little story from this past Monday. You had lined up the radio interview for 6:08 AM EDT and at about 10 PM [the night before] I figured out that with us being in a new city it was going to happen at 5:08 AM, and I thought ‘Oh Happy Day!’ So I set my alarm for 5 AM – and went to bed at about midnight. “When I woke up I complained as I stumbled out of bed, and then God whispered, ‘just thank me for this opportunity to share my heart through your story.’ I did, and God really energized me! It was a VERY good interview. Then later on (when I couldn’t go back to sleep) I got a song idea and spent about 1 1/2 hours working on it (which is always very energizing for me no matter what happens with the idea).” Your publicist will do all that they can to help you in spreading the word about your book, but we can’t do it alone. Do you remember the movie Jerry Maguire? In the movie, Jerry is an agent and tells one of his clients, “help me, help you.” If you are able to help your publicist help you, you won’t regret it!