While you're waiting for an interview, there are often other guests in the green room. Take some time to get to know them, and exchange promotional ideas, and of course, business cards!

Peggy Richardson is the owner/editor of Humanus Publishing and she's got great advice for all aspects of book publishing at her editor's blog. Most recently she's started selling books via an affiliate program - that alone is worth checking out!

Kimberly Plumley is one of Canada's leading book publicists and the owner of Publicity Mavens. Her rapport with the media is well known and to her clients, she's known as "Mom".

George Plumley is a media and presentation coach, helping people with better messages and better delivery. He blogs about presentations at Pointed & Impassioned and about media coaching at The Media Interview.

Kim and George here. A few weeks ago, we realized that the information in each of our newsletters really belonged in a single package - sounds like when we got married - and that our readers would benefit from seeing a broader range of material.

So in this expanded newsletter, you'll get tips and tricks to take you from getting interviews, to delivering great interviews; from planning a publicity campaign, to making a great speech at your local service club. Plus we'll feature interviews with top book promotion professionals.

We want to help you do better book promotion, but more importantly we want you to have fun doing it. That's how we approach our jobs as publicist and media coach - if we're not having fun doing it, why do it? So print out this newsletter or grab your laptop and find a comfy place to read, because it's time to promote!

I had a potential client call back the other day to say their organization wouldn't be needing a publicist because someone on staff had a complete list of media contacts for the city. In their minds they had equated a publicist's job with assembling a list, and therefore the job was as good as done.

Assembling a list of media contacts is not an easy task and is worth a lot of time and money. Getting a list of the right media contacts for a particular project is even harder. But at the end of the day it's still just a list. The real work lies in getting the people on the list to 1) read your release 2) consider your release and 3) book you for an interview.

There's the classic story of a factory which comes to a grinding halt because a machine has broken down. No one can figure out what's wrong, so an expert's called in. He looks it over thoroughly and then presses a button - suddenly everything's running again. The expert presents a bill for $1,000 and the owner complains that the expert just pressed a button. Replies the expert: 'Yes, but I knew which button to press.'

Publicists are paid to press the right buttons, and you only get to know that by constantly talking with the media; getting to know what they want, what their audiences want, how they respond as people. You're paying a publicist for the relationships they've built up and the knowledge they've gained.

- Kim Plumley

An expert on sleep disorders was asked recently what percentage of people suffer from sleeping problems. The answer was painful to listen to. 'Well, that's difficult to say, you see...'

Difficult to say is right! In fact it was so difficult that listeners were probably tuning her out or at the very least taking what she said with several grains of salt.

There's no denying that issues are complex and too often the media asks for oversimplifications. However, you can't let the fear of oversimplifying or causing distortions shut you down and make you sound uncertain or unintelligible. You'll never get your message across that way. And remember, other media people are seeing you and they'll cross you off their list of people to call.

The answer lies in giving enough context to keep your answer legitimate, while giving a clear straightforward answer. For example, with the sleep disorder case: 'There's disagreement about what constitutes a sleep disorder [lets us know it's complex] but if we're talking about people not getting at least seven hours of uninterrupted sleep [narrow things with clear criteria], then upwards of 40% of adults [you've given us a figure we can think about, while still saying it's not exact] suffer from some kind of sleep disorder'

Someone well versed in their subject, and well versed in thinking on their feet, could come up with that answer off the top of their head - but why leave things to chance? The basics of that answer should be prepped beforehand. You know that the media and their audience will want to understand the scope of the problem, so you work on finding a useful figure that you can give them.

- George Plumley