Everyone’s Got a Book
By Louisa Ermelino -- Publishers Weekly, 5/31/2007 12:38:00 PM
Today's "Meet the Producers" panel, hosted by Elizabeth Shreve of the Shreve-Williams PR Agency, played to an almost packed house of publicists, independent publishers and authors, and no one seemed to care that the mics didn’t start working until halfway through. The radio segment was all women, all from NPR, with the exception of Alicia Haywood, the ABC radio producer of Satellite Sisters, who, despite being the less familiar name, generated the most excitement for her six-days-a-week show featuring five women scattered around the country who talk about their lives, headline news and, most importantly to this group, interview authors.
With her on the dais were Susan Feeney from All Things Considered, Amy Salit from Fresh Air, Shannon Rhoades from Morning Edition (the second most-listened to show on national radio. The first? Rush Limbaugh) and Barrie Hardymon from Talk of the Nation. They were all gracious and they were all clear: they’re busy; they get endless, relentless phone calls and e-mails; they are all looking for something different; and yes, they all do want to be pitched (but please, not at deadline). Key points were the importance of the author’s personality in booking a segment and not necessarily pitching according to what the show usually features. Each producer explained her show’s format, although as Salit made clear when she asked for a show of hands as to how many in the audience were publicist, authors or listened to NPR, this crowd knew who they were listening to and why they were there. Rhoades said—and the others agreed—that while the hosts have certain topics they gravitate toward, for the most part, nonfiction trumps fiction, because two people talking about a novel feels like a private conversation, though Philip Roth and Khaled Hosseini recently broke that barrier. And Morning Edition is doing more fiction, in themed chats with Nancy Pearl. The success of Marley & Me led to a conversation about dog books; Harry Potter about books to read while waiting for the next Harry Potter.Salit took a jaundiced tack: "I’ve been doing this show over 20 years (she books for Terry Gross) and you can call and e-mail me all you want, because I won’t answer." Feeny was delightful in her confessed struggle to keep thinking of books as sacred: "There’s so many, they start to look like junk mail, and that’s just sacrilegious!" Questions and answers ended the session, and Shreve pleaded for general queries: "Please, no pitches!" The requests were predictable: Do you consider self-published books? Can an author pitch his own book? How? (E-mail) When? (Early). And when the session ended, the panelists were stormed... except for Rhoades, who had beat a quiet exit stage left.
