Three Answers from Lori Glazer, v-p, executive publicity director at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

by Dick Donahue -- Publishers Weekly, 3/3/2008 7:43:00 AM

PW: What’s the most challenging part of your job? 

LG: Transforming early interest from the media into confirmed bookings—in other words, sealing the deal. That’s been the same for a long time, but there’s definitely more competition today for things like NPR, which is very important to the kind of books we publish, and there are fewer slots for print review attention, which is also still important for literary books. I’m always wanting to do more, because publicity is never finished; it’s only limited by the hours in the day. Of course there’s a fine line between following up and browbeating a contact; that’s why getting to know the specific reporters and producers is important. 

PW: What’s your hottest project right now? 

LG: Last Tuesday was the on-sale date for Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, which is the new Starbucks selection. It’s a riveting memoir—a rare glimpse of what addiction does to the family from the parents’ point of view. David is touring with his son, Nic, who has his own memoir out for young readers, called Tweak, and together they’ve been irresistible to the media. The Starbucks selection gives our book tremendous visibility in their 6,000+ stores—where it’s in its own display.

PW: How’s the integration of Houghton and Harcourt going?

LG: Well, change is always hard. But I’m really excited about the energy and the new organization—people like [publisher] Becky Saletan, Laurie Brown, in sales; and my boss for 10 years, Bridget Marmion. That’s quite a lot of firepower, and we’ll all be “one us” by winter ’09. Starting to work with the Harcourt people, too, is a terrific opportunity; we just had a meeting where we met Padma Viswanathan, the author of a wonderful debut novel, Toss of a Lemon. And of course Harcourt has a very distinguished backlist—Umberto Eco; José Saramago; and Charles Simic, the current U.S. poet laureate.