Meet The Media Event With The Guardian Weekend!

So last Thursday (25 Feb) my editor/agent/soulmate Julie Tucker and myself were kindly invited by PRNewswire to a MEET THE MEDIA event at One Whitehall Place, a most magnificent venue! The media we were meeting were representatives of Guardian Weekend magazine in the form of its Features Editor, Ruth Lewy and Commissioning Editor, Abigail Radnor.

The evening began with a champagne reception which was followed by a presentation and Q&A session with Ruth and Abigail who introduced the audience, which I was surprised to see consisted of at least 700 people, to the many features that Guardian Weekend publish every Saturday. The room was packed and even had people standing at the back, but as my agent is so on the ball, she clocked two empty seats in the front row and we made a bee-line for those, so securing a prime location. We were also pleased to see some merchandise on the seats which will come in very handy (everyone loves a freebie!).

After the excellent hour or so, both Julie and I met Ruth and Abigail to inform them, well Julie did, of my books and how well they have been selling on Amazon, with the many hundreds of 5* reviews. Julie also believes I have an interesting personal story to tell and had documented everything which she felt to be of interest in a press release which she personally handed to Ruth and Abigail and which she has already followed up with an email to each of them.  Julie really is an excellent agent, even Ruth mention this and told me to hold onto her, which of course I plan to! It was a delight to meet both Ruth and Abigail, having heard them speak so eloquently and a perfect opportunity for some shameless self-promotion, well us self-published authors need chutzpah in order to get ourselves known. 

The evening wasn't over yet as it was onto the networking area where the wine and soft drinks were flowing, probably too much of the former in my case, but I managed to keep it together of course. I gave out my new book marks which were very well received, but I also gave a paperback copy (actually my own proof copy) of one of my marketing books, MY WAY TOO to a young self-published author Carina Pellius who's debut book, Band-Aids, Bullet Holes and Bleeding Words is available on Amazon. It was great to be able to offer her some marketing advice and we have connected on Twitter.

In addition Julie and I met James Essinger, a fellow author but also a publisher who called Julie the next day to say that he went home and that very night contacted his circle of authors to tell them about the MY WAY marketing books. By the time he called Julie one of his authors had already read MY WAY and highly recommended it to him for its many super book marketing tips, James has also said that he will contact me next week for further discussions.

So all in all a fantastic evening was had by all and I would like to thank PRNewswire MEET THE MEDIA for the invite and I'm very much looking forward to the next event where, as they have said via our Twitter connection, that I could also do promotional marketing of my books.

Until the next time, cheers! but with the absence of a champagne flute in my hand as it is Sunday morning!