When is it in the best interest for an author to hire a freelance publicist?
When the enthusiasm of your in-house publicist clearly doesn’t square with yours, either in terms of level or in terms of focus. She may be very excited about your book but just not “get it.” Or she may “get it” but not care (or not be able to care because of all the other, higher-profile titles on which she’s working). But before you enlist the services of an outside publicist, have a heart-to-heart with your in-house publicist. It’s the courteous thing to do (after all, you are, in a sense, firing her), plus she may be able to recommend freelancers with whom she likes working and from whom she has seen good results in the past. She may also have thoughts on what, specifically, you need to hire a freelancer to do-tour-city support, local media where you live, radio interviews, national magazine coverage, reviews in major-market papers, bookstore events. Encourage her to be honest about which aspects of the campaign she’ll be able to handle and which portions of it are beyond her reach
