Business Spotlight: The Hype PR

My name is Christine Stanley and I am the owner and CEO of The Hype PR.  I specialize in working one on one with Author’s in the romance genre to customize their marketing as well as deal with all aspects of their publicity.

When I first got into the book world as a blogger I would help out Author friends here and there with some of their marketing issues.  It turned out that I was good at it and before I knew it they were asking to hire me.  After I had just a few clients and was working with them on all aspects of their careers, some fellow Author’s started coming to them and asking them what they had done to all of a sudden have so much exposure and increase in sales.  They were able to tell them that I had done the work for them, and before I knew it I was bombarded by people wanting to hire me.  Before I even opened the company I had full time work, so it was just a factor of hiring on some extra hands to be able to take on a larger work load.

The biggest hurdle I’ve had to overcome is being able to stay on top of the ever changing market.  This industry changes daily and because of that our services and ideas need to be able to adapt to those changes.  On top of that there is a ton of competition in the publicist industry so there really isn’t any room for error.  The smallest thing can cause you a great deal of hurt career wise so you are constantly having to up your game and stay on your toes in order to be one of the stronger competitors.

Hmmm this is a hard one.  I hate comparing myself to the others.  I try to look at it as we all bring our own flare to our businesses and that doesn’t make any one of us better than the other.  I suppose one thing I pride myself in is the fact that we are here for our Author’s anytime day or night.  There are many nights that we are working well into 2 or 3 in the morning to accommodate the Author’s schedules.  We go out of our way to have the kind of relationship with our Author’s that never leaves them feeling like they are bothering us.  There may be days where we spend hours talking to one single Author working out kinks or just simply brainstorming.  Anytime we do something like this, we never have that account to their monthly hours.  Due to that the Author’s are left feeling like they can come to us anytime with any issue no matter big or small.  I think another thing that we do that a lot of the others don’t is spend copious amounts of time building the Author’s relationships with the many different blogs.  We are always pushing our Author’s to build relationships with the bloggers.  Without bloggers these Author’s wouldn’t be where they are today.  With having that kind of thinking it just seemed to be common sense to us to play into that aspect.  We make initial contact with the bloggers asking for assistance on behalf of the Author in regards to releases or sales and then we leave that door open for the Author’s to step through and take advantage.  I know many of the Author’s love that.  They may not be outgoing enough to do the initial introduction so we just help take the edge off.

Ummm nuts?  Ha I think that’s probably what it would be.  They are always saying things like “You’re nuts you don’t sleep enough!” or “You must be nuts you really think that would work?”  So yeah I’m going to go with nuts…or maybe just plain crazy who knows 😉

I think the thing I probably say the most is simply “You can do it! because you are worth it”  So often in the Author world, these people are left beaten down and left extremely self conscious.  Due to that you are constantly having to reassure them that they can do anything they set there minds to and that they are in fact worth it.

We offer everything from uploading titles to NetGalley, to a simple cover reveal for an upcoming release and pretty much everything in between.  The most popular service we offer is the full and part time PR packages where we essentially take care of everything in regards to their marketing and promotion from the very beginning stages of a book to the end stages and then some.  Whether it’s for new releases, sales or books that have been out for a year or two and just need to be brought back into the public eye, we cover them all.  We are also able to help them arrange different events and signings and all around help dealing with selecting the best avenues to stay in the public eye.

I think for the rest of this year it’s just to keep plugging along as we are now.  We are in a really good spot and growing steadily.  With those things in play I’m not wanting to set my sights too high at the moment.

I have one final thought and that is simply….CJC Photography rocks!  You will never, and I mean never, find a harder working, more caring photographer than Chris!  In my personal opinion I think he should be the only photographer around 😉

A special thanks for having Christine join us today. She is truly a remarkable person and I have been honored to be her official event photographer at two of her recent signings. I’m really excited to see where 2016 takes us.

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