Publicity people.......

You have to love the publicity people who work at publishing houses. Part of me suspects that it is a job I would absolutely love, except I am sure there would be some pressure to mainly read 'in-house' books, so it could reduce the breadth of my reading. As it is, there are a core of wonderful people who I deal with across the houses who go out of their way to provide amazing proofs and a.r.cs for me to read and review. When I started doing this I assumed that I could only get hold of proofs if they were offered via our intranet service. I did this and was sent some wonderful books, but more recently I have found that thanks to my core contacts I am able to request arcs/proofs of a wide range of upcoming books and more often than not they follow through with actual copies. I know that it is in the interest of the publishing houses that they get people like me to blog/review and recommend their new books, but even so many of the contacts I have go above and beyond the call of duty in getting books sent out to me. They are happy to put together bound copies if no proofs are available, pass my name and details along to other publicists and make recommendations of new things to read and review. These people are stars, and I thank them for hours of reading pleasure.