In twenty minutes, I will call into another live radio show to promote my book The Widower’s Wife. I enjoy these interviews. For the most part, the radio hosts sound happy to discuss themes in my novel and my writing process. They give me a chance to tell my story. If the hosts genuinely liked the book, they’ll say so, which is a nice ego boost, particularly for someone who spent six hours-a-day for the past eight months in relative silence crafting and, then, rewriting a ninety-thousand word book. What writer isn’t thrilled hearing that someone read her work, let alone liked it? But, aside from the aid to my fragile scribe psyche, are radio interviews worth the PR investment? Do they sell books? 
My experience is YES. Here’s why: Amazon’s author central provides a map showing where my sales have been geographically. (SEE MAP) I live in the New York area and have concentrated most of my marketing efforts and book tours there. Not surprisingly, most of my sales have come from the dark blue area in the North East. I also have a family contingent on the West Coast that has been very supportive and helped get the word out there to book clubs, so that partially explains the concentration of sales in the Los Angeles and the Bay area. Radio, I believe, is largely responsible for several of the light blue areas on the map. Last year, I was fortunate to be on culture shows in Des Moines, Iowa; Ocala, Florida; Orange County, New York; and Philadelphia, PA. As you can see from the map, those areas where I did radio have larger concentrations of sales (shown as a mid-blue) than other areas. For The Widower’s Wife, I plan to do more radio and podcasts. I hope that those mid-blue areas will get to a nice, rich navy this time around.
