The Hartsock Agency

I’m lucky because I’ve had the opportunity to be both a journalist and a PR person and I’ve seen the good, bad and the ugly from all sides.
So with that said, I also want to quickly touch on why it’s wise to think before you ask a journalist to sit through a one hour briefing. [...]

There is one amazing phrase that we could use with one another, our clients, our business partners and bloggers who write about our products or books. It’s been around for centuries and I try to use it as often as I can in email or snail mail notes. It’s the most meaningful phrase beyond “i [...]

Today is “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day” and I hope everyone out there is spending time with their daughters and sons by their side at work today.
I also wanted to share two pictures of my amazing daughter who really gave me a whole new career when she came into my life. I [...]

If you only have time to read one book in April, then I highly recommend, Richard Laermer’s latest book, 2011: Trendspotting For the Next Decade.
Laermer’s prose is witty, confessional and dead on in terms of where we’re at in marketing and trends and where we need to be.
The book is a literary and marketing masterpiece [...]

It’s interesting to read Jeff Bezo’s Letter to Shareholders that references Kindle and dropped this morning on Kindle on the Amazon Investor’s site.
He notes in the letter that one of his early quandries was how to do electronic book signings. I’m wondering why he doesn’t reference Margaret Atwood’s Long Pen? How come that amazingly [...]

Ok, so I’m still stinging from the Newsweek story on the plastic surgeon who wrote a children’s book for Moms to read to their children prior to the Moms going in for tummy tucks. And because I really try to be a very positive person, I have to get the negative mojo off the blog, [...]

This is the single most disturbing book I’ve ever heard of and it’s even more disturbing that it’s targeted at kids.