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AAPRC Weekly: Christine Saunders

Christine Saunders
Public Relations Manager
Harlequin Books
New York City


As a freshly minted college graduate Christine Saunders knew she liked books. She thought she'd like to help create books. She knew she wasn't an editor. Those three facts pretty much encompassed the extent of her career planning. Fortunately, fate stepped in and offered her an interview as a publicity assistant at Hyperion Books, a Disney subsidiary. "I didn't even know what a publicist was," Saunders remembers. "I had a sort of Hollywood notion of an old-fashioned press agent. I knew what they did but I didn't know how. I needed a job, though, and it was in publishing so I agreed to go on the interview."

She got the job and for three months or so Saunders stuffed press kits and did mailings, but still only had a vague idea of why she and her co-workers were doing what they did. Then, in August of 1995, Hyperion published a memoir by New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato, Power, Pasta and Politics: The World According to Senator Al D'Amato. "All I knew is that I had to stay at work until 9:30 preparing messenger and FedEx slips on a Friday night in July and I was just bitter," Saunders says with a laugh. "I had to hand-address 400 packages myself because no one else could see the book except me and my boss, but when I picked up the Sunday papers and saw the book on the front page of all three [New York] papers I instantly understood. I was like 'now I get it.'"

Her run at Hyperion was brief, just six months, but long enough for Saunders to get a grasp of the business and, most importantly, to make a good impression on a colleague.

A co-worker, someone Saunders knew only informally, called Saunders into her office one day. The co-worker knew someone at rival publisher Simon & Schuster who was looking for an assistant. Saunders' co-worker had passed along her resume. "She told me, 'S and S is a great house to grow and learn,'" Saunders recalls. "It just goes to show you…Me and this woman were friendly but we worked on different projects in different parts of the office. We hardly saw each other. I learned a lot from that. People notice how you carry yourself. People notice things that you do."

After six months at Simon & Schuster, Saunders was promoted to associate publicist and had to hit the ground running. She was quickly given big projects to helm. Her first was a 24-city tour for former CIA director Robert Gates' 1996 account of the Cold War, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. Saunders, who'd majored in political science, had written college essays about Gates and was blown away to suddenly find herself promoting the former cabinet member's book.

During her five years at Simon & Shuster (she was promoted to senior publicist in 1998), Saunders participated in the house's launch of its African-American publishing program and worked with best-selling African-American popular fiction writers like Omar Tyree (A Do Right Man), Benilde Little (Good Hair, The Itch) and Sheneska Jackson (Caught Up in the Rapture, Blessings). Little's Good Hair was the first Black novel Saunders worked on and because the publisher had done so little Black fiction, there was no game plan for how to promote it. Saunders had to get resourceful. To identify the right morning drive stations, she called her girlfriends in the different tour cities and asked them what radio stations they listened to while getting dressed in the morning. "I'm really glad I was able to be here at that time because it was a learning experience for all of us," says Saunders. "I was a young publicist still learning my craft and Simon & Schuster was just learning about the African-American bookstores –– which are the big ones and who the sales reps should even be calling on."

While Saunders helped support the rise of African-American popular fiction at Simon & Schuster, she also played a vital role in the crossover success of groundbreaking African-American non-fiction author Iyanla Vanzant. Vanzant, a self-styled self-help guru, ordained minister, lawyer and domestic abuse survivor, has written a string of bestselling books on spirituality, self-love and healing, including: In the Meantime: Finding Yourself and the Love You Want, One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, and many more. Saunders' work as Vanzant's publicist in the late nineties earned her one of the publishing industry's highest awards –– the Literary Marketplace Award for Publishing Excellence (1999). Saunders also caught the eye of Warner Books (a subsidiary of AOL/Time Warner).

In 2000, Warner recruited her to join their staff as a publicity manager. She developed plans for Larry King, Sammy Sosa, Coretta Scott King and others. She also launched the company's imprint, Walk Worthy Press, a publisher of African-American Christian fiction. Her new managerial role was a challenge, but Saunders had juggled multiple staffs at Simon & Schuster (Vanzant published in hardcover and trade paperback simultaneously so Saunders was used to coordinating among different departments). The leap she made a year later, though, was a tougher gut test.

In 2001, publishing giant Random House made Saunders the proverbial offer she couldn't refuse. The publisher brought her on board as publicity and marketing director for the African-American imprint One World. On the publicity side, it was simply another publicity job. Being the executive in charge of the imprint's complete external image –– from marketing and publicity to representing the imprint in the media –– was something else. "As a director, you have to think not only about the projects you personally may be handling, you have to think about the projects other people are handling. You have to think about the books the imprint is acquiring," Saunders says. "You have other corporate concerns in addition to all the publicity stuff. I used to say to people, 'I'm always thinking a year out.'"

Needless to say, working for Random House was demanding. The company kept an aggressive publishing schedule and Saunders, quite frankly, was burned out. When a friend in human resources at Columbia Medical School called to say there was an opportunity Saunders might be interested in, Saunders thought about the fact that the medical school was just 20 blocks away from her Harlem apartment. She thought about the luxury of leaving the office at five. "I wanted to figure out if it was going to be possible to grow as a publicist. What skills did I want to learn?" says Saunders of the decision to leave Random House. "You book 'Oprah,' you book the 'Today Show.' After a while you've done a lot of it…" By July of 2002, Saunders was, for the first time since she'd left college, not a publicist.

As director of student activities at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, Saunders coordinated functions for more than 60 student groups. The college has a level of extracurricular student activity unique for a medical school, including a theatre program that puts on three full-scale Broadway-style productions each year, and groups like a wine-tasting club that coordinate monthly activities for 200. It was a busy job but the work moved at a slower pace than publicity. At first, Saunders looked forward to the more leisurely day, but it was quite an adjustment, especially for someone who'd never gone home at five o'clock. "I sort of work until I'm at a place where I can stop," says Saunders. "The first few weeks I was at Columbia I would do that and then go to someone's office with what I was working on and it would be locked! I was like, 'It's five-fifteen!' That was culture shock."

During her nearly two years with Columbia, Saunders honed her eventproducing and fundraising skills, but, in the end, the culture shock won. "When you're a publicist there's a certain rhythm of the day and there's a way you think about 20 things at once…I really missed the momentum of it," says Saunders. "That's when I realized, 'okay, I think I want to do this [publicity] again.'"

She eased her way back into publicity by taking a dip in the Kerry campaign for President in late 2004. A call from Saunders' long-time friend, publicist Candace Sandy [see Candace Sandy's MOVERS & MAKERS profile in the November 2004 issue of The AAPRC Monthly], put Saunders, long a political junkie, on a plane to Wisconsin. The swing state was among the hottest real estate in the last minute grab for electoral votes and Saunders enjoyed being in the midst. "Intellectually, I'm really fascinated by this [politics]," says Saunders. "To be in a swing state at the forefront of a Presidential election was really a once-ina-lifetime experience…There's nothing like it."

These days, Saunders is back in publishing. At the first of the year she became the public relations manager for Harlequin, a Canadian publishing house known primarily for its romance paperbacks (though romance is a very small part of their business). Saunders is the company's first U.S.-based press person. "This is actually more of a corporate communications position," says Saunders of the new job. "I'm actually doing more corporate branding and trade outreach, which I find really interesting. I feel like it's the next step from doing just single title publicity."

Looking to the future, Saunders sees herself one day putting her PR skills to work for a non-profit and involving herself more completely in philanthropy. Already, she serves on the Manhattan Advisory Board of the New York Urban League and volunteers with St. Aloysius School and The Sledge Group, an organization that provides services to young people. When she isn't volunteering, Saunders spends time with her family in Teaneck, New Jersey, attends Harlem's Canaan Baptist Church and relishes a newly rediscovered love for roller rinks.

AAPRC's Mission
The African-American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC) is an assemblage of professionals who provide communication conduits among clients, journalists, media and our communities. We come together as a collective because we recognize the importance of building those same conduits amongst ourselves.

A great deal of what we do is professional development––updating our skills, keeping pace with technology, refining and streamlining processes, providing a forum to tackle the issues that impact our work environment––but we believe our professional lives benefit most from the forging of effective alliances. Connected to one another, we possess the power of a nationwide body of committed, knowledgeable practitioners with an eye on the future.

As we move into the 21st century at lightning speed, mass media and its potent messages occupy an ever-larger part of our daily lives and our collective psyche. The AAPRC is focused on helping our members gain a deeper understanding of media's force and supporting their growth as powerful participants in the global communications network.

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