It was inevitable that the economic downturn would hit the publishing industry. Book sales had dropped off before the recession. Shrinking wallets and corporate panic (with good cause, unfortunately) was unlikely to help. So mainstream publishers (who already weren’t publishing a terribly high percentage of all new books) are publishing fewer books and promoting and marketing fewer of the books they have published. That means book publicists’ phones are ringing more often than before — not necessarily with tons of viable book promotion projects, but still, most authors understand that, if they want their books promoted, they have to do it themselves or hire a book publicity firm to do it for them (or at least to partner with them to conduct a book promotion campaign).