How To Sell A Book And Have Fun In The Process
In the recent past, book promotion was all about print reviews, multi-city signing tours, and bookstore readings orchestrated by the publishing houses. It’s still about that, but these days, with the industry bending this way and that in the breezes of change, new writers are raised on the expectation that they’ll be required to home-grow much of their own publicity opportunities.
At literary conferences and in bookstores, you’ll see theme-printed bookmarks, pens, mousepads, and all sorts of giveaways featuring cover artwork, book blurbs, and the occasional photograph of the author mugging his best-look-in-the-mirror face. Hired independent literary publicists, once rare-ish creatures, toil away to steer writers to an audience, but the venue for the most diverse prospects in PR (and the least expensive) is the internet.
Social-network fan pages, Amazon ratings and reviews, blog tours and contests, podcast interviews, book trailers, virtual book launches… the list mutates with each pulse of bandwidth through the server farms.
And just today, I’ve found an internet promo of a sort that I haven’t seen before.
Debut author, Scarlett Parrish, celebrated the release of her novel by staging a blog interview. That’s not so unusual in and of itself, but the interview-er was Cole Fenton, a featured character from Marie Sexton’s pending release, THE LETTER Z, and the interview-ee was Leo Carson, one of the two main characters from Ms. Parrish’s book, LONG TIME COMING.
The interview was a clever tongue-in-cheek workaround to the endless rehashing of jacket copy that can plague a book launch.
Of course, not all books and characters would lend themselves to this type of featurette, but it never hurt a soul to stretch the concept of what passes for advertising, especially in such a fun and creative display.
So, do enjoy the volley between Cole and Leo, and join with AuthorScoop in wishing Ms. Parrish and Ms. Sexton the best of luck in their efforts. Oh, and do also take away the object lesson - never hesitate to point out a good idea when you see one.
(In the interest of disclosure, the linked interview is not entirely ‘Safe for Work’ in that both LONG TIME COMING and THE LETTER Z are works of erotic fiction. The content is a smirky, R-lite rating.)
AuthorScoop
May 5th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Yes, the conundrum of book promotion. My next one’s coming out in July and I don’t know what I’ll do this time around. The latest rage, as you say, seems to be the blog tour. I suppose I’ll have to figure some variant of that. Ms. Parrish does appear to have a new and clever take on it. Perhaps I’ll have some bacteria interview a couple of white blood cells, up close and personal.
The dilemma is that, if you want to get a contract for your next book, you’ve got to get the sales figures. So, weirdly enough, adequate sales aren’t so much a way to make money as they are the means to keep the ball rolling. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a little like a Ponzi scheme.
May 6th, 2010 at 7:14 am
scarlett’s good people, and i wish her the best.
interesting piece, jamie.