Backflip for book promotion?

By Stacey J. Miller, Book Publicist
S. J. Miller Communications
bookpromotion@gmail.com


Would you do a backflip for book promotion?

Book publicists frequently hear from authors who say, "I want a viral book marketing campaign. Do you orchestrate viral book marketing campaigns?" This honest book publicist always responds, "Not on purpose. By definition, you can't orchestrate a viral marketing campaign. Viral marketing campaigns are regular marketing campaigns that go viral. You can set up all the right conditions so that your book marketing campaign has a chance to go viral. You can integrate whimsy, humor, or controversy into the campaign, come up with catchy sound bites, and tap into pop culture events that everyone seems to be discussing at the water cooler. But, no, I can't guarantee you a viral book marketing campaign.  I can only guarantee you a creative book marketing campaign. How does that sound?" Authors who are determined to pay a book publicist to orchestrate a viral book marketing campaign simply make additional phone calls until they find a book publicist who disingenuously promises to do the impossible, and to force a book promotion campaign to go viral.

Authors and publishers: you can't make a book marketing campaign go viral. If you could, though, a book marketing campaign would look something like this. Note that, if this college graduate's blackflip had gone the way he'd intended for it to (in other words, if the blackflip had gone as planned), there'd be no video of his blackflip going viral online right now, and CNN certainly wouldn't have picked it up.

So the question is: would you -- metaphorically speaking -- do a blackflip for book promotion? This particular book publicist doesn't recommend it! No amount of author publicity is worth the pain of that thud! But she's glad the college graduate didn't hurt himself. Onward and upward!