Senator Scott Brown scores book promotion win

Scott Brown, the Republican senator from Massachusetts (did I really just say that -- it still sounds amazing to this life-long Bostonian?), just scored the biggest possible book promotion win. Everyone is talking about his about-to-be-published book (Against All Odds: My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances) -- an autobiography that, among other things, details sexual abuse that the senator suffered when he was ten years old. If a book could receive more publicity than this one has, this book publicist can't imagine it.

Sixty Minutes taped an interview with Senator Brown. The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Beast, ABCNews, CBSNews, Yahoo News, and just about every other news organization in the country has discussed Senator Brown in the context of his upcoming autobiography.

Virtually every political figure publishes an autobiography and, while most of them turn into book promotion -- and, with that, persona promotion -- opportunities for their authors, the media attention Scott Brown's book is receiving is off the chart. You can't click on a web site, or turn on the TV or the radio, or open up a newspaper, without hearing about the senator's new book. Why are all of the producers and editors going out of their way to help promote Senator Brown's new book?

My take on it is that, for whatever reason, some people feel that Scott Brown has provided too much information. The sexual abuse in his childhood, they hold, was his personal business, and he should just do the manly thing, keep it to himself, and move on. In other words, incredibly enough -- and unintentionally, I'm sure -- this book contained enough controversy to keep producers and editors excited about the story and to get their readers, viewers, and listeners interacting with the story. Any time readers, viewers, and listeners participate in a story, the story grows.

Thus, Senator Scott Brown and his publisher are sitting on a goldmine: a book that everyone is talking about. That's what book promotion does best: it finds a charismatic author (that would be Senator Brown, in this case), a worthwhile message or three (the book's title, Against All Odds, says it all), and adds a dash of controversy (intentional or not) . . . and creates a bestselling book.

That's what I think Senator Brown has here: a bestseller. Kudos to him and to his publisher, and I hope the book continues to receive publicity and positive attention from the media. This is book promotion at its best, and it's exciting -- particularly, for this Boston-area book publicist -- to see another great Boston book promotion story!

What's online? Take note for your book promotion campaign.

What's online these days? Maybe the radio station that you think is on the radio dial. Ah, changes in the media are afoot! Big changes! And regardless of how you feel about those changes, you'll have to acknowledge them, and explore them, and be willing to exploit them, if you want to maximize your chances of having a successful book promotion campaign.

We know that the Christian Science Monitor, which was one of the largest circulation daily newspapers in the U.S. not so long ago, has become almost exclusively an online publication. Now we're seeing one of Boston, Massachusetts' popular radio stations -- WBCN-FM -- go digital. Click here and here for the story.

WBCN's place on the dial (for those of us who are still using dials) will be taken by CBS-owned WBZ-FM (not to be confused with WBZ-AM, which will still enjoy its coveted, 50,000-watt AM place on the dial), and will broadcast all sports, all the time. The rock 'n' roll of WBCN-FM, on the other hand, will be relegated to a Web site.

If you're promoting your book, then you're naturally keeping up with media changes. But whereas once, all a book publicist had to do to keep up with media changes was find out which producers were leaving jobs, and which producers are taking jobs, and which journalists are moving to which publications, and which shows are launching and which shows are leaving the airwaves -- now, a book publicist has to find out whether a media outlet is still printing or broadcasting in the conventional way, or whether its exclusively (or mostly) digital.

For the time being, it's easy to keep up with the media changes, because changes such as WBCN-FM's conversion to a Web station are grabbing headlines. In a month or two, though, such changes may become old hat.

Perhaps we'll see the day soon when a book promotion campaign can be conducted exclusively online -- not only because online book promotion online can become viral marketing opportunities, but because some of the biggest and most influential media outlets have transitioned into online-only media outlets.

Stay tuned....