Tony Horwitz's Book Publicity Tale of Woe

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

Author Tony Horwitz is disgruntled with the world of ebook publishing and his prospects of earning a living wage as a full-time author. With a small advance, he relied on his ebook publisher's book promotion machine...and, when that book promotion machine stalled, Horwitz found himself in the unenviable position of having to make potential book buyers aware of his book himself.

Besides which, Horwitz's publisher dropped the ball (it's complicated), and then Amazon (it's even more complicated but, this time, Hatchette doesn't seem directly to be involved) dropped the ebook.

But there is good book publicity-related news for Tony Horwitz and his ebook. First, his ebook is back on Amazon again. Second, the op-ed that Hortitz wrote describing his book promotion woes was published in the New York Times. You can read it here.

Good for Tony Horwitz. The New York Times is a whole lot of lemonade to squeeze out of a lemon.

Tony, I love how you turned your foray into ebook publishing and ebook promotion from a tale of woe into a tale of wow. Keep up the great work! And enjoy the fact that the New York Times was nice enough to include the title of your ebook ("Boom") approximately -- by my conservative estimate -- about ten times. Way to go!!!

Can't ebook publishers and ebook readers just get along?

Can't ebook publishers and manufacturers (and resellers) of ebook readers just get along? As a reader (and not only as a book publicist), I want the dust to hurry up and settle so that we can all read (and, yes, promote) ebooks if we'd like. Until we figure out which ebook format will take hold, and which ebook reader or device will "win" the book wars, the ebook publishing revolution will move in slow motion. And I'm too excited about the opportunities for book promotion that revolve around ebooks to wait. So, for now, I'm using workarounds (such as ebook publishers who output content to various ebook formats) to create book promotion opportunities. But that's just a placeholder. Soon, I hope, we'll figure out the best format for ebooks and the best way to deliver them and the best way to read them -- and then this book publicity specialist is going to delight in the biggest development in the book publishing industry since the printing press. Great article about the ebook format wars on BNET.