Perfect Book Promotion Pitches

If you send out a lot of book promotion pitches, the way that I do, then you write for a tough audience: the media. In fact, if the editors and writers of top magazines and newspapers are on your media contact list, then you are writing for the toughest -- and, potentially, the most critical -- audience imaginable. A press kit (and that term now includes traditional press kits as well as online, digital press kits) is not the place to demonstrate your confusion about grammar, spelling, or word usage. Even casual emails to the media -- surprise! -- have to be cogent, correct, cohesive, and clear.

It's easy to write perfectly, all the time, if you're a well-programmed software program -- but I've never met an author, publisher, or book publicist who falls into that category. Alas. The second-best way to create book promotion pitches that enhance your credibility, rather than encourage recipients to roll their eyes and shake their heads, is to look up anything of which you're unsure.

I've just found a great online resource, and I want to share it with everyone who's in the midst of a book promotion campaign. In fact, I want to share it with everyone on the planet! Note: The site doesn't charge users, and even if it ever starts to charge users, the owners aren't paying me a referral fee. My enthusiasm comes not from the potential to profit from this referral but, rather, from my deep and abiding love of the English language. Check out this link: http://www.bartleby.com/.

Why? I'm glad you asked. On Bartleby's Web site, you'll find searchable copies of Fowler's The King's English (yes, it's British, but still); The Elements of Style; the American Heritage® Book of English Usage, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, and more.

Finding this site has made my day. It's also eliminated my last excuse for getting anything wrong, ever, in any of my outbound book promotion pitches.

It's also, potentially, addictive. Note to clients: Don't worry, I'm bookmarking the site now and won't click it on again until after hours. I can do it! I can do it!

Book promotion mistake: torturing your message

Don't get me wrong. One of the most effective ways to garner book promotion opportunities is to tie your book (and blog, seminars, multimedia book shows, podcasts, and other informational offerings) into the headlines. As a book publicist, it's part of my job to keep an eye on news stories and current events, and to suggest ways to tie your messages into the news.

But a common mistake this book publicist sees is: taking it too far.

If there's a presidential election coming up, suddenly, every author is trying to find a presidential election media angle. Sometimes, it works, but when you have to put your message through torturous machinations ("as a nutritionist, I can talk about how Hillary Clinton's diet has probably changed during the campaign based on how her clothes seem to be fitting her" or "as a real estate professional, I'd suggest waiting until the Democratic party has nominated its candidate before putting your home on the market") to justify a pitch.

I've had two clients, already, ask me to craft a pitch to the media that would run something like, "here's some fashion advice for Barak, Hillary, and John" and "here are the five verbal mistakes that the presidential candidates must avoid."

Now put yourself in the shoes of a producer or editor. Every publicist who approaches you, and every author and publisher who pitches you, has an election-related media angle. Every one of them wants to advise presidential candidates. And you've been running dozens of election stories each week, and you've spoken with hundreds of experts who are tying their messages into the election. You've heard thousands of election-related news hooks, and at this point, you have election story ideas all over your desk, your floor, your email box, and your voice mail. You're drowning in election stories.

Which would appeal to you more: yet another election-related news hook, or an unrelated story idea?

The answer is that, when coverage of a particular news event (today, it's the presidential election, but soon it will be another story -- a celebrity's demise, another O. J. Simpson trial, a natural disaster, or what-have-you) reaches the saturation point, then the media welcomes -- in fact, the media demands -- other story pitches.

Be bold. When other authors, publishers, and book publicists are offering advice to presidential candidates or Britney Spears or O. J. Simpson, try offering a more hard-hitting news angle. Conversely, when the news is filled with natural disasters, crime, and morbid economic predictioins, try pitching a light feature story idea. Instead of torturing your message to fit the news story of the day, offer your expertise in ways that the media will find refreshing.

Producers and editors, too, need a break from politics (and the recession, and O.J., and the Olympics, and...). During those times -- when the media is weighing itself down with the same-old, same-old news hooks -- try offering them something, and I think you'll see the book promotion opportunities you've been seeking.

Authors: have you been to Boston lately?

Boston, Massachusetts is a literary hotbed. So says novelist Mameve Medwed as quoted in a May 4 Boston Globe article titled "Novices peek at literary world."

Well, yes. I knew that Massachusetts had bragging rights to some of my favorite authors, past and present. Louisa May Alcott, famously of Concord, once lived on Beacon Hill, for heaven's sakes! I've read in her bio that Lois Lowry -- The Giver, anyone? -- lives, part of the time, on Beacon Hill, too. So of course: Boston is filled with literary greats.

But who knew that Boston was also the home of "Muse and the Marketplace," which the Globe describes as a two-day conference run by the independent writing center Grub Street Inc." I didn't, I'm ashamed to say, even though this was its seventh year in operation.

Me? I'm not only a Boston-based book publicist, but I'm also a rabid Massachusetts-based book reader, and I can guarantee you: the eighth annual "Muse and the Marketplace" will find me in attendance, drinking in the company, and talents, of the Massachusetts-based writers who help make Boston a literary hub.

Is the "Muse and the Marketplace" a book promotion opportunity? Certainly, but it's also a chance to meet new Boston-area authors and get a first-peek at their works -- and I, for one, will never let that opportunity slip by again.

Do you need a blog promotion specialist?

Everyone blogs. But it occurs to me that a lot of bloggers are making the same mistake. They're thinking: If you blog it, they will come. Well, no.

If you blog it, they will come -- if you promote your blog.

You know the drill. You can be the world's best blogger, but if no one knows about your blog, then you're blogging for your own amusement. That may be fine, if you're a hobbyist with lots of time on your hands to express yourself on a subject and then move onto your real life.

But if blogging is part of your real life -- if you're blogging to promote your book, to bring visitors to your Web site, to help producers and editors find you, to optimize your Web site for search engine placement, to build brand, to enhance your online visibility, and to disseminate your messages -- then you have to publicize your blog.

You have to think of your blog as a product that needs your publicist's time and energy, just as you think of your book, Web site, and seminars as products that must be promoted and marketed. Your blog publicist should understand the viral marketing potential of your blog and should have a track record at bringing visitors to your blog.

If you blog, they will come -- but your blog promotion specialist has to "think outside the blog" to make that happen. Does your book publicist lack the blog promotion experience? We can help. We also offer ghost blogging services. Email us at sjmiller@bookpr.com, or visit our web site for more information.

I'd like to thank the Academy, and....

This year's YouTube Video Awards have just been handed out, and for this book publicist, that begs the question: could your multimedia book show (presuming you've uploaded it to YouTube and other video-sharing sites) go "viral," be seen by millions of people, and perhaps even win the online video equivalent of an Emmy?

And, if it did, would that necessarily turn your book into a bestseller?

Historically, book promotion efforts have been related to book sales (book publicists of integrity won't tell you exactly how the two are related, because we can't know for sure -- but we do know that there's usually a correlation between the two). But there's been no one huge book promotion hit -- no, not even an appearance on "Oprah" -- that can guarantee an author will sell a specific number of books on a given day, or that the number of books sold will be enough to catapult the book to the bestseller lists.

But, then again, traditional media outlets haven't resulted in the type of viral marketing enjoyed by the winners of the 2007 YouTube Video Awards. Those videos are everywhere. Links to those videos are in your inbox, because several people you know sent them to you. Those people didn't even have to enjoy those videos to pass along those links. They simply had to be get a chuckle, learn a couple of things, or believe that -- in some way -- the videos were worth a few minutes of your time. And that's it: the links land in your inbox, you pass them along to others, and those recipients pass them along to still others, and...before long, the number of viewers for that video probably leaves the number of viewers that any national TV show boasts in the dust.

Which leads me to wonder: for authors with a book to promote, and the budget to create a multimedia book show, why are you not getting out there and hiring a production conmpany to create a video for you? Why are you putting all of your book promotion muscle behind traditional book publicity instead of exploring the possibilities of online book promotion such as multimedia book shows?

There may be reasons that I don't understand. But perhaps someoone could explain them to me, because -- after watching the success of the videos featured in this year's YouTube Video Awards -- I believe that book videos should be a part of every author and publisher's bag of tricks. And you?

Who's competing for the media's attention?

You're trying to promote your book. Who's competing for the media's attention? Just about everyone, according to an article in the New York Times' Sunday Book Review called "You’re an Author? Me Too!" Columnist Rachel Donadio points out that, while fewer Americans are reading, many more of us are publishing books.

Are you seeking book promotion opportunities? So is every other author. And so is every other publisher.

Are you seeking endorsements for your book? So is every other author. And so is every other publisher.

In fact, columnist Brandon Griggs of the Salt Lake City Tribune points out that everyone is seeking a blurb for his or her book, and even well-meaning blurbers (that is, those who genuinely enjoy a book and want to support it, as opposed to those authors who are just seeking promotional opportunities for their own books) tend to look like, well, "blurb whores" if they endorse more than fifty books.

What are authors to do if their book promotion opportunities are diminishing because of the crowded field of competition? Work harder. Seek out online book promotion opportunities as well as the traditional venues. And make book promotion a part of your job and your mission.

Book Promotion Is Tough. Poetry Promotion Is Tougher.

If book promotion is tough, then promoting poetry books is the toughest book promotion challenge of all. So how would you get people -- many of whom aren't "into" poetry -- to attend a poetry festival?

The organizers of the Newburyport (Massachusetts) Poetry Festival had a brilliant book promotion idea. Using the Book Crossing model, they had volunteers distribute 25 copies of books written by poets participating in the festival. The idea was that people would find the books, browse through them, get hooked, and tell their friends about the festival -- and they'd pick up new fans and festival attendees.

I'll bet it worked, too.

For more information about the challenge of bringing people to the Newburyport Poetry Festival, click here. If you can bring readers to poetry, then you can bring readers to any type of book. Way to go, Newburyport, for thinking outside the book promotion box!

Web-based TV show for novelists and poets

I may have just seen the future of book promotion, and if so, then it is TitlePage TV. It wasn't easy to run across; I did, because I was paying attention to the April 22 PaperCuts blog (which is a New York Times book blog). Once I got past the baffling book multimedia show for a book by Sloane Crosley called, I Was Told There'd Be Cake (don't get me wrong -- it was a wonderfully-produced show, but I was at a loss to figure out its message), I gleefully found the TitlePage TV show (hosted by editor and novelist Daniel Menaker).

Way to go, Daniel! Your show looks as nice as anything you might see on broadcast TV, and I'll bet its attracting more prospective guests than you have the time to interview.

Web-based TV shows about books. This may well be the future of book promotion -- or, at least, one sizeable chunk of it.

YouTubing for Book Promotion

Are you using youtube.com as part of your book promotion campaign? You probably should be, if some recent stats are correct. Last Wednesday, an organization called comScore Inc. released this surprising (to this book publicist, anyway) factoid: This year, 66% more people than last year are viewing online videos. You can read the Associated Press article on MSNBC here. Even television network executives, who acknowledge that they're losing viewers to the Internet, are trying to bring their content online.

That's probably good news for authors and publishers who are currently contemplating book promotion campaigns and for book publicists. Rather than pitching television shows and hoping the producer picks your book to feature, or your author to interview, you can create a multimedia book trailer, post it on YouTube (which is where most viewers go to indulge their online video-watching habit) and on your own Web site.

There are a couple of caveats.

First, you'll have to bring viewers to your online video. When you do a traditional TV show, you'll automatically have viewers; those TV shows are on the air because they've built up their audience base. With your own book video, you'll have to find viewers yourself. That means an effective book promotion campaign, these days, includes a video promotion campaign component (and a book Web site promotion campaign), too.

Second, your book's multimedia show has to be professionally conceptualized and executed. The production values must be top-notch. They don't necessarily have to include video components, which can really jack up the cost (and, ironically, lower the quality) of multimedia shows for books. But they do have to leave PowerPoint presentations in the dust, and -- as talented as your college-age nephew might be -- this is a project for production professionals, not relatives and students. The multimedia show is a reflection on your book, so if you can't afford a first-rate production, then put the idea on hold until you can.

When your multimedia book show is built, and viewers are watching it on YouTube (and on your Web site), you might ask: Who needs "Oprah?" Why should I bother to pitch traditional national TV shows when I now have my own book multimedia show online? Well, for now, we all need "Oprah" (and other tradtional book promotion opportunities).

Next year...who knows?

Agree to disagree

A client recently was interviewed by a Christian radio show. After the interview, he called to request that, in the future, I refrain from booking him on Christian radio shows. When I asked why, he said, "Well, the hosts disagree with my book's thesis, so there's no point in talking with them."

Well, I disagree. Every radio interview, on any type of radio station, is a book promotion opportunity. And nearly every host who disagrees with you provides you with an opportunity to make your case. (Those who don't provide you with an opportunity to make your case present a particular challenge, but there are ways to rise to that challenge, too.)

Book promotion opportunities aren't easy to come by. If they were, then book publicists would be out of business. As a book publicist, I work hard to schedule each and every interview, and the last thing I want is to screen potential interviewers to make sure their perspective is identical to my client's point of view before finalizing the interview.

I can appreciate a client's wish to attract interviews from media outlets that he or she respects the most (particularly, from those venues that are on his or her media "wish list"). And I can understand a client's desire to say, in advance of the book promotion campaign, "I'll do an interview that comes up except A, B, and C" (where A, B, and C are radio talk show hosts who make their living beating up or mocking or humiliating guests just for the sport of it). I'm very comfortable, for example, with the client who says, "Don't bother to pitch Howard Stern, because I wouldn't consider doing his show."

But I don't appreciate it when clients sabotage their own book promotion potential by restricting the pool of interviewers to "known, safe" quantities. No book publicist can predict what will happen during an interview; therefore, no interviewer is perfectly "safe." Anyone can disagree with a client, for any reason, and it shouldn't be the end of the world.

But limiting the media outlets that might help you promote your book can very well be the end of your book promotion campaign.

A vulgar way to get book promotion opportunities.

Here's a vulgar way to get book promotion opportunities. Although I'm willing to share it, I don't advocate it either as a book publicist or as a human being. That said, here's how to get more book publicity opportunities than you can handle: get involved with O.J. Simpson, and then offer your "exclusive" perspective into the man's psyche.

That's just what "a key figure in the O.J. Simpson case" did, according to an Associated Press article that's making the rounds. The O.J. Simpson case in question, interestingly enough, isn't the O.J. Simpson case. It's the other O.J. Simpson case -- you know, the one that involves sports memorabilia, a hotel room, possible kidnapping, and (potentially) at least one gun. And the "key figure" who has something to do with the case -- it ain't O.J., and I couldn't quite get myself to commit the name of the person it was to long-term memory -- is cashing in on his, um, proud association with O.J. Simpson here in our world. He wrote a book, he had it published, and now he's promoting it.

Somewhere, I'll bet a book publicist (or book publicists) are cringing at the thought of what they've involved themselves in. I hope the publisher is cringing, too.

As for me, I'm not exactly proud of myself for adding this blog to the book promotion this "key figure" is receiving for his O.J. Simpson-related title. But I'll defend myself, partially, by reminding you that I never mentioned the name of the author's book.

I'll conclude by saying this. If you don't always get as many book promotion opportunities you deserve, at least you can be thankful that you haven't stooped to the level of some authors, who right about certain vulgar topics, to get the book promotion that you do receive. It's a trade-off, I suppose, but I'd never promote a book related to O.J. Simpson -- and I'm glad that, as an independent book promotion specialist, that choice is mine to make.

Are these books even worth promoting?

HarperCollins is launching an imprint which will be led by Robert S Miller, founder of Hyperion. A new imprint, you say. Wow! Great!

Well, not so much. The new HarperCollins imprint, the name of which hasn't yet been announced (or this book publicist has missed it), has two drawbacks. First, it doesn't pay an advance to authors (or the advance is so small that it may as well not exist, since it won't cover the author's time in preparing the book and waiting for it to pay royalties). Also -- and this is the biggie -- the books will be nonreturnable.

I've just read a Guardian Weekly article that quotes Miller as saying that he'll have to figure out a way to get booksellers to buy his books on a nonreturnable basis. Yes. And right after he figures that out, he can end world hunger, get the U.S. troops out of Iraq, and cure AIDS.

I'll sit here and wait.

The new HarperCollins imprint begs the question: Are the books they publish even going to be books, given the fact that -- unless Miller pulls a rabbit out of a hat that has long proven itself hostile to bunnies -- bookstores won't even entertain the idea of carrying them? Worse, since the books are nonreturnable, most bookstores won't even know how to order the books and will, mostly likely, turn customers away. Even an appearance on "Oprah" couldn't turn a book that probably won't be ordered by bookstores into a success.

I just hope that, before authors sign on with the new HarperCollins imprint do their homework and determine whether they can live with its drawbacks. With changes occurring in the publishing industry, the homework never ends.

Being a book publicist is no joke.

Being a book publicist is no joke, and book promotion isn't a joke, either. So when a client approached me about sending out a press release parody on her behalf for April Fool's Day, I declined.

The press release would have contained how-to tips that were "funny," because they represented ideas that were diametrically opposed to the author's "real" how-to tips. I declined to send out such a press release on the grounds that it was irresponsible.

The author in question isn't irresponsible. She's been offering the media her how-to tips for years, and the media loves them and rewards her for being the expert in her field by providing her with tons of high-profile interview opportunities on a regular basis. But, in this case, I believe the author was misguided.

An author can have fun during her book promotion campaign. I hope book publicity is fun. I want it to be fun.

But an author, like book publicists, has to guard her credibility. All she has to offer the media, finally, is her credibility -- just as all book pubicists have to offer the media, finally, is the trust they've earned over the years they've spent nurturing relationiships. It would be a very bad call, in my judgment, to throw away that credibility and trust for the privilege of being able to chortle "April Fool!" when someone believes a press release (and, perhaps, is ready to schedule an interview that revolves around a press release) that contains false information.

That is why this book publicist declined to play an April Fool's Day joke on the media. I think it's a very bad idea, and as a book promotion professional, I choose to associate myself with only very good ideas. Onward....

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

One of the responsibilities of a book publicist -- or of anyone who's organizing a book promotion campaign -- is to keep abreast of changes in the media. Producers, editors, and hosts come and go, and keeping up with those changes can be disheartening (as when Don Imus lands another on-air gig) or puzzling (as when Kathie Lee Gifford is hired to be part of the "Today Show" team).

Kathie Lee Gifford? The fluffy co-host of "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee?" The perky half of morning television's fluffiest, perkiest show ever? On the "Today Show?"

I'm puzzled. What could Kathie Lee Gifford bring to a news program that includes -- but doesn't focus on -- lighter features?

Well, like everyone else who promotes books, I'll find out soon, I suppose. Stay tuned....

Could blogs ever replace books?

Could blogs ever replace books in the hearts and souls of book lovers? Of course not. But will there ever be a generation that grows up without books -- favoring, instead, the chunks of information they can get by logging onto the Internet and reading Web sites, ezines, and blogs? Maybe. Check out this article on Icwales.com/.

Another survey -- this one, done in Great Britain, I'm pleased to say -- finds that young people are reading fewer books than their parents did. And how many books will their children read? That's the really disturbing question.

If young people today prefer reading blogs to curling up with a good book, then what will become of the generation that follows them? And the generation after that? And the generation after that?

Book promotion is difficult enough with all the competition for readers' attention. What will happen when the definition of "reader" changes to mean "someone who frequently logs onto the Internet and scans information that might be of interest?"

To whom will we promote our books then?

Thinking Outside the Blog: An Update

Since I last posted about Gary David Goldberg's blog entry, "WWAKD: What Would Alex Keaton Do," there have been two major developments.

To backtrack a bit, Gary David Goldberg (creator of "Family Ties" and author of the new book, Sit, Ubu, Sit) posted a blog entry on his Web site. I'm fortunate enough to be handling the online portion of Gary's comprehensive book promotion campaign.

The article moved me, and I asked for (and received) permission to "think outside the blog" and pitch the article to other media outlets. Within 24 hours, the New York Times blog, Campaign Stop, posted Gary's article. That was on March 3.

A couple of days later, on a hunch, I checked Google and discovered that the blog entry had spread virally. Blogs ranging from Politico to the Atlantic had linked back to Gary's article (as published by the New York Times blog). I published, in my previous blog entry (Thinking Outside the Blog) a partial list of the links back to the article I'd found as of a couple of days ago.

I'm excited to report that the article is still spreading around the Internet in the best example of viral marketing that I've ever been involved with. New York Magazine's Web site has linked back to the article, and the Los Angeles Times' LA Funny Pages 2.0 blog has also featured part of the article and a link back to the complete text on the New York Times blog.

And if that weren't enough, the real-world version of the Chicago Tribune ran the article yesterday, and its Web site featured the article, as well. The (Allentown, PA) Morning Call also ran the article yesterday and featured it on its Web site. And the LA Daily News is running the article this Sunday (and I feel confident that it will show up on their Web site, too).

Gary David Goldberg is a fantastic writer with an unmatched instinct for choosing topics that are current, poignant, and controversial. His work has inspired "water cooler chats" for decades. So it's not surprising that his thoughts about how an iconic character whom he created, Alex P. Keaton of "Family Ties," would vote in the upcoming presidential election has garnered a tremendous amount of interest and discussion (as of now, there are 215 readers' comments posted on the New York Times blog).

Good for him. Gary David Goldberg is a man who's earned success and found it many times over, and it's unsurprising that he's found more of it with this article. But there's a lesson for all of us to be drawn here, and that is simply this: blog! And when you think you don't have time to blog, blog anyway! And then extend your blog entries beyond the blog. See how far you can take them. You might be able to launch a viral marketing campaign of your own just because of one great piece of writing. It's hard to overlook the success this particular blog entry, "What Would Alex Keaton Do," has enjoyed.

Open letter to the National Enquirer editors

Dear National Enquirer editors:

You could publish that story, NATIONAL ENQUIRER WORLD EXCLUSIVE: PATRICK SWAYZE HAS 5 WEEKS TO LIVE, so you did. You get the glory of scoring an exclusive on a "breaking news story."

And what do members of Mr. Swayze's inner circle get?

Pain.

And what do his fans get?

Sadness. And anger.

This fan didn't want to find out about Mr. Swayze's health condition from you, dear editors. She wanted to find out -- when and if appropriate -- from Mr. Swayze himself or those who are authorized to speak on his behalf.

Shame on you for depriving the Swazye family, and those who care about them, of that opportunity. Shame on you for deciding to publish what best served your purposes just because you could -- regardless of the consequences.

Thinking Outside the Blog

Why blog? It's a lot of work, and it's time-consuming, even for professional writers and those who just love to write. So why do it?

Because one blog entry -- if you think outside the blog -- can get your message all over cyberspace (and, by extension, all over the globe) just about instantly. Could that benefit your book promotion campaign?

Are you serious?

Here's an example of how it can work.

A client, Gary David Goldberg, recently wrote a blog entry called "WWAKD (What Would Alex Keaton Do)" He posted it on his personal blog on his Web site. His site, which is new, is already building a very respectable following and helping to promote his new book, Sit, Ubu, Sit: How I went from Brooklyn to Hollywood with the Same Woman, the Same Dog, and a Lot Less Hair .

The article is about how the fictional character, Alex P. Keaton of "Family Ties," might vote in the upcoming presidential election, and I think it's insightful and witty and compassionate and touching (and I'd expect no less from its author).

Because I believe in the power of "thinking outside the blog," I pitched the article as an op-ed piece to various media contacts at the same time as Goldberg uploaded it to his Web site.

The New York Times asked for (and received) permission to publish the article in their own political blog called Campaign Stops. The Times posted the article on the evening of March 3, and the next morning, there was a hyperlink to the story on the NYT.com home page (with a vintage file photograph of Michael J. Fox dressed to play the role of Alex P. Keaton). As of this writing, the story has elicted 196 readers' comments on the New York Times' blog (which run the gamut, by the way, from "Who is Alex Keaton? I’ve never heard of him before" to "To see a picture of Alex P. Keaton on the New York Times is worth this article alone").

On an inspired hunch, I Googled the phrase "What Would Alex Keaton Do" this morning and found that the following Web sites -- many of which you'll recognize -- have linked to the NYT blog:

Atlantic.com
Politico.com
NowPublic.com
Topix.com
KWOFF.com.au
Wilshire and Washington
NewsVine.com
North American Patriot
Suburban Correspondent
Yedda.com
Memeorandum.com
Electionbid2008
Twitter.com
Intermedia Outdoors Forums
BlogoWogo.com
Abram’s Nickels
Democratic Underground
Red Blue America blog

And I've begun the process of submitting a press release I drafted about how Alex Keaton might vote, and the fact that the New York Times cares about the topic, all over the Web. The release has already appeared in Google News along with a photo of the Sit, Ubu, Sit book cover.

Also, about a dozen newspapers (including one of the major dailies) from coast to coast have asked for an author's photo in anticipation of publishing the article -- both on their Web sites and in their real-world newspapers.

All that media coverage has come from one really great, well-conceived, and well-written blog entry. Granted, the blog entry was written by Gary David Goldberg, who has been a household name in many TV-watching households for more than two decades, so you might ask what Gary's success in promoting his article has to do with the exposure your blog entry is likely to receive.

Well, okay. You can say, "Forget it. No one cares about my blog entry. I'll upload it to my Web site and move on. Let's think of some more realistic book promotion strategies, please."

Or you can think outside the blog.

And who knows what might happen?

It's your choice.

"If it ain't broke, break it."

This is only tangentally related to book promotion, but since it affects those of us who want to continue to watch television with our lower-tech TV sets after the Digital TV Revolution overthrows the Analog TV Regime (or something like that -- sadly, the details escape this book promotion specialist), I'll share what I just learned.

The NTIA (The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration) is offering up to two discount coupons for each TV-watching household for digital converter boxes for its much-hyped Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program. So, if you still want to watch television on your less than state-of-the-art TV set after the Revolution -- and you'd like a discount coupon from the government to help you pay for this privilege -- then you can call the FCC's Digital Converter Box Hotline at 1-888-388-2009. Alternatively, you can click here.

If you're far braver than this book publicist and want to try to figure out what in the world the Digital TV Revolution is all about, and how it will/won't/may affect your television-watching life, then click here.

If anyone can wade through all that information and make sense of it, I invite him or her to pass along the geek-free details here.

Are book tours part of your book promotion strategy?

If conventional book tours (as opposed to online book tours) are a part of your book promotion campaign, then you might want to consider memorializing your book tour stops on BookTour.com. The site allows fans who are in the market to go to book signings to connect with authors who will be in the neighborhood as part of a book tour.

You can read more about the BookTour.com site and its benefits here, at author Connie Briscoe's site. As Connie implies, one of the site's fringe benefits is that it lets search engines know about your book tour by getting your book's title "out there" on the Net. So not only do authors get to connect with their fans through BookTour.com, but they also get to connect with search engines. And BookTour.com is free (at least, it's free for now).

So, if you are using book tours as part of your book promotion strategy, why not take a look at BookTour.com? You have nothing to lose, and who knows? You might even bring a few extra people into your book signings.

Book promotion ups and downs.

Book promotion ups and downs: every author who has ever engaged in a book publicity campaign can tell the same story. This particular tale belongs to a blogger whose blog is called Shoshanahala's Weblog. Check out the experiences of a first-time nonfiction author here.

To veteran book promoters out there, does any of this sound familiar? Any thoughts about which is less stressful: television or radio interviews?

As Judge Judy says....

Say what you will about Judge Judy Sheindlin's shortcomings as a gracious and kind adjudicator, but she's inarguably right about at least one thing: when you tell the truth, you don't ever have to worry about getting your story straight.

I was reminded of that as I read the news reports of Roger Clemens' and Brian McNamee's recent testimony at the Congressional hearings. Both of them, according to all the sources I checked, looked and sounded suspiciously as though they were, at best, covering up something and not telling the whole truth.

There's a lesson in here for authors who are promoting their books and granting media interviews as part of their book promotion campaigns. If you want to look and sound credible, keep your answers simple and above board. Be sure your pitch is honest, too. Using a headline such as "Local author has just discovered a cure for AIDS" may get you the interview, but it will also earn you instant animosity when the reporter or host finds out it just isn't true.

Be honest. Always. Tell the truth, and present yourself as you are -- nothing more, and nothing less.

Hyperbole isn't your friend. Stammering, pausing, and twitching nervously while you try to figure out which version of the story you're supposed to be sharing with the media is the enemy of a successful book promotion campaign. And it wouldn't score any points with Judge Judy Sheindlin, either.

Do you want to know how important radio is? Think: Jess Cain.

Do you want to know how important radio is to listeners? Here's how important it is.

A friend left a voice mail message for me this morning at work. It said, "Jess Cain died." And I started to sob.

So who was Jess Cain? If you have to ask, then you probably didn't live within range of the old WHDH-AM Boston-area radio signal anytime between 1958 and 1991 or, if you did, then you probably weren't an early riser.

Jess sent me off to school each morning. He was the first person to talk to me when I awoke, he was the first person to make me smile each day, and he was usually the first person to break the really, really bad news to me each morning, too (my mom actually woke me in the wee hours of a particular morning in December of 1981 expressly so that I wouldn't hear about John Lennon's murder from Jess) -- and to share the really, really good news (snow day! yay!) with me.

I still remember his last day on the air as clearly as I remember other huge losses in my life. I'm sure I have plenty of company in feeling that Jess Cain, and all those larger-than-life, local radio personalities of the time -- smart and talented, respectful and kind -- were never replaced, and never will be.

The intimacy of radio persists, though, and if authors and publishers ever question whether it's worth it to do an interview on a small radio station, this blog entry is my response. Yes. Do it. It's worth it. There's nothing as intimate and satisfying as connecting with a radio audience.

Jess was almost a member of my family. His successors (at other area radio stations -- WHDH radio doesn't even exist any longer, alas) aren't in his league, but I still feel a strong bond with some of the on-air personalities who populate the airwaves these days. They're an important part of my life, and my newsgathering, and my entertainment, and my waking up in the morning -- and they're an integral part of the lives of other members of their listeners, too. Who wouldn't want to tap into that powerful relationship as part of a book promotion campaign?

If you love Jess Cain, the way that I do, you might want to read about him. Click here to do so at the Boston Globe's Web site.

Free eBook, anyone? An experiment in book publishing.

Free eBook download, anyone? Or would you just like to read part of a book online at a really great discount (it would have to be at a really great discount if you only get to read part of the book, obviously)?

Well, they're doing it again. Yes. Two major publishing houses, HarperCollins and Random House, are making some of their novels available online either for free, or nearly for free, to entice people to read for recreation. Here's an article from Guardian Unlimited Books that will tell you all about the experiment.

Is it naive of this book publicist to believe that HarperCollins and Random House are trying a little bit too hard to entice people to read their books? I mean, how many of us who work in, and around, the publishing industry balk at the idea of reading books?

Okay, okay, I know. I've read the statistics, too. People aren't reading now as much as they used to. But do we change people's reading habits -- and, not so coincidentally, do we increase book sales -- by giving away free books?

I'd hate to think we have to resort to giving away the store to entice people to read good books. And what if people just don't want to read novels online? Is that supposed to tell HarperCollins and Random House that novels are dead?

I don't even want to think about what will happen if this book publishing experiment fails.

Going first class?

Is anyone going first class? If you're mailing your book promotion materials via first class mail these days, then it's time to stock up on the United States Postal Service's Forever Stamps. The USPS has just announced that, beginning in May, the price of a first class postage stamp will increase by a penny.

Now, I'm not petty. I won't argue a one-cent increase on an annual basis is going to break the bank for authors, publishers, and book publicists.

But I will say this. The USPS has announced that the price of a first class postage stamp will increase by a penny. No word from their spokeperson yet on what will happen to the price of flat-rate Priority mail (which I use all the time) or the rates for mailing books via media mail (which I rarely use, but still...).

Just thought I'd mention the price increases to come in May so that you can plan your book promotion mailings accordingly. If you can finish the bulk of them before the postal rate increases, so much the better for you.

Are printed galleys a thing of the past?

Well, no. You still have to print galleys if you want such industry publications as "Publishers Weekly" and "Library Journal" to consider reviewing your book. But will that always be the case?

Maybe not.

According to an article in PW Daily, Rosetta Solutions is now providing a service called netGalley that might one day render printed ARCs and galleys obselete. For now, "Publishers Weekly" is using netGalley to capture such information as press materials and promotional plans, when publishers and authors submit their books for review.

But it sounds as though stage two of netGalley -- eliminating that short print run of galleys and sending the advance review media a digital copy of galleys -- is just around the corner. That's good news for those of us who love the thought of saving trees and postage even as we increase our efficiency. But it's bad news for those publishers and authors (and book publicists) who have been slow to adapt to the online world, or who just don't want to see how the Internet relates to book promotion.

Bob Dylan was right. The times, they are a'changing. And now would be a really good time to commit to moving forward with those changes so that, at the very least, you're still in the publishing game five years down the road.

Who decides what Google sees?

What Google finds when someone searches for your name, or for your book, is key to your reputation and credibility. So who decides what Google sees? There's an article in the Technology section of Newsweek.com called "Google Yourself—And Enjoy It" that talks about how such companies as ReputationHawk, ReputationDefender, and International Reputation Management provide damage control when your online image is compromised.

But those companies don't do anything we can't do ourselves. The most important point the Newsweek.com article makes is that, to control what Google sees, just keep creating content. The more positive the content you create, the more positive your online reputation will be -- and the more positive an impression you'll make when others Google you. Keep writing articles and press releases, and keep creating blog entries. The positive will soon outweigh the negative -- or, at least -- the negative will be pushed off the front page of Google's results.

Online book promotion is a lot like online personal promotion. Sure, everything that's posted on the Net about your book won't read just the way it would if you'd written it yourself. But there's one way to cure that problem: get your keyboard going, and start typing. Google sees what you tell it to see. That's the good news. Take advantage of it!

A book promotion newsletter.

Here's a book promotion newsletter that I'd recommmend: Build Book Buzz. It's a free e-newsletter published monthly by Beckwith Communications. To subscribe, visit
www.buildbookbuzz.com. Its editor and publisher, Sandra Beckwith, can be reached through the Web site or you can write to her at sb at buildbookbuzz.com.

Scanning an archived newsletter -- the October edition, I believe it was -- I learned a different perspective on submitting op ed pieces to newspapers, and that's a good thing. Meditating on your own strategy doesn't help you grow as a book publicist (or as an author or publisher who's promoting books); finding out how your associates have created their successes, on the other hand, opens up the possibility of doing things more effectively all the time. So thank you, Sandra, and I hope everyone who wants proven advice from a book promotion professional with a great track record considers giving your Build Book Buzz newsletter a try!

Guest Blogger Kyra Hicks

A few days ago, I received an email from author/scholar/lecturer Kyra Hicks that, with her permission, I will reprint here in its entirety. Kyra is both a friend and client. I've had the privilege of promoting her breathtaking book, Black Threads: An African American Quilting Sourcebook and her stunning children's book, Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria. You can visit Kyra online by clicking here.

Here's the email Kyra sent to me:

Hello! Happy New Year! Hope you are doing well! I'm good. Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria continues to sell well. I thought about you and your Book PR blog. Here's a potential post for you!

Are you familiar with the Brown Bookshelf blog? It's a new effort by five African American children's book authors and illustrators to promote the category. One of the bloggers first national efforts is to promote African American children's book during the upcoming Black History Month.

The Brown Bookshelf is promoting a program called "28 Days Later" - featuring an African American children's book author or illustrator each day in February. Have a look at: http://thebrownbookshelf.com/28-days-later/.

Not only that - did you know the CCBC estimated that there were only 87 African American authors of children's books in 2006??
http://www.blackthreadsinkidslit.blogspot.com/2007/07/quick-how-many-childrens-books-were.html.

I'm thrilled about the Brown Bookshelf effort. In the more than 100 books they reviewed, my own Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria was selected for one of the days!!!

All the best, Kyra
www.BlackThreadsinKidsLit.blogspot.com

Ringo's loss is...someone's gain.

Don't you love it when a media interview goes so well that you're rewarded with extra air time? Or when there's a last-minute cancellation so you get the chance to go on the air or, again, to have your interview time extended?

Well, here's an interesting scenario. Imagine if an ex-Beatle is scheduled to sing a song on "Live With Regis and Kelly," and -- due to a misunderstanding (Ringo says he needs more time to perform the song, while the producer says there's no flexibility and the song has to be shortened). And, to make what sounds like a sad story even sadder, Ringo walks, leaving more airtime available for the remaining guests. That's what happened to a couple of lucky "Live with Regis and Kelly" guests today, according to this Associated Press news story.

I'll have to take the reporter's word for it since I didn't have the opportunity to watch the show myself. Of course, if I had known Ringo was scheduled to appear, I might have found a way to tune in....

Mixed news for Morton.

The buzz about Andrew Morton's new book, Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biograph, is both good news and bad news for Andrew Morton (not to mention for Tom Cruise and his family members). The good news for Morton is that, yes, the public is interested in Tom Cruise. He'll probably sell a lot of books, too, given all the book promotion opportunities Morton has received. Here's an example of one less-than-enthusiastic article about the book.

Now for the bad news: the amount of book publicity that Morton's book has garnered far outweighs the enthusiasm, and the respect, that the media is showing for the book and its author. How many authors would trade their media attention (or even their lack of media attention) for comments such as "the author knows he can’t back up many of the book’s claims," "a variety of other issues in the book involve clear inconsistencies or falsehoods," and "at best, Morton’s book is a best-of collection of Cruise rumors?" Not I, says this book publicist...and I'll bet my book promotion clients feel the same way.

Book Promotion in 2008

This book publicist hopes that all authors and publishers can garner the book promotion opportunities they're seeking in 2008. That includes authors and publishers who can afford to hire a book publicist, and those who cannot.

For those who can afford to outsource their book promotion campaigns, I'm glad to consider taking on your project. Take a look at my client list to see the types of projects I've represented recently and, if your book fits into those genres, let me know. I've written about how to find a book promotion firm that's best-suited for your book project, but the concise advice on hiring a book publicist is this. Check out book publicity-related Web sites; contact book publicists; describe your project; narrow down the prospects based on book publicists' interest in your project; do a "chemistry check" with prospective book publicists; request book promotion proposals (these book publicity plans and associated costs should be free); and then make your choice.

But, each day, book publicists receive far more queries from prosective clients than we can handle. Sometimes, we even receive more queries than we can respond to. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate every inquiry I receive from an author or publisher, and I get in touch with each as quickly as possible -- whenever possible. But paying clients' needs and projects must take precedence over incoming emails and phone calls from authors and publishers, and sometimes my good intentions exceed my ability to help out all the book projects that deserve media attention.

There just aren't enough hours in the day to offer book promotion advice to every author and publisher whom I cannot represent, but as a next-best offering, I've put together some book promotion offerings -- some low-cost, and some free -- that all authors and publishers can use.

First, we've relaunched BookPromotionTools.com, a site where you can find more than 200 book promotion tips that have been tested in the field by book publicists and their clients. These tips are free. You'll also find The Online Pitch Kit, a book promotion tool that lets you contact national media online to pitch your story idea -- instantly and effectively.

And, for those who are interested in book promotion, publicity, and marketing, but who cannot afford to hire a book publicist and have the time to invest in a do-it-yourself compaign, I offer an affordable eBook called How to Market, Sell, Distribute, and Promote Your Book: Critical, Hard-to-Find Information for Authors and Publishers. It's available only online at my Web site -- click here for more information.

So, whether you can afford to hire a book publicist in 2008, or whether you're interested in garnering as much book promotion information as possible, there are book promotion tools available for you to start the new year off right. Happy 2008, and I wish you every book promotion success in the months to come.

It is what it is -- and other worn-out phrases to avoid using in 2008.

On behalf of readers everywhere, this book publicist urges authors to read this Reuters article (posted on MSNBC.com) before typing a single keystroke in 2008: ‘Perfect storm’ of cliches make bad English list: University targets 'surge' of words and phrases that deserve to be banned .

Okay, maybe a book that's loaded with tired old phrases such as "it is what it is" and "at the end of the day" can still enjoy terrific book promotion opportunities in the new year. But please, authors: when you're working on your next title, give your readers a break. Resolve that, in 2008, it won't be what it doesn't have to be, or even, it might not be what it should have been but probably won't be ... because of one too many cliches.

Yes. It's still the holiday season, and this book publicist is in avery silly holiday mood. But do read the Reuters article, when you have a chance...and do resolve to enjoy the new year safely and in good health. A productive and successful 2008 for all, filled with limitless book promotion opportunities!

A book promotion opportunity no publisher or book publicist wants.

Here's an example of what book publicists and publishers mean by "book promotion opportunity": HarperCollins was about to publish a book written by Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto when...well, you know what happened. Now, of course, that book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, has been fast-tracked and will be published in February of 2008. Here's the Reuter's article, as published by MSNBC.com.

Any book publicist will tell you that, if you can find a news hook to promote your book, you'll exponentially increase your book promotion opportunities. Book publicists don't want to find news hooks like Bhutto's murder in order to promote books, and publishers don't want to find their authors' obituaries in the news, either. HarperCollins advanced $75,000 to Bhutto. That wasn't a king's ransom, nor was it a prime minister's fortune.

But now? The sales potential of Bhuto's book is almost immeasurable, and the book promotion opportunities are limitless.

HarperCollins has a goldmine here. I'm sure the good people at HarperCollins are glad to have the book on its list for February. But...someone...I also have to believe that, given a choice, HarperCollins would rather have its author, Bhutto, alive and looking forward to winning the election in Pakistan.

If only this particular book promotion opportunity had not presented itself....

Book Promotion Idea: Host Your Own Radio Show

Here's a book promotion idea: host your own radio show. As an on-air personality, you can talk about your book as much as you'd like. You can even invite listeners to pose their questions by phone. You can build a following, and potentially, you could turn each of your radio broadcasts into an instant and effective book promotion opportunity.

In the not-so-distant past, getting the opportunity to host your own radio show was neither easy nor inexpensive. You would have had to convince a radio station to hire you as a talk show host (which could be tricky if you lacked broadcasting experience), or you would have had to pay for air time. With the advent of such new Internet tools such as BlogTalkRadio and Skypecasts, the barrier to entry for wannabe radio show hosts has been eliminated. Well, okay, there's still a slight barrier to entry; you do need a computer, Internet access, and a phone line. But, with those items -- along with the desire to spread the message about your book and the willingness to learn some of the tricks of the broadcasting trade -- you're set to go on the air with your own radio show anytime you'd like. For more information, click here to read a Reuter's article about hosting your own radio show. Hey! Maybe hosting a radio show would be a good idea for book publicists, too!

A smart publishing decision.

Actually, this is about a smart decision to not publish. You guessed it: Lynn Spears's much-promoted parenting book has run into a slight snag -- very likely because her 16-year-old daughter, Jamie Lynn, has just announced to the world that she is with child. While Lynn's book, Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World, would undoubtedly have offered a wealth of top-notch parenting advice, its publication has been delayed. Thomas Nelson Inc., by the way, is a Christian book publishing company, and that religious orientation may have been at odds with the outcome of Lynn's parenting skills, as they've manifested themselves thus far.

Well, there you go. All that book promotion that Lynn has received has been wasted. Unless...well, you never know. Perhaps some other publisher decides to pick up the project and take advantage of Jamie Lynn's upcoming, um, blessed event.

Good luck to the publisher that chooses to do that. Personally, I hope the book promotion that Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World has already received has been wasted. Call me socially conservative, but it always did scare me that Britney Spears's mom was going to have an opportunity to pass along her parenting advice -- and that was before the announcement that Lynn was expecting another grandchild.

A new challenge for book promotion

Were you worried about media consolidation before? Did you notice that book promotion opportunities with smaller media outlets, such as local radio stations (that used to be hosted by local radio personalities), were drying up as smaller media outlets were bought by bigger media outlets, and bigger media outlets were bought by huge conglomerates such as Clear Channel?

Well, the news from the book promotion trenches just got even more frightening with the Federal Trade Commission's most recent decision. According to a story in USA Today, the Federal Trade Commission voted on Tuesday to retract at law that had been on the books for 32 years to prevent one company from owning both a newspaper and a radio or television station in the same media market.

So now it's going to be perfectly legitimate for the New York Times and WABC-TV to be owned by the same company, and it will be absolutely legal for the Boston Globe to be operated by the same people who run WBZ-TV. I'm not saying those particular media marriages will come to pass, but certainly, similar alliances will be formed now that the FCC is allowing it.

What does further media consolidation mean for the media consumer? There will be fewer checks and balances on our news (and even our entertainment), and we're coming one step closer to giving just one powerful company, institution, or even person the right to influence what we believe, what we want, how we vote, and what we value.

What does further media consolidation mean for book promotion campaigns? Although it remains to be seen whether an author or a publisher with opinions or agendas that opose those of the media outlets will have a tougher time disseminating messages in the very near future, inevitably, that is what will happen.

In other words, get on the good side of any corporation that's poised to become a larger and more influential media owner in the major media markets -- and stay there. Some day soon, your book promotion opportunities may depend on it.

Visibility for your book: the good news and the bad news.

In trolling the Web, I found good book promotion news and bad book promotion news. Let's start with the bad book promotion news.

According to a MediaBistro article, "The More Book Critics Change, The More They Stay the Same," the state of the art in book cricism is what I like to call the Oprah's Book Club Syndrome -- that is, if you're John Steinbeck or Pearl S. Buck or Sidney Poitier, then you'll receive all the visibility you could want for your book. On the other hand, if you're an unknown author, you have to work a hundred times harder for book promotion opportunities.

Now, according to MediaBistro, the National Book Critics Circle has fallen into the same rut. The NBCC has asked 500 people to recommend books and, of course, those 500 people are recommending books we've all heard about already. So we're all reminded to go out and buy Philip Roth's latest book and, of course, that's not newsworthy, and it's not necessary. Roth doesn't need book promotion opportunities. And those who do need book promotion opportunities, MediaBistro's article seems to rub in, are not going to get those book publicity opportunities from the NBCC anytime soon.

That's the bad book promotion news.

Now for the good book promotion news.

In a recent article called "Crossover Dreams: Turning Free Web Work Into Real Book Sales," the New York Times tells the tale of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a children's book that began its life as a free online publication and that, subsequently, was acquired by Amulet, an imprint of Harry N. Abrams. The Times points out that the book already has sold 147,000 copies even though the publication is still available for free at Funbrain.com.

Publishing your work for free online, the Times tells us, can lead anywhere, including -- just possibly -- to a lucrative book contract. If you find an audience for your online work, and a publisher notices you, then this type of "overnight success" can happen to you. The opportunity to turn online publication success into real-world publication success is available to everyone. You don't have to be a household name, and you don't have to be the winner of literary prizes. You can just be a brilliant online publisher who scores a lot of book promotion buzz, and who knows what can happen?

That's the good book promotion news, and -- as this book publicist continues to dig out from the weekend's snowstorm -- it's just what I needed to read this morning.

Here's how to make money selling books

Here's how to make money selling books: be JK Rowling. Way to, Jo!

Book Promotion Post-mortem

Well, now that the year's almost concluded, it's easy to know which book promotion strategies would have worked in 2007. MSNBC.com has a list of the top pop-culture moments of 2007 that range from "Grey's Anatomy" actor Isaiah Washington's offensive utterance at the Golden Globes award ceremony in January to the relaunch of Don Imus's radio show in December.

All of these pop culture phenomenons had people talking. More than that, these events had over-the-top media coverage, with producers and editors vying for new angles and competing to find fresh slants on the stories. Of course, that would have provided a golden opportunity for any author or publisher who was willing to provide that news hook. Are you an expert on drug abuse? Bam! Anna Nicole Simpson's demise could have provided a book promotion bonanza for you, beginning in February of 2007. Were you promoting a book about child custody or divorce? You would have had Britney Spears (and your own instinct for book publicity opportunities) to thank when your phone rang off the hook with requests from the media for your insights and input ... each of which was an opportunity to tie your book into a media frenzy.

Do book publicists wish bad luck on celebrities? No, we don't. Do book publicists check out pop culture, and stay on top of "what's hot" in the news so we can figure out how to position you as an expert on the issues all media consumers are talking about? You bet we do.

So if you missed book promotion opportunities in 2007, keep in mind that -- in 2008 -- part of your job as an author or publisher is to keep an eye on pop culture, and figure out how your messages tie into the news. Book publicists certainly don't hope that celebrities will overdose, lose custody of their kids, offend their fans, or otherwise make headlines for all the wrong reasons. But book publicists don't have to wish for these things to happen. They do happen, over and over and over again. Next year, stay on top of those happenings, and you'll come out ahead in the book promotion game.

Nice way to say good morning!

Congratulations to Jeremy Haft, author of the Penguin/Portfolio book, All the Tea in China. His in-house book publicist just alerted me that IndustryWeek.com has published Jeremy's article, "Top Five China Recall Lessons."

And...talk about book promotion opportunities!...the editor of IndustryWeek.com has invited Jeremy to contribute future articles for publication, as well.

I'm sorry about all the angst that's befallen American companies who are sourcing from China, and I'm sorry about the consumers (that's us) who have become fearful of all imported products (particularly, during the holiday season when you sort of want the toys you buy to be safe). But I'm glad that the situation has provided book promotion opporutnities for an author who richly deserves them. Nice job, Jeremy, and I hope to read future bylined articles written by you in IndustryWeek.com, too!

What's happened to book promotion?

What's happened to book promotion? Specifically, what's happened to the traditional book tour? According to a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, traditional book tours may be passé. Authors and publishers who are seeking book promotion opportunities may be ditching the multi-city book tour -- which is expensive, time-consuming, and disruptive -- in favor of virtual book tours. Virtual book tours, it turns out, are the latest trend in book promotion because they're new, they're sexy, and they're cost-effective and efficient -- in fact, they're everything that traditional book tours are not.

So what is a virtual book tour? Again, according to that Christian Science Monitor article, a virtual book tour includes saturating the Internet with your multimedia trailer ("book trailer," from what I've read, is a trademarked term, so I'm cautious about using it) and podcasts. It includes a blog tour. It includes maintaining your own Web site and getting attention for that site to maximize the number of hits.

To that, I'd add that a virtual book tour also includes blogging and bringing visitors to your blog (your blog may, or may not, be a part of your Web site), self-publishing your press release (or multiple press releases), publishing a bylined article (or multiple bylined articles), and snagging as many online book reviews as possible.

And, while your virtual book tour is a big part of your book promotion effort, keep working on your traditional book promotion efforts. You don't have to go anywhere, or make s series of bookstore and library stops in various cities, to feel good about your traditional book promotion efforts. Every radio show appearance, and every newspaper and magazine interview, that you can do by telephone adds to your visibility and gives your overall book promotion effort a boost. And a national television show appearance is still worth going to a major city, such as New York or Chicago, to do, if you're lucky enough to score an invitation. It probably will always be the Holy Grail of the book promotion world.

Virtual book promotion -- also called online book promotion -- is an important shift in the book publicity arena. But I wouldn't stop pitching "Oprah," either.

Bad timing.

Here's a serious case of bad timing. Just when Amazon is trying to sell its new eBook reader, Kindle, there's a thief -- or thiefs -- out there who have figured out how to add fraudulent charges for eBooks to credit card statements. Check your credit card statement -- and hope that you don't find a ten dollar charge from a company that sells eBooks (unless you've bought eBooks recently). Otherwise, you could be the victim of this particular scam. Read what little is known about it here.

This book publicist hasn't had the privilege of promoting eBooks yet. In fact, this book publicist is eager to promote eBooks -- when the time comes. (And I'm confident the time will come when "book promotion" includes the promotion of eBooks. It will.)

And I was hopeful about Kindle. All signs looked good; apart from the initial version 1.0 goofiness (and absurdly high price point) of the product, Kindle promised to turn all book lovers into eBook buyers -- eventually.

And now this: charges for eBooks that were never purchased turning up on credit card statements, and are causing aggravation from the very people we hoped would turn into eBook fans. This is a case, I think, of very, very bad timing.

Be a Kennedy, or Just Publish Like One.

A client with a self-published book asked me the other day how he could get a mainstream publisher interested in taking on his book. Turn your book into a bestseller, I told him. Then the publishers will pursue you. Otherwise, find a literary agent...and good luck.

The rule of the publishing industry is that there's no such thing as "coming out of nowhere" and being an overnight success. A major publisher may nuture an unknown author and help that author's book become a bestseller, but it will not happen instantly. It will take consistent hard work, and the stars in the universe will have to line up in that author's favor...and then, it will still be mostly a question of luck. The best book publicist in the world can only arrange media interviews. The most successful book promotion campaign can only ensure that people know about a book. But that won't ensure that people will the a book or that a book will reach the New York Times Bestseller List.

However, rules are made to be broken, and they're especially likely to be broken if you are a name brand -- for instance, the way that Senator Edward Kennedy is. Ted's upcoming memoir (to be published in 2010) has already been covered by the Associated Press, Fox News, local newspapers, and radio stations from coast to coast. In case you missed the story, read it here. Nine publishing houses participated in an auction to buy Ted's memoir. The lucky winner was the Hachette Book Group USA.

Is that the end of Ted Kennedy's book promotion campaign? Please. Don't make me laugh. Ted's memoir will receive all the book publicity in the world, because its author is...Ted Kennedy. As the publication date nears, media attention will be Ted's for a snap of the fingers, just as an astronomical advance was his for the twitch of his magical nose.

And that is the story of Ted Kennedy's memoir -- years away from publication, and already a phenomenal success in the making. So if my client were to ask me now what he could do to interest a major publishing house in purchasing his self-published book, I'd have a different response. I'd suggest figuring out a way to marry into the Kennedy clan. Hyannisport can be a nice place to vacation in the summertime. Hey...it's on the water, anyway.

Book promotion and self-esteem

What can we learn from Howard Stern? He likes himself. He really, really likes himself. Although this book publicist isn't sure why Howard Stern likes himself, he does. He likes his show, he feels good in his own skin, and apparently, he thinks he's a good human being with something positive to offer the world. Here's an Associated Press article in which he waxes eloquent about, well, himself.

Okay, I'm sure many skeptics are thinking that there's a fine line between self-esteem and narcissism, and I'm not going to argue that here. I'm just saying that Howard Stern clearly feels good about himself, and that's probably a key part of why he's successful.

Now here's the part of my thesis that will strike many as bad news. When you're in the middle of a book promotion campaign, you have to tap into that sense of self-worth to make your book promotion campaign work for you. You must feel good about yourself and your book, and you must be able to communicate that good feeling to media audiences to maximize your credibility and convince them that your message is worth hearing, and your book is worth buying.

Howard Stern is not my role model, and I'll understand if he's not yours, either. But I'll take the lesson that I've learned from him and pass it along. Self-esteem is an integral part of a successful book promotion campaign. Not a Stern fan? Okay, then here's another example. Think: Judge Judy. Whatever it takes to motivate you to suspend your modesty and self-doubt for the duration of your book promotion campaign, do it! Book publicists want to hear that you feel confident. That will help them feel confident about you, and that could make all the difference when they're pitching you to the media. So tap into that reserve of good feelings about yourself, and convey it to the media. Your book promotion campaign will thank you for it.

The media never sleeps.

The media never takes a vacation, even if it is the day before Thanksgiving. This book publicist has been getting calls from the media, non-stop, all week. And, perhaps, the media's a bit needy now because so many experts and authors are taking a break from their book promotion campaigns to celebrate the holiday. Good! More book promotion opportunities for my clients!

If you're in the midst of a book promotion campaign, it's your call -- but I wouldn't take the day off, if I were you. Today promises to be a productive one for anyone who needs book publicity opportunities and is available to answer the telephone or respond to email.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, but stick with book promotion just a little bit longer today, if you can. I think it will pay off for you.

Skeptical about online book promotion?

There are many authors and publishers out there (and you may be one of them) who believe the impact of online book promotion efforts is negligible, and that the only book publicity that matters is real-world buzz (that is, getting book reviews in traditional magazines and newspapers, and scoring interviews on radio and television shows). Traditionalists, beware: you might want to reconsider the power of the Internet.

Here's a tale from Reuters (as it appears on MSNBC.com) about a young man who was looking for a needle in the haystack. The young man spied the woman of his dreams on a subway train, and then the object of his desires got off the train and walked off into the sunset. Except her would-be suitor couldn't get her out of his mind, so he set up a Web site specifically to find her. Yes, this brave and optimistic soul posted his cell phone number as well as his artistic rendering of his Fantasy Woman from the train on the site, and the leads started to pour in. Media attention came his way (of course). And, believe it or not, he found the woman. (According to the Reuters story, the Prince Charming removed his cell phone number from the Web site and now is making a bid to regain his privacy.)

No, the intrepid man isn't an author (at least, he's not an author yet). But he did want to promote his cause, and didn't turn to "Oprah" or "Good Morning America" or "All Things Considered" or "USA Today" to do it.

He turned to online promotion.

And it worked.

Food for thought, isn't it? Next time you're tempted to "stick to what's been proven to work for decades" in your own book promotion campaign, remember the man who found his mate (or, at least, he hopes so) by creating Internet buzz about his search. If an Internet promotion campaign worked for him, isn't it reasonable to try it and see what effect it might have on your book promotion campaign?

Marie Osmond Is Not Having a Good Day.

Marie Osmond hasn't been having a good couple of weeks. I don't mean to be flippant. Marie and her famous siblings lost their father yestday, and that's horrible. A few days before that , Marie fainted on a live television show (she's all right, apparently). And now this: a now-defunct publishing company that she once owned published a sex telephone number in a series of books aimed at little girls. Here's the story.

Marie says -- and I believe her -- that the phone number was given to another company once Marie's company no longer needed it, and Marie didn't know who ended up with the number and, therefore, didn't realize that the children's books containing the phone number would be problematic.

Fair enough. But, huge fan of the Osmonds (okay, it was Donny Osmond, but still) that I was, I really don't want to hear another word about Marie Osmond for a long, long time.

Book promotion means getting your name into print, onto the airwaves, and on the Internet, and that's all good. But, for heaven's sakes, let's give someone who has had a rough couple of weeks a break.

Marie, be well, and know that no one can seriously blame you for failing to check out the new owners of the phone number that your company published in its children's books. And I'm so sorry about your father. He must have been an amazing human being. Look at his wonderful children -- and, yes, I am partial to your brother, Donny.

What makes the news?

What makes the news? A Parade magazine reader posed that question to columnist Marilyn vos Savant on October 28, 2007.

The reader, Brian VerHage of Fort Mill, S.C., asked Marilyn why news stories always seem to report bad news exclusively. Here's the Parade column.

Marilyn answers the reader's question, and as I read her response, I thought: Well, yes. Here's where Marilyn's celebrated high I.Q. and common sense would really help us out with book promotion campaigns. If only we could get inside the minds of assignment editors and news producers, then just think how effective would our book promotion campaigns be!

I'm fond of Marilyn's column, and I have a lot of respect for her high intelligence (and that facile mind of hers that can work through just about any puzzle a reader can pose -- seemingly, in an instant). But I'm not sure she was 100% on target with her perspective about what makes news.

She was partly correct. Yes, news is a sudden happening. Non-news is a non-happening, of course, or something that happened so gradually that no one noticed it (and, presumably, nobody cared about it), as Marilyn points out.

But let's take it a step farther. News is what happens when someone says, "Hey! Wait! I've reached a conclusion, and here it is!" or "Let me be the first to point this out: there's a trend happening here!" And news, of course, is when the media reports that the someone in question is saying it.

Also, let me take a stab at answering the reader's question. To quote Brian VerHage exactly, the question was: Why do nearly all the stories on newscasts focus on negative events?

I just want to reassure Brian that, sometimes, the media is all over good news. In fact, sometimes the media is so saturated with good news that it makes some media consumers (or this media consumer, anyway) squirm.

Here in Massachusetts, the Boston Red Sox World Championship win has been saturating all the local news outlets. In fact, everywhere you turn -- TV, newspapers, radio, and the Net -- it's Sox, Sox, Sox! There's so much good news for Boston sports enthusiasts that there's little room for any other type of news.

This was not the week to get mugged. Nobody cares. It was not the week to have your house catch on fire. No sympathy from the press. It was not the week for a strange infection to hit a local school. Wouldn't even make the radar screen.

No, this week, Boston-area news is about one thing, and one thing only. The Boston Red Sox have brought good news to the Red Sox Nation, and have brought grim news to any author who's trying to conduct a book promotion tour in the Boston area for the past week or so.

Good news, as it turns out, is not necessarily good news for authors and publishers who are trying to do some book marketing in the media.

Of course, Massachusetts' good news isn't good news for everyone. Thank goodness, there's always Colorado for those who are seeking book promotion opportunities.

Scrap that book promotion opportunity!

I told you about an experiment that Massachusetts' mass transit system -- the MBTA -- was trying. It was called T Radio, and it was going to replace ipods, newspapers, and conversation as ways for Boston-area commuters to pass their time while they were riding around on trains. It was also going to present book promotion opportunities for intrepid authors who didn't mind trying to market their books while aggressive commuters jockeyed for seats on crowded trains during rush hour.

Well, scrap that book promotion opportunity. The MBTA riders didn't like T Radio. They really, really didn't like it. They sent emails to the authorities in charge of the mass transit system and complained about what they called "Torture Radio," and asked that the plug be pulled permanently. And the MBTA authorities listened. Here's the story, from the Boston Globe.

This story leaves me feeling the way I do when a TV show that I meant to watch because the critics rave about it gets cancelled, and I haven't had a chance to take a look at it yet. Well, okay, the analogy breaks down here because Boston's subway riders didn't rave about T Radio. They hated it. Still, I think the medium had potential, and I might have liked to check it out for myself. Okay, let's face it. I would have hated it, too -- but I'm sorry I didn't make a trip into Boston via train so that I could hear T Radio just once before the station went dark just so that I could have heard what it was that everyone hated so I could decide for myself that it was, indeed, terrible and deserved to leave the airwaves.

Oh, well. Another book promotion for authors has bitten the dust. That probably means about 46 new book promotion opportunities will arise next week to take its place. And it's our lot in life, as book marketers, to find out just what those new book promotion opportunities are.

Book promotion, book promotion, book promotion. If ever there were a moving target, book promotion is it. Pity the book publicist who has to keep up with the media changes to make a living!

Boston Globe reporter speaks out about book reviews

Just read an interesting Boston Globe article, "Internet offers book reviewers a new chapter," by Alex Beam.

In that article, Beam points out that newspapers accept a lot of advertising dollars in their book review sections. Thus, by trimming back (or by eliminating) their book review sections, they're actually sabotaging themselves. I never thought about it that way, but now that I have, I'm curious about why newspapers have been so willing to cut out a section of their publications that, potentially, was a moneymaker for them.

Is it because the switch from paper-based book reviews to Internet-based book reviews is inevitable? Will readers switch their allegiances from, say, the Boston Globe's book review section to the online Barnes and Noble bookstore (BN.com) reviews, regardless of what newspapers want?

In fact, if book reviews are moving to the Net, then can feature stories be far behind? How long will it be before the Boston Globe whacks back all its editorial content in favor of putting it up on its Web site -- perhaps for the benefit of subscribers only?

It's a strange new world, the idea of online book reviews. And yet it's happening all around us. Alex Beam's article suggests to me that there's nothing readers can do to change that. I wonder....

From Tinky Winky to Dumbledore

Note to J.K. Rowling: I don't care about Dumbledore's sexual orientation.

I don't mean that I was sort of busy the day that the huge revelation about Dumbledore's attraction to another male character in the Harry Potter book series appeared everywhere in the media, all at once.

I mean: I don't care. I just really and truly can't get my mind wrapped around the fictional sexual orientation of fictional characters in a fictional world. This is a consistent theme with me. Not only do I not care who the imaginary Dumbledore might have been fictionally attracted to, but I also didn't care which doll the Tinky Winky teletubby would have been attracted to, if he/she/it had been attracted to another teletubby doll.

I similarly don't care much about David Copperfield's sexual orientation although, admittedly, that saga promises to be a bit more interesting -- but only a bit. David Copperfield is an assumed name of a man who makes a living pretending to be able to perform magic, which makes him another fictional character, of sorts, as far as I'm concerned. Need we go into my feelings about Michael Jackson's romantic persuasion? I think not.

Okay, the Harry Potter books have outsold every book you can name since the 1997 release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Good for Rowling.

But, now that the series has been concluded, do I really have to hear the back story of each and every one of the 12 million fictional characters (including the owls and rats and who-knows-what other creatures) that populate Rowling's imaginary world?

Today, we know that Dumbledore is gay. Tomorrow, must we find out that Hermione had acne? Or, perhaps, that Ron needed braces?

Come one. Give me a break. Sometimes, there's such a thing as too much book promotion.

Rowling, could you leave this one alone now? Please?

Jon Keller, Part Two.

In the event that you were waiting at the edge of your seat to learn what Jon Keller's editor had to say about Jon Keller's book, here's part two of the Jon Keller saga. Jon Keller, as you'll recall from yesterday's blog entry, is the Boston-area media personality whose new book, The Bluest State, contains a multitude of quotations that, apparently, are unattributed to the sources from which they were originally appropriated. The Boston Herald broke the story yesterday and followed up on it today.

The Boston Herald (to which Keller frequently contributes, by the way), touched base with Michael Flamini who edited The Bluest State for St. Martin's Press. Flamini is quoted as saying (I'm psraphrasing here) that, since Keller's book is for the trade rather than the academic press, it doesn't need footnotes or a meticulous bibliography.

Well, then.

Equally frightening to this book publicist is the fact that Jeff Kiernan, the news director at WBZ-TV -- one of the two Boston-area television stations for which Jon Keller is a political analyst -- says (and here I'm quoting the Boston Herald article) that he has "full confidence in Jon’s integrity and in the excellent work he does.”

Unfortunately for those of us who receive at least some of our information on a daily basis from Boston-area media outlets, Kiernan doesn't explain why he has full confidence in Jon Keller or what, exactly, he means by the word "integrity." Perhaps the Boston Herald truncated Kiernan's comments. If so, then I would appreciate hearing the rest of what Kiernan had to say, and I trust other media consumers would be interested as well.

For the entire Boston Herald article, click here.

Oh, and to conclude the tale about the middle schooler I mentioned yesterday who failed to footnote that encyclopedia entry in her seventh grade homework assignment.... She was given a consequence. She was asked to pen an admission of guilt (for committing the p-word offense) along with an apology to both her classroom teacher and the principal of her school. And she did, and as a result, that young woman will remember to include footnotes in all of her future homework assignments for a long time to come.

This youngster was in middle school. She now knows better than to leave herself open to the charge of plagarism.

How interesting it is to me that some professional journalists out there haven't learned that lesson yet.

The type of book promotion nobody wants.

As an author, you're hungry for media attention...but not the type that political analyst Jon Keller received from the Boston Herald today. According to the Boston Herald, Keller may have used without attribution quotations from a variety of print sources in his new book, The Bluest State.

Keller is a high visibility media personality in the Boston area. He has a regular gig as a political commentator on television and radio, and he's a regular contributor -- interestingly enough -- to the very publication that just outed him as a potential, well, borrower of quotations without attribution.

I hesitate to use the p-word, but that's the word that was used to describe the act of a middle school child I know who once used an encyclopedia entry to round out a homework assignment and failed to footnote that source at the bottom of her seventh-grade paper. That child came home from school crying. Jon Keller? Well, I don't know what his response to the Boston Herald's allegations are, because the paper didn't print his response.

But here's what I couldn't help but notice. To date, Keller's book (which, by the way, was published by St. Martin’s Press) has sold about 2,000 copies. That's a fair number of books for an unknown, first-time author. (Well, okay, it's not a fair number of books for anyone -- but it does at least represent the first printing of a cash-strapped publisher with very modest expectations for an unknown, first-time author.) It's less impressive a number when you consider the fact that Jon Keller is everywhere, all the time, including in many venues that have given him airtime and space to promote his book.

Everyone wants book promotion opportunities. And everyone presumes that all book promotion is good, and all media attention -- good or bad -- will eventually lead to book sales. That's what book publicists hope, too. Generally speaking.

In this case, though, we may be finding that sometimes authors get exactly what they deserve.

Doris Lessing has a MySpace page. Do you?

Doris Lessing has something you may not have. Yes, yes, Doris Lessing has a Nobel Prize in literature, but that's not what I was talking about. Doris Lessing has something far more impressive than a Nobel Prize (shoot -- any author can get one of those if, say, that author generates one of the world's most noteworthy bodies of literary work over the course of her lifetime).

Doris Lessing has a MySpace page.

The New York Times broke the news to me with this article.

Doris Lessing, at age 87, "gets it." Or, at least, she understands that she doesn't "get it," so she's partnered with somebody who does -- and she has 240 MySpace "friends" -- and counting -- to show for it.

Now here's a literary genius who probably wouldn't know an email account from an iPod. Yet she's taken the advice of a technically-savvy admirer, Jan Hanford, and developed a Web site as well as a MySpace page where fans can connect with her, express their admiration of her work, find out about future projects, and so forth. It's especially wonderful to think that Lessing found her way to Cyberpace and the world of online book marketing when you consider the fact that her publisher, HarperCollins, wasn't in on the deal. In fact, according to the NYT, Lessing's adventures in social network were "news to the HarperCollins online marketing manager, Jeffrey Yamaguchi."

Social networking is similar to blogging in that, while it seems to create online buzz "somehow," few of us over the age of 21 have a firm grasp of how, exactly, it works. But that's okay. As Doris Lessing has demonstrated, understanding the mechanism behind cyberspace community building isn't the point.

Partnering with someone who "gets it" is the point. Suspending disbelief, getting creative, and taking the plunge...that's the path to creating online buzz for your book. And, come to think of it, it's probably at least part of the blueprint Lessing would endorse for scoring a Nobel Prize in literature, too.