Ok. On topic:
Egos get laid daily. Large Canada grade A. $1.89 per dozen.

Leggo my ego...

K

I don't see how this story is about publicity. It's another story about how it's all a crap shoot. We don't see many stories about how agents and publishers got excited, worked like dogs and got no results - but that's what happens to most books.

I got a lot of publicity for my first published novel and two years later have not earned out my advance (I admit, I expect to do so this year). Everyone I know in publishing says most books -never- earn back their advances, no matter how small.

What publicity really does for you is make some kind of blip on the radar, so people will start returning your calls. Which is something, after all.

CBC lockouts publishers as well

The CBC lockout is affecting publishers' plans for the fall publicity season. For our American readers, a CBC strike is the Canadian arts world equivalent of a hockey strike. The whole country suffers. Without the CBC, it's as if no one cares! Wait... no one does...


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Tits to sell lits

Maud, and editor Rebecca Wolff, comments on how American cool-kids litmag Fence features a coyly posed Suicide Girl on the cover of the latest issue. I for one am not upset. (You know, that's not true. What upsets me about SGs is the fact that they've taken a great idea (punk women being naughty) and realized it with children, as in this picture. I picked up the SG book in a store one day and had to put it down because I was so disturbed by how young some of them looked. I mean, baby-fat and all. I quote my old pal Chris on the fine line between disturbing and sexy (regarding the advent of a saucy young songstress, last name of "Spears"), "A 16-year-old dancing in a private school girls' uniform is not sexy. However, a 28-year-old dancing in a private school girls' uniform is.")


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Edited by author 09-21-2005 10:52 AM
Tom Wolfe is Charlotte Simmons

I bet he looks great in a cheerleader costume; well, it'd be an improvement on that creepy colonial safari white linen thing he ususally wears. Dapper? I think not. So anywayz, Tom Wolfe is a brand, now.

"We are using Tom Wolfe's name as a brand, rather than the title of the book. He is an icon himself," said Tanya Farrell, publicity director for Picador USA, which is printing more than 2 million copies of the 738-page novel in which the 74-year-old writer tries to infiltrate the minds of American college students.

Give us a rest. If a person is iconic, does that make them an icon? And how do we get from icon to brand, exactly? Yikes.

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Edited by author 09-21-2005 11:01 AM
Ploy

I think this speaks for itself.

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Publicists

You know, I've met some publicists I really, really like. People I can really talk to on a human level. Then there are other times when you bump into some publishing folk and you suddenly feel like you need to take a bath. This morning, for instance... Oop! Time's up!


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Publicity surrealism

The strange, do-what-it-takes life of the book publicist.

Miraculously, it turned out that David Letterman has a passion for wild life and for Yellowstone in particular. Knowing that, his booker immediately wanted Renee. One catch: I, two months into the job, had to book a wolf to appear with Renee on the show. “Yes, sure, I can get you a wolf by next Tuesday” was clearly the only possible response to the request. So I hung up the phone and did what any professional in my position would do: I began complaining loudly. So loudly that a managing editor overheard me and mentioned that she had a nephew visiting her who had a passion for wolves, and that she was planning on taking him to a nearby wolf conservation center. Maybe they had a media wolf? A Media Wolf? Who knew?

Do-what-it-takes? There are publicists who do-what-it-takes? Sigh.


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Emerging Writers Network had a good email on this today.
Interviews with 4 PR reps.

Product placement

The products are at Saks 5th and the placement is in your children's stockings (which, from the looks of it, will be made of cashmere...)

On sale now only in Saks stores, HarperCollins plans to distribute the $16.99 book nationwide in January as if it were any other children's picture book. And "Cashmere if You Can" has inspired HarperCollins, a unit of the News Corporation, to make a business out of these sorts of corporate collaborations.

Saks has already signed with the publisher to produce another children's book for next year's holiday season, and HarperCollins is in negotiations with sports and entertainment entities and packaged goods companies.

The weaving of brands and products into content - making them supporting characters or even the stars rather than mere scenery -is growing elsewhere in the media, particularly on television, as advertisers try to cut through the clutter.

The book world, however, has not always been hospitable to such commercialization.

It's a lovely world. I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. AND SHOW THEM HOW TO BE BEAUTIFUL ON THE OUTSIDE TOO BY SMOTHERING THEMSELVES WITH THE DECADENCE OF CASHMERE EVERYTHING!


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The publicity machine goes Hollywood

Take note.. way in advance.

Mass merchants allow new releases only a couple of weeks to prove their popularity in the front of the store before shifting them to the back.

So publishers are taking a cue from Hollywood. "Like the movie business,'' says Mr. Bogards, "publishers are now trying to engineer campaigns so we open big on the on-sale date." Creating advance buzz is a tried and true tactic in Hollywood. Knowing that theaters will stop showing a new film if it doesn't do well in its first weekend or two, studios start marketing campaigns months -- even a year -- before a film opens.

The publicity machine has already kicked into gear for my upcoming title. I've told my dad and some people at work. I can hear the loose change rolling in already! Yeah!


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That's their gimmick, see?

Gimmicky books suck as gifts.

Why? Because they're so much easier to give than they are to receive. They're so much more gratifying to gift givers than they are to recipients. And the act of follow-through is not often a big part of these transactions. A gift book may be chosen on impulse, but it can confound whoever winds up with it for a long, long time. Here's a selection of this year's offerings, and a guide to which make good company - and which do not.


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More on stupid books

Following that NYT story on light books, the Globe notes that it also has something to say, but cleverly ups the ante and calls these books "stupid". Oh, so clever and NAUGHTY! And ironic, considering the source. Take that, pop culture!


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Do writers need their own web-pages? I'd be interested in what you Ninjas have to say about this, and also any good models you might offer as to effective, elegant, useful literary web-sites out there.

Making the switch

From corporate honcho to cowboy agent.

Mr. Kirshbaum has long been known as a master salesman. And he ended his tenure at Time Warner in character, with the success of "The Historian," the debut novel by Elizabeth Kostova, published by the Time Warner subsidiary Little, Brown & Company. The book ranked No. 1 on the New York Times fiction best-seller list in its first week on sale, a remarkable feat for a first novel.

"That didn't happen just because Little, Brown printed a few hundred thousand copies and waited for positive reviews," he said. The campaign for the book began a year ahead of time, with the company telling booksellers about it at the annual Book Expo America, then sending early copies to bookstores, setting up dinners between retailers and the author and introducing her to the company's own sales force.

After having tried it all, what's left? Do it all again from the other side of the bargaining table.


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