Promoting Books in the Internet Age, and Other Thankless Endeavours

Posted 24 September, 2007 in Book News, Publishing |

Further to last Thursday’s post about publishers focusing on splashy openings for big books, then summarily abandoning them, this article in the New York Times analyzes the difficulties inherent in trying to manage a mega-opening without doing irreparable damage to relationships with media outlets and readers alike:

The task of unveiling a big book— especially one with great news interest or enormous popular demand — has changed dramatically in recent years as players in an increasingly competitive news media seek to be the first to unveil content, and the Internet makes it more difficult to keep books under wraps.

Increasingly, publishers have been relying on embargoes of books they think are going to be blockbusters, such as the latest Harry Potter novel and high-profile books by George Tenet, Bob Woodward, and, most recently, Alan Greenspan. These titles have been subject to sales embargoes and embargoes on reviews and commentary, often because the publishers have promised the first kick at the can to a particular media outlet.

In the case of the Greenspan book, The Age of Turbulence, the publisher, Penguin Press, gave the promise of being first out of the gate to 60 Minutes, which was scheduled to interview Greenspan on Sunday, September 16, the day before the book’s official release. That promise was broken when the Wall Street Journal leaked information online about the book the previous Friday. The New York Times and the Washington Post followed suit on Saturday, effectively scooping 60 Minutes‘ exclusive.

The lesson for book publicists may be simply this: in the Internet age, it’s virtually impossible to keep something big under wraps, so why expend so much energy trying? As the Times article points out, “The gentlemen’s agreements that once existed between publishers and media outlets have long since fallen by the wayside, as embargoes are seen as catnip to reporters chasing news.”

In the case of the Greenspan memoir, it was established news organizations that broke the embargo. But the growing army of “citizen journalists” online love to scoop the traditional media outlets, and don’t necessarily have any qualms about breaching copyright laws to do so. The first review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows appeared in the New York Times, it’s true, but the person who took digital photographs of the book and posted them online was apparently unaffiliated with any major media organization.

The harder publicists try to keep information under wraps, the harder the Net denizens are going to work to uncover that information. There is evidence that certain publishers understand this and are trying to use it to their advantage. In Canada, both Anansi and HarperCollins have reading groups on Facebook (you can find them under Anansi Review Crew and HarperCollinsCanada — The Reading Group, respectively), which offer participants advance copies of books in exchange for online reviews and discussion of the titles. (Anansi stipulates that in addition to providing a review, the person receiving an advance reading copy must also supply five contacts to whom the review will be forwarded online. The HarperCollins reading group currently has no such stipulation.) Instead of fighting the Net’s “citizen journalists,” Anansi and HarperCollins have essentially co-opted them, making them de facto partners in publicizing the houses’ books.

The Anansi group is instructive in this regard. The rubric on the Anansi Review Crew page offers group members the “opportunity to read and review our books months before they are available to the general public,” which essentially feeds into the “first-past-the-post” mentality that is so prevalent amongst the mainstream media these days. That, along with the opportunity for members of the general public to get “an insider’s look” at new titles prior to publication, seems to be the major selling point used to attract members to the group.

As for whether these groups are an effective alternative means of promotion, Deanna McFadden, digital marketing manager at HarperCollinsCanada says, “Absolutely.” According to McFadden, “There’s a lovely element of word of mouth attached to the group — not just in attracting new members but in our readers taking their experiences and sharing them offline.”

This method of promotion must seem like an enticing alternative to increasingly unworkable embargoes and easily broken promises of exclusivity to media outlets that are constantly falling over each other in their attempts to be first with a story. The danger of cutting these media outlets out of the equation, of course, is the concurrent loss of accountability and professional standards that this entails.

The worry here is not just that if the burden of publicizing books is downloaded onto “citizen journalists” at the expense of professionals, people like me will be out of a job (book reviewing doesn’t pay that much, anyway). There is a real danger that the “reviewers” chosen by publishers to receive free books will feel compelled to say nice things about those books, if only so that they can continue to receive them.

McFadden downplays this concern as regards the HarperCollins group. “We’ve tried to create a space where our members can speak freely about the books they receive,” she says. “We actively try to foster discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the reading copies are given away.” And perhaps this won’t have the effect of creating unreasonably biased readers: after all, professionals get thrown free copies of the books they review, too.

Regardless, with embargoes routinely being broken, and with news organizations lowballing publishers on serial rights (Newsweek reportedly payed $1 for the first excerpt rights on The Age of Turbulence, in part because they suspected that it would be publicized elsewhere before their excerpt ran), the idea of grassroots publicity over the Internet must seem like an attractive alternative to publishers. Whether it will have a beneficial effect on sales in the long run is still an open question.

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