Your Reactions to Online Hype
At least one publicist wasn’t happy with our excoriation of Lauren Weisberger’s e-hypester. “You need us,” this anonymous source scolds. “I’m not talking about the supposed symbiotic relationship between media and publicist, the mutual back-scratching, the distribution of information that makes the world go round… Publicists are the buffer between you and the thousands of authors published each year. We stem the tide. We are, so to speak, the little Dutch boy.” (This is absolutely true, and for those of you who know how to do the job right, we thank you daily! Which isn’t to say we don’t love hearing from those authors who know how to make us notice them without being pushy…)
“Instead of pointing out that a certain campaign is two months late,” our complainant adds, “consider the possibility that this publicist is getting screamed at something fierce because the book isn’t moving to everyone’s satisfaction, and a blog campaign is a balm with some immediacy.” This raises another very good point: As lame as we thought the pitch letter was, we should place much more blame on SoulKool for even thinking that writing to bloggers like they were monthly mag book section editors was a good idea, let alone assigning somebody to do it.
Another tipster observes, “I get the feeling that a lot of publicists think that the book blogs are the most influential out there. But the book blogs are a tiny subset of a huge phenomenon—and a pretty narrowly focused subset. There are communities all over the web, many of them that are more receptive to a pitch. The problem is the perception that the book blogges are the only people worth knowing. Anyone who knows their way around technorati knows better.” At the risk of totally blowing all the hype surrounding litblog and chasing away the publishing industry, this is absolutely true. You want to spread word-of-mouth about Weisberger? Don’t go to the bookbloggers; approach the (amateur) blogs about fashion and beauty and celebrity gossip and, I dunno, dating or something. Heck, call up Stephanie Klein and invite her out for drinks with Lauren—and if you pull that off, then you can invite Sarah and me to tag along and write about it, because that’s news (or at least gossip) we can use.
But even then, be careful about which blogs you approach, and how you do it. “I just started getting these types of spam and I immediately delete them,” says business author Lisa Coutant. “Just seems like a waste of energy and time when that same push could have been used to research proper audiences and interesting ways of cross marketing.” Now, it’s true, Coutant’s not a book reviewer, so telling her she could review the book on her site isn’t a great idea, but what if you were to approach somebody like her and say, look, I know you’re interested in these issues, how would you like to take a look at this? And if something happens, great, the word-of-mouth will spread…and you’ll get a reputation as somebody who’s just interested in sharing good info, rather than somebody desperately trying to create buzz.
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