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Friday, Nov 27, 2009
In a world where more and more new books get less and less attention, authors will do anything to promote their work.
Sep 16, 2002 | It's not easy being a book critic nowadays. Sometimes you receive daily e-mails from an author explaining for the hundredth time why his treatise on holistic vegetarianism is the "Left/Progressive answer to Capitalist, meat-eating excesses of Our Time!!!!!" Or you're implored to cover a local reading where the poet will stand at the lectern clothed only in a number of strategically pasted pages from her forthcoming chapbook. Whenever Marie Arana -- editor in chief of the Washington Post Book World and an author herself -- gives a talk or a reading, invariably a clutch of authors find her afterwards, books in hand, ready to pitch themselves.
"It happens more frequently," she says. "There's a boldness that wasn't there before."
In fact, authors often go to considerable lengths to promote their books. Some fire off endless faxes or rambling e-mails to editors and critics, some try phoning directly and the most intrepid simply show up at the newspaper or magazine's office, much to the book editor's alarm. Less aggressive (and perhaps more successful) are those who on their own arrange readings in bookstores or coffeehouses, often selling copies of their books out of the trunks of their cars. Others -- like the half-naked poet mentioned above -- try stunts and other gimmicks to draw attention to themselves.
In the past, authors relied on their publishers' publicity departments to get attention for their books. But increasingly, publishers are giving the majority of their authors less and less assistance. When times are tough, publishers prefer to invest their publicity dollars in books they're fairly sure will sell -- big-name authors, hot topics -- rather than in promoting lesser-known or new authors, especially fiction writers.
Not only that, but newspapers and magazines are trimming back their review coverage. And publishers are releasing more and more individual titles each year, what one book editor, speaking off the record, calls "spaghetti publishing: throw a pot of stuff at the wall and hope something sticks." The result is a lot of desperate authors who are realizing that getting published isn't the end of a long struggle but the beginning of an even harder one.
"Publicists started falling down on the job," says David Kipen, critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, who recalls that one time an author sent him a review copy with a $5 bill slipped inside. (He says he immediately threw away the book without reading it and used the bill to buy donuts for the office.) "The mid-list writers, in their defense, are having to do their own publicity."
Seeking publicity is not a responsibility that many authors are prepared to take on. The ones with some money to spare hire their own publicists, a practice that has increased dramatically over the past years. If authors can't afford that, they may still feel compelled to do something since their chance of publishing another book usually depends on the success of the previous one.
"It's harder to sustain a literary career, and the general run of authors are less shy about publicizing themselves than they were perhaps 20 years ago," says Thomas Mallon, an author and critic who has been on numerous book tours and was the literary editor and books columnist for Gentlemen's Quarterly. "Publishing houses give up on writers after a few books -- quicker than before. It's more of a profit margin now. The idea that an author is stepping down from lofty perch of Parnassus to wallow in the marketplace isn't a feeling authors [can afford] anymore."
Compounding the problem are all the competing media -- the Internet, movies, radio, television and other modern diversions. It has become more difficult for publicity departments, let alone authors, to make an impact.
"The biggest change in publicity now is that to reach the same number of readers you need more publicity," says Paul Bogaards, senior vice president and executive director of publicity at Knopf. "Before, a few central thrusts could help launch a book. Now the question is, how much the publicist needs to do to break through the noise of our culture."
Which may sound like certain doom for authors who aren't well heeled or who publish at smaller presses without publicity departments, but some writers have managed to overcome these obstacles.
After Neal Pollack published his "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature" with McSweeney's Press, he devoted the next two years to a shoestring promotional tour. He sold books from a backpack and got noticed by giving a reading in a men's room in a Philadelphia train station, at a ticket window in front of Boston's Fenway Park, while standing in the fountain at Washington Square Park in New York and in a deli in Ann Arbor. He also used the Internet by keeping an amusing tour diary on the McSweeney's Web site. His efforts eventually worked; the paperback was published by HarperCollins last March.
"What I did was a primer on how to pull a book tour out of your ass," he says. "I'd do anything to get attention for the book. You have to have some kind of gimmick, something that distinguishes you from the horde. Lots of times the prose won't do it by itself."
