I think that it is only a matter of time before the discerning readers will learn not to trust the internet at all. I certainly will not be buying anything that is recommended to me by way of one of these forums ever again, and I am learning not to trust also some of the more well known internet reviewers such as you Danuta. When I checked you out on the various forums (Amazon, Authors Den) I notice that you have listed as friends some of these authors of the diabolical books that you have favourably reviewed and indeed recommended! In fact, I am so suspicious I am even beginning to suspect now that some internet reviewers are ‘paid’ or in some way encouraged to review books by friends of the authors. It is almost as if they have no talent of their own so wish to make their mark by reviewing books as favours for internet contacts, and yes Danuta, you are very guilty of this yourself!

It is not on, a well written book should be brought to the attention of readers and I would trust the appropriate PR people to do the business, the rest is up to the author to come up with a decent read. There is just not enough good material out there, or if there is, it is hidden among the mountain of cheesy mud that is overloading reader (and writer) forums.

‘The bird book sounds wonderful’ says Anne Brooke, oh come on! Of course it doesn’t sound wonderful, this is the kind of schmulz that is confusing people and taking up air space, it is just noise and doesn’t actually say anything at all about the book. The book acutally sounds like it isn’t concise enough to be of interest to an ornithologist, so in short, is little better than a book of pretty pictures of birds.

One of the marketing men above refers to dishing out bookmarks which frankly, is better as it is at least corporeal, plus the reader (I assume) actually gets to read extracts of the book and can get an idea of the standard of writing and plot.

No, get back to old fashioned marketing, get rid of internet reviewers except the experts (such as Danuta – normally!) and to the publishers stop publishing any old thing that comes your way. Fewer books on the shelves would mean the good writers would sooner or later have no trouble selling their wares.

At the end of the day, a well written book should sell itself and indeed does. The da Vinci Code, Life of Pi, Curious Dog, Harry Potter and His Dark Materials all recent examples of the power of ‘word of mouth’.

I have learned not to trust blog, readers forums and review pages such as Amazon, as the reviews are largely written by the authors themselves who way over praise their own material in the greedy hunt for fame and glory.

These books, while drawing in a few suckers, will never sell because they simply will not be recommended by others.

No, if an author wants to be a household name then the best advice is to get a good editor. Thereafter the book should sell itself.

I have learned not to trust blog, readers forums and review pages such as Amazon, as the reviews are largely written by the authors themselves who way over praise their own material in the greedy hunt for fame and glory.

These books, while drawing in a few suckers, will never sell because they simply will not be recommended by others.

No, if an author wants to be a household name then the best advice is to get a good editor. Thereafter the book should sell itself.

I work in publicity in publishing and have never come across this attitude. Yes, we may not fully enjoy an hour long conversation that appears to be going nowhere but frankly – that’s our job and a “trained” PR person should know that.

Relationship management, client care, call it what you will – if you can’t bear the thought of an author interrupting your schedule with possibly very useful suggestions about promoting their book, then you are definitely in the wrong job!

Publicists are there to follow up leads and be pushy on behalf of our authors – and take long “meandering” phone calls. I actively encourage my authors to supplement my work with events and any other promotional activity they can come up with and often this means a long phone call, trying to work out what this could be and how I can support them.

If you’re not prepared to go the extra mile, I’d get out now before you get really cynical!

Marketing is a deep mystery to me, I have to admit. I’ve tried harder in the past with earlier books, but it seems to have no correlation to how many I actually sell. Mind you, as my books – no matter how good the reviews – are only read by about 100 people or so, I’m labouring in a very small (but of course completely discerning!) field.

)

A
xxx

Alistair Spalding is quite correct of course, but I think he may need some medicinal irn-bru to assist with the blood pressure.

Dr Blockbuster thinks Jimmy is getting over excited about the birds, the garden ones. Schurely Schome Mischtake? Let’s not get too green.

Apart from new avenues like Myspace and YouTube that lorelei mentions there are fantastic forums out there that bind and guide authors in the process. I can say that authorsden.com is a “fabby” forum/network with 20 trillion visitors a week or more(:wink:), and I, myself, participate in many online discussions on Amazon, the .com (bigger) where marketing info can be easily pooled.

There are many facets to publicity and successful publicity. For example … Dr Blockbuster handed out 1400 bookmarks at the Edinburgh International Book Festival … how good an audience was that?

ALL PARTICIPANTS have their part to play, the enemy is A P A T H Y !

For stress relief, here’s a wee joke that Sean Connery told at his birthday BAFTA in Edinburgh last year:

Towards the end of the discussion with Shane Danielson of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, we have this-

Sir Sean: Did you know that Tony Blair and I both went to Fettes?
(For those who don’t know Fettes is a private school in Edinburgh AND is fee paying)
Shane Danielson: (looking puzzled) No ???
Sir Sean: Yesch, yesch, Tony Blair and I both went to Fettes. Tony went for the education …. and I …. delivered the milk!

:roflmAo:
Dr Blockbuster
Blockbusterbooks.co.uk

This is a facinating world we are entering, but your wisdom is much appreciated.

Love,

Liz & Julie x

I’ve also met Maria before and she does a great job of self-publicising her books – I must confess I’m a little in awe of her confidence and bolshiness – I know I should do more to promote my own, but it’s not that easy bigging yourself up to people you’ve never met. And, as much as I wish it didn’t, the DIY approach does always leave you feeling a little shameless.

What’s so disappointing about the story of the publicist is that the publicity departments are lucky enough to have the one thing us authors don’t have in abundance: contacts. But even better is having contacts that are actually interested and offering to help! To not give that the personal response it deserves is a real shame, as you say.

I think it’s great that you (Danuta) encourage authors to do more of their own publicity. My own publishers’ publicity department are very busy, and my imprint in particular has a policy of not promoting their individual authors; rather their time is spent promoting the list as a whole; (which they are very good at). As a result, I should be writing off myself to journalists – and I have done a bit – but the reality is that it is hard to go direct, and it’s expensive too. Buying up shedloads of copies of your own book, and then cold-calling people to tell them how great your work is (even if you don’t quite believe it yourself) – can after a while become disheartening.

Sadly, not all journalists are as friendly to the idea of self-publicity as you (Danuta) seem to be. And although this sounds like a lame excuse, I also work full time in another job so I haven’t got quite enough time to send off loads of jiffy bags and keep calling up to chase. But if I did, and I was blessed with the contacts of the publicists, I’d like to think that I would make use of them.

On the up side, I’ve been dabbling in a bit of self-marketing – ie, putting book trailers onto YouTube and MySpace to help raise awareness for my books. It’s worked for me, and luckily, it’s also lead to spin-off reviews and features. It’s helped me get through to journalists who otherwise might not have had time.

I have to say that I was surprised to hear about these generic press releases and emails not even addressed personally though – surely these are fundamental things to get right? And, perhaps they might have reached for a less hackneyed, generic word than ‘superb?’ for the headline? I’ve worked on both sides of the fence – I used to work in the marketing dept at one of the big book houses before writing my own books – so I do know how stretched both publicity and marketing departments can be. In that way, it does make sense for authors to give a helping hand.

But what would be really great is if these publishers could give a helping hand back, by at least helping to fund the review copies. After all, they do benefit from any resulting reviews. With that small amount of support, we might then feel a little less out on a limb. And a little less shameless.

http://www.loreleimathias.com

The number of long meandering phone calls I’ve had from authors with no concept of PR that have left me seething means that I won’t deal with authors directly.

Let’s take down the celebs and make them beg for mercy over Yuletide!

Wouldn’t it be great to get all the media to refuse to even mention celeb books over Xmas? A revolution: Just say NO to celebs…

And it all began with a book about garden birds. Which, let’s face it, are 100% more important than any celeb.

What do I get out of all my hard work… a double page spread in a local ‘paper, 5 mins on local BBC radio and a couple of column inches in a free rag.

Ho-hum… must do better. Better than nothing though.