First let me say that I don't have any book publicity horror stories of my own, but I can start us off with a happy book publicity tale which I'll try to spook-ify as best I can. ;-)
Once upon a time, I was supposed to be coordinating publicity for Andy's book Blogwild!.
I say "supposed to be" because I don't think he really needed anyone to try to get him publicity. It seemed like journalists and major newspapers and magazines just miraculously "found" him.
While I was researching and writing to hosts of obscure internet radio shows trying to get him some air time, he would IM me to say, "I'm on the phone with 60 Minutes!" or "USA Today called," or "The Wall Street Journal just put me on their 'must read' list".
Mind you, none of this publicity was solicited. They just "found" him via his blog or other interviews he'd done.
I think that he's been so successful with garnering major publicity because he laid the ground work for a marketing machine years and years ago (before his book was even published) when he started his blog and got his name all over the internet.
(Oooo--or perhaps he has the formula for a magic potion that lures unsuspecting journalists to his blog. Or maybe he made a pact with the devil like Keanu Reeves in "The Devil's Advocate." That's not quite "horror", but it is kind of other-worldly--hey, I'm doing the best I can to make this upbeat book publicity story into something worthy of being published on Halloween, so cut me some slack. ;-))
In M.J. Rose's post about Publicity Horror Stories, she talks about how marketing differs from PR. She advises folks to spend the bulk of their money on marketing, and then if you've got money left over add some PR.
I think of marketing as being more of a long term, ongoing thing (like with Andy and his blog and virtual book tours and such), and PR is bringing an agency in after your book is published with the hopes that they'll be albe to get you big-time media exposure in a relatively short period of time.
Like M.J. says, publicity is a crap shoot, but marketing is a safer bet than PR.
Okay, get ready for some book publicity tales that went horribly wrong...cue the spooky music...
M.J.'s horror story has to do with the time she paid $10,000 for 12 weeks with a PR firm, and they only got her a tiny write-up in a local paper. Now that's scary!
Also check out Bella Stander's Publicity Terror Tales, including "The Librarian's Revenge", "Stupid Author Tricks", and a spine-tingling tale about the time a lesser-known author was seated next to Stephen King at a book-signing event.
Ghastly stuff! :-)
There are a lot of publicity stories that have gone wrong. They could have studied their strategies diligently before implementing them.
Posted by: Book Publicity | September 13, 2010 at 02:36 AM