Interesting, thanks for sharing this story.
Categories: Romantic Times
Tags: celebrity, lisa jackson, promotion
by SB Sarah • Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 12:25 PM
This morning I had breakfast with author Lisa Jackson, her assistant and her publicist, who is also my neighbor – thus I was on my best behavior. In classic Pittsburgh fashion the breakfast buffet was the best deal, and featured every breakfast product known to woman. Since breakfast is generally my favorite meal to eat in restaurants, I was very happy. Plus there was coffee.
So after everyone at our table got their healthy breakfast and I had more coffee, we talked about regional accents, small towns in the west, small towns in the south, how many traffic lights qualify for small town status, and how to get to outer parts of Pittsburgh.
Then we started talking about author celebrity, and Jackson had some really interesting thing to say about promotion, the internet, and blogging.
Jackson writes suspense and romantic suspense, and told me about her earlyefforts to promot herself and her books, and how she figured out that authors nowadays often do have to promote themselves as well as, or as an accessory to, their books. As I said during breakfast, it used to be that movies were marketed based on the story and then mentioned the actors in it. Now, the movie is often marketed as a vehicle for fans to see their favorite actor or actress. The individual is as important as the created product – and authors are marketing their books following much the same pattern.
Lisa: About 10 years ago, I was paying attention to the sales for my books, and I realized I needed to do something to push my career. I could not let my next book slide in sales. So I sent myself on tour. I went to places I could drive to, where I had friends I could crash with, and I hired a publicist I couldn’t really afford, and it really seemed to make a difference. The book did well – it could have also been due to the cover, the timing, whatever, but sending myself on tour definitely didn’t hurt.
But authors have to be very proactive. Name and title often appear in equal size on the book cover. And readers don’t ask “What books do you read?” They ask “Who do you read? The name and the backlist behind it are compared to other names when readers talk about romance – and mysteries, and suspense, etc.
by SB Sarah • Friday, June 20, 2008 at 07:04 AM
Happy Friday! Have some links for fun and profit. If you figure out the profit thing, lemme know.
From Elizabeth: an older post from Mark Sarvas’ blog: the many many kinds of lit. I’m partial to “Clique lit” (when friends of bestselling authors write books) and “Flick lit” (novels optimized for film adaptation). But “Frick Lit” and “Tick Lit” made me snort diet Pepsi up my nose.
Elizabeth’s email was made 23% more awesome by the following true story:
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 07:03 AM
Anyone who gets the Publishers Lunch has received the news that Amazon acquired Shelfari. TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon dropped a cool million on the Shelf, while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes that three weeks ago, Amazon acquired AbeBooks, which owns a share in Shelfari’s competitor, LibraryThing.
While the nom-nom-nom-ing of the internet does make me raise a cautious brow, it also makes me wonder if Amazon is the only party with massive cash behind it that recognizes the potential power of book network marketing. Not marketing of books, but the marketing of book networks, and how powerful social networks are when founded on common reading experiences. In my research for advertising brokers, I’ve been told that book sites don’t sell, that books are hard to market, and that there isn’t as much interest in book based blogs as there is celebrity gossip, celebrity pictures with Photoshopped jism on them, and celebrity babies, handbags, diet plans, and plastic surgery. Oh, and celebrities.
Now, I happen to think these brokers are totally wrong, and while the massive big gulp that Amazon seems to be undertaking makes me wonder what they’re larger plans are for unifying these brands, it does give me a small amount of pleasure that at least Amazon does recognize that book network based marketing is an untapped market.
21 comments •
Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: amazon, celebrity, gossip, shelfari
Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: amazon, celebrity, gossip, shelfari
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