Bad Book Publicity

[jimhines]

I’ll probably be talking about book-release stuff next week when Mermaid’s Madness comes out, which got me thinking about some of the really bad publicity strategies for authors.

I’m not claiming to be perfect.  In the past five years, I’ve tried any number of things to promote my work that make me wince to think about ‘em now.  Bad home-printed

Comments

[jimhines]

Just curious - did this come directly from the author?

It could be worse. I've come across folks who mail their entire book out as an attachment in unsolicited e-mails to whoever they can find that might possibly be able to review or promote it for them...

[jimhines]

That's the problem with spam. 999 people will delete it unread, but it only takes that 1 in 1000 to actually click and buy, and since e-mail is free to send, that's incentive to keep doing it. Grumble.

[mtlawson]

Billboards.

Maybe it's just me, but taking out a billboard ad promoting an upcoming book makes me feel uneasy. The past several months if you drive south on I-75 just before downtown Cincinnati, there's been a billboard promoting the upcoming Eric Rex book, and it just seems incredibly tacky to this Midwestern kid.

[jimhines]

I'm torn on this one. A billboard kind of makes sense to me for someone on the level of Dan Brown. I still think they're tacky, but a big bestseller seems as deserving of billboard attention as a movie or TV show.

[mtlawson]

I agree about your assessment of the level of Dan Brown, but Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling didn't get billboards around town.

Honestly, I think that TV and movie billboards are tacky as well, mainly because they're sharing space with fast food and lawyer ads.

[jadesfire55]

I have the same reaction to TV commercials for books. Sometimes they're for books I've heard of, sometimes not. In either case they just seem odd.

[kylecassidy]

i dunno, those all sounds like pretty good marketing practices to me!

[jimhines]

::Snicker:: Well played, my friend.

[kylecassidy]

oops!

"Jim was very excited to get me to autograph my latest tome which he said he carries everywhere with him!"

[mtlawson]

::applause::

[j_cheney]

Oh heavens we don't want to get into what the 'we are not a vanity press' company that a friend of mine used is telling him to do....

But he's had an announcement put in the church bulletin, and used the church e-mail system to announce his book signing....

[cathschaffstump]

The church email system? Wow...

Catherine

[j_cheney]

I'm fairly certian that the publisher had that in their little book of suggestions. I do know that myself, the multi-published romance author, and the multi-published YA author there have never done such a thing....

[cathschaffstump]

It just seems so invasive. You're there, focusing on your spirituality, and there's an advertisement for someone else's agenda.

Yuck. Doesn't seem gentlemanly.

Catherine

[jimhines]

Oh, yes. Panel-domination is annoying by itself, but domination-for-self-pimping is doubly worthy of smackdown.

[cathschaffstump]

This happened at a recent panel I saw. I thought it was because the panelist was a teacher (not yours truly) and not used to giving up control in a Q&A session.

But it turned me off entirely. It seemed so inconsiderate of the other authors.

[mtlawson]

Are there some conferences where that is less common than others? Just curious if the presence of enough other writers at some conferences provide unspoken pressure for some of these people to behave.