The Hype Debate

Johnny Temple publisher of Akashic Books wrote an interesting article for Poets & Writers about authors promoting their own work. It's worth reading.

"Calling upon writers to do more of their own promotional "dirty work" is by no means a suggestion that they alone must carry this burden. To be sure, it is primarily the publishers' job to market the books they take on. But in Theroux's "age of intrusion," it is unwise for any author to hand over the reins of her career to someone she doesn't trust. The ideal, of course, is to collaborate with an attentive and zealous publisher, but the reality for most artists in any medium is that little is guaranteed beyond one's own efforts. (Even close friends with "good connections" often fail to come through for artists.)"

So is the argument going on over at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind about whether or not authors should self promote, or even if we can do any good for our books or if its all a waste of time.

My take on Buzz is: Self promoting works for some authors and it fails for others. Some authors are good at it and some should never bother. Of course we all got into this because we wanted to write not promote. So you have to figure out what kind of writer you are, what you can do, what you can't, what you will, and what you won't.

Douglas Clegg built his sales up from 20,000 copies per book to 100,000 copies per book by coming up with some ingenious on line promotions that exposed his work to new readers. Lisa Tucker, took a huge chunk of her advance, hired a publicist and took herself on tour as a result her book took off and she got kudos and awards and sold over 75,000 copies of her first novel. On the other hand I know just as many authors who have done everything right for their books but nothing happened. I knew Dan Brown back before TDC and yes he did self promote and no, it didn't make him a bestseller.

I don't know any author who made the effort and was sorry afterwards. I do however know many who didn't make any effort, believed their publisher's would do it all and when it was all over, felt they'd make a big mistake by doing so.

But here's the thing. If you are going to look back and wonder if promoting your book would have helped, if you are going to regret that you didn't do some of the things you thought of, then you should do them.

But one thing we know. No one thing sells a book and makes it take off. A million little things do. And if you can do some of those little things, and you want to, there's just no reason you shouldn't go them.

Comments

[Kate Allan]

My image of promotion is that it's like sticking pins in an orange. You are completely right that no one thing is going to have a large impact, but lots of small things an author can do could add up to something bigger, and it's a case of optimising impact in the spheres an author can influence. e.g. local author / home town stuff or engaging with that specialist audience most likely to be interested in your book.