[FM Discuss] PR: Boosting book visibility

[Janet Swisher]

She's obviously more used a different market and probably publishing
paradigm. But I thought it was interesting to see a traditional book
publicist's view.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Andy Oram <andyo at oreilly.com> wrote:
> I'm perplexed that her advice to authors focuses on local events. How many sales can you generate by speaking at a library or a local bookstore (which is probably about to go out of business?). The social networking advice is more reasonable, albeit obvious. As for contacting reviewers--who reads them any more?
>
> I don't want to sound too cynical. O'Reilly has a big PR department, and we do encourage authors to do face-to-face events. But we're more strategic: for instance, instead of a bookstore, we're more likely to encourage authors to talk to a user group, where they can influence 20 to 40 really active users who are likely to talk about what they've heard.
>
> And what's that advice about getting advance copies three months before a book's launch? Maybe that works for children's books (I have a little knowledge of that, having talked to Scholastic). But three months before our books launch, the authors are about half done writing them.
>
> Andy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Janet Swisher <jmswisher at gmail.com>
> To: discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> Sent: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:31:40 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: [FM Discuss] PR: Boosting book visibility
>
> http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2009/03/publicist-interview-julie-schoerke-of.html
>
> Scroll down to: What advice do you have for writers trying to handle
> their own publicity/media relations?
> _______________________________________________