alt.books
a column by M.J. Rose

Dirty Words

The bad news for book lovers is that newspapers all over the country are either dispensing with their book review sections or shortening them. If you read The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, or the San Francisco Chronicle, look for fewer reviews you can use to help you create your TBR (To be Read) piles.

"Advertising is not the enemy. Empowering authors is not a mistake."

At the same time, both the New York Times and USA Today have recently run stories about authors who have taken it upon themselves to go out into the world and market their own books. In fact, looking back at the last two years, it seems as if authors than have done more creative marketing than their publishers.

Anita Diamant, Donna Woolfolk, and Adriana Trigiani contacted hundreds of book clubs, introducing themselves and offering to come and talk or communicate online if the book club members chose their titles.

Douglas Cleeg (douglascleeg.com) went online offering a free e-serial of his novel as a way to introduce his work to new readers. And Neil Gaiman (neilgaiman.com) used his website to create a journal taking the reader through every step of the process of taking a book through publication, supplemented with intensive online talks like that at the Well's Inkvue conference.

Not only have these authors taken their sales into their own hands, they have catapulted their titles to bestsellerdom — in every case seelling hundreds of thousands of books.

N.M. Kelby took a second mortgage out on her house to fund her own book tour. Michael I Leahey (MichaeliLeahey.com) created a contest, which he marketed to over 100 websites to encourage sales for his new mystery. Personally, I recently offered the top 50 independent bookstores signed bookplates for my latest novel.

And none of the above are self-published writers. They all have big New York publishing companies behind them.

Authors are also visiting and becoming involved in websites that attract readers: sites like Readerville.com, Bookreporter.com, and Bookbrowser.com – which together offer over 20,000 book reviews, author interviews, and feature articles.

 

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