Power to the people

A great visit and talk yesterday from Lauren Cerand, the renowned PR queen. Much made of the joys of digital marketing and PR - why pay tonnes to a newspaper for a tiny ad for your event, when putting out a viral email virtually (forgive the pun) guarantees a crowd of self-selecting devotees?

More important though, is the power of bloggers. Lauren recounted how a secret url passed to one blogger resulted in thousands of hits to the site as the link spread through the community like wildfire. My, how we long for that...

So how to convince all you Dear Readers that my fellow bloggers and I aren't shilling for the corporate buck? Well, we can't even begin to lust after the credibility that the dedication of Miss Snark and Grumpy Old Bookman gives: all we can do is offer a glimpse into the world of Penguin books that some people may not yet have. For instance, I learnt only last week that most publishing houses don't even have a copywriting team. The editors write their own copy! Ha! How charming to know we are slightly unique in the industry. Ooops, are my orange-and-black colours showing again?

Sam the junior copywriter