The Penguin Blog

Publicity 2.0, or Online Book PR, or 'Blog me the money!'

Almost as soon as I thought of the subject matter for this blog I began to worry about what I like to think of as my ‘online rep’.  ‘Blogging’, one of our work experience children tells me, has been around for some time now (it’s something to do with the interweb, FYI) and there are a few out there who write (the verb is ‘blog’, weirdly) about literature.  Now, I use email as much as the next person, and I even have a Twitter account (look mum, look at all those followers! Mwhahahaha…) but blow me down if it doesn’t seem like I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants all this time… I’m a bit worried I’ll seem like a techno dinosaur (although that would be cool).

Of course (wait for it), I’m exaggerating a bit and I do deal with a number of literary blogs and bloggers.  I’ve even commented on a few.  And I’m pretty honest about nailing my Penguin colours to the mast when I do it.  Honesty and integrity, it appears to me, are watch-words of literary blogging, even when I don’t necessarily agree with a review or a point or anything else or don’tmakemecomeoverthereandstartsomething.  Sometimes I just can’t help myself and I have to stick my oar in.  But blogs are all about discussion, at their best, and people need to feel free to say what they want and also have an idea who they’re saying it to, hence me putting my hand up and saying “I work at Penguin, guv.”

The problem with online PR is that, it’s perhaps fair to say, there’s been a certain amount of scepticism in the publishing world as to the merits and affects of book blogs, and even the reasons behind them.  In my time emails have gone round the publishing houses warning of someone purporting to be from a print publication that is, in fact, fake, just to get free books, either to read or to sell.  Blogs caused suspicion because even if someone linked through to one that clearly existed, it could be a fairly ad hoc enterprise, one that potentially took little effort on the part of the blogger to circulate or even write when compared to the book-y rewards they were receiving.  It’s a quid pro quo agreement, sending review copies out, albeit a flexible one.

Two things have caused me and I’m sure many others to have a re-think.  Firstly, the simple fact that there’s now less space in the traditional outlets, such as newspapers, magazines, radio, etc, and every book publicist in London is competing for it.  It’s always the hardest part of the job, convincing someone that they should consider, look at, perhaps read and, if you’re lucky, cover a book and there’s less room now than there used to be, for various reasons.  So as publicists, we have to look beyond where we’ve usually aimed for coverage.

(Who’s this guy with Joe the Publicist?)

The second reason is the obvious increase in the number of serious, quality book bloggers and sites out there.  Blogs such as ReadySteadyBook, Dovegreyreader Scribbles, Untitled Books or Asylum have clear aims in mind, an important ethical and aesthetic approach to their book coverage and, most importantly and informing all of this, a passion for books that means they take it very seriously and do it, well, properly.  They’re not after any free copy they can get their hands on and won’t just review a book well, or even at all, because they’ve been sent it. 

An interesting discussion appeared on Twitter recently about the effect of book blogging and online discussion.  While it remains hard to judge what sales come directly from a blog, from a particular online review or comment, or whether one blog is ‘better’ or more effective than another, the phrase that keeps coming to my mind is word of mouth.  That phrase is mentioned a few times in the Twitter discussion and it seems to be mentioned, at least indirectly, in online forums.  People who interact with book sites do it more and more frequently; relationships and trust builds up; you get to know other peoples’ tastes and they get to know yours; and it’s no longer a closed circle for a certain type of person.  In short, getting a review on a widely-read blog gets the book you’re working on talked about somewhere, and that is far, far better than silence.  As publishers that’s essentially what we’re trying to do.  Yes, we need to make money but we’ll never do that if no one is talking about our books.  You may not be able to measure sales from them 100% but neither can you do that with a lead review in Sunday Times Culture.

So I’m going to carry on with my mission of finding out more about the sites and bloggers I already work with and do my best to cast my net a little wider and discover more.  I’m hoping to find out what they like, what they read, what they look for from books, and publishers, and I think I’ll learn a lot from it.  As publicists, and as publishers, we need to look beyond what we’ve always seen as a benchmark for a publicity campaign and see what we can do to push ourselves, and our books, a little further.

For your reading pleasure (you need something to help you get over how serious the above got, right?) here are five literary blogs I’ve discovered and enjoyed recently:

http://robaroundbooks.com/  

http://www.thefictiondesk.com/

http://kimbofo.typepad.com/readingmatters/

http://www.booklit.com/blog/

http://www.acommonreader.org.uk/

 

Joe, Literary Publicity (@Joethepublicist – I know, I know)

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A very early shout out

If I could write like anyone in the world I think I would maybe like to write like David Vann. Each word in a sentence feels like it’s been weighed and measured to such precision, it’s as if they could be set in stone; at the end of what seems to be every paragraph there is a moment of epiphany that makes you stop and think ‘Amazing! How did he manage to get to that?’ There are moments of such pure and emotional power that I had a genuine physical reaction: at one point I read fully three pages with my mouth open in shock. I’ll guess you haven’t heard of him, not because I’m very cool or anything but because up until late November last year I hadn’t either, and we don’t publish his debut book of fiction, Legend of a Suicide, in this country until October this year. 

Let’s be honest with each other: I’m a publicist and you probably don’t trust me. My job is to cajole, nag, bully and create – here’s an ugly word – hype for things I want you to buy. Distrust can be good, though, as it can help to create healthy scepticism. The best journalists are healthy sceptics, who insist on making their own mind up about something. The best I can do is try to get them to take a chance on even taking the time to make their mind up, rather than just dismissing something out of hand. The best way to do that is through – here’s a nice word – enthusiasm. Doesn’t everyone love enthusiasm? Well, maybe not all the time. Let’s be realistic. But in my job it’s very helpful and, with David Vann and this book, I am 100% ain’t nuthin’ but the truth enthusiasm, hence this very early shout out. 

The book is comprised of five stories that book-end a novella, all inter-connected and with a clear progression. The more I’ve thought about this, the more I’ve realised it’s a different way of writing a novel.  The more I’ve thought about this, the more I’ve realised what a shatteringly good work it is. A colleague here said that when he finished it he went downstairs to his flatmate and, completely unbidden, told him step by step every detail in the book; it was so vivid to him it felt as if he’d lived it. Another texted me with a completely unquotable but extremely visceral reaction to a particular moment in the book. While this may tell you more about my homelife than you need to know, I’ve found myself having to read out sections of the book to my girlfriend, while she tries to get on with doing, you know, actual stuff, because I’ve been so struck by their clarity and brilliance. And it’s not as if she’s going to have to pay for a copy. I’m sure I could even stump up for one for her parents. If it’s Christmas or a birthday. Maybe. 

The book was published late last year, only in the States, by the small but venerable University of Massachusetts Press, and we’re hoping that, on this side of the Atlantic, it will be loved by people in the same way that the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle loved it. If you like American fiction, if you like Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Anne Tyler, Cormac McCarthy, if you like stupendous writing from anywhere then you have to read this book. I’m not telling you Next Big Thing So Go Tell Your Kids or Die Trying; I’m just saying that if you like great books I think you will love this. It’s wonderful, it’s moving, it’s literature. It’s Legend of a Suicide by David Vann, and it’s a little way off at the moment, but it’s well worth the wait.

 

And, because it’s the 21st century, if you’d like to hear more about this book as it gets closer to publication, then ping me @joethepublicist on twitter. I don’t know what I’m doing on there yet but I could maybe update you and stuff like that.

Joe the Publicist

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Fully Booked

It’s Booker week this week.  For the reading public I imagine this means hearing a little more each day about the nation’s most famous literary prize, as the arts media gear up to the announcement live on the Ten O’Clock News, bookshops change displays, sticker-up the winning novel, and an author who may or may not have been on everyone’s radar is suddenly slap bang in the middle of it and being asked to justify why.  In publishing terms, for the author and those directly involved with the process, it roughly means that it was Booker fortnight prior to that, Booker month not long before, and Booker longlist-quarter in the run-up to that.  In short, it gets busy.  We’ve all got our eye on it and pleasant anticipation steadily changes to full-on work.  Sales have to think about reprints, publicists have to think about schedules and editors, for their sins, have to think about speeches.  Poor folk.  At least there’s a party on the night, eh?

On Monday I had the pleasure of escorting our nominee, Steve Toltz (yay, Steve!) to a Guardian photoshoot at the V&A.  You can’t see me but I’m there, behind the camera, messing about with the inkwells and book-stands built in to the stunning mahogany (I’m guessing, there) desks of the reading room in the National Art Library.  It was a rare experience, I thought, to be in a room with all six Booker hopefuls, watching them being ordered around by a photographer.  Sebastian Barry, in particular, had a rough old time of it, being up that ladder as he was.  Each time the photographer wanted it moved he had to traipse down, shift it a few inches himself, and then clamber back up.  The gentleman in me, or perhaps the publicist, felt I should offer to do it for him.  I didn’t though, which probably says as much about me and my professionalism as Sebastian Barry’s willingness to do it without a word of complaint, nor even a raised eyebrow, does about Sebastian Barry.  Of course, it’s not an overly-testing thing to ask someone to do, except I couldn’t help but wonder if other previously shortlisted authors would have been so accommodating.  Well done, Sebastian; you’ve earned my respect with that display.  Oh, and yeah, of course, congrats on the shortlisting, too.  Nice one.

All six, in fact, seemed extremely nice and, well, normal.  I know, I know, ‘Shortlisted Authors in Normal Personality Shock’ is quite the cliché-ridden headline but the Booker schedule is demanding, time-consuming and daunting.  Steve Toltz (go Steve!), for instance, had a 36-hour flight from Australia last week and pretty much had to hit the ground running in terms of interviews, appearances and signings.  Not even President Jed Bartlett could handle that one.  Steve is also a first-time author, with no prior experience in publishing, so it’s being thrown in at the deep-end, literarily.  But Steve’s a cool guy, took it in his stride and seemed to find the whole thing amusing.  Although at one point he did ask for some water and was politely refused, on the basis that we were in a library.  I mean, come on Steve, get with the programme, you know?  ‘I feel like such a diva’ he said. 

Amitav Ghosh seemed more interested in asking me about my previous job than discussing his chances, which was nice, while Linda Grant wondered how she could answer a question she’d been asked umpteen times already in a different way: just how do you feel about being shortlisted for the Booker?  Personally, from what I saw and heard, I’d guess it comes in stages: tremendous excitement; humility; horror at the schedule; media work (don’t let anyone tell you that doesn’t produce a feeling all of its own); excitement of some kind but maybe not tremendous because you’re tired; free dinner on the night; fear; and then, of course…

Joe
Literary Publicity

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Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

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