More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
TeleRead poll> Will Net promo hurt literature—by favoring writer-performers?
July 10, 2007 | 12:34 am
|
By David Rothman
[poll=29]
“If you subscribe to the notion of the ‘attention economy,’ and agree that books now compete not only with films and television for cultural relevance and interest, but now must also beat out new media such as blogs, MP3s, Myspace and Youtube for human bandwidth,” says Jeff Gomez, a Web-oriented marketer for Holtzbrinck in his personal Print Is Dead blog, “then why shouldn’t authors use every marketing tool at their disposal?” So, gang, what do you think? Vote, then perform via a comment if you’d like.
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
I’m really surprised this one hasn’t drawn more comments. Some people make a living from their blogs as it is, by commenting on politics or television. I think this poll would have more relevance as a “will blogs beat out magazines or radio as the top way to promote your book” poll. It’s a fact that good “guests” get chat time on TV, radio and magazines less on the merits of their work and more on their ability to entertain, shock or dazzle. Somehow we have to find out about a book before we can read it. In fact since the dawn of time (1965, when I was born) every book I ever saw (outside of a library – those library editions with the bland covers? Whose idea was that? May be a UK thing…) had a garish cover designed to deceive and entice me into buying it. To this day you’ll see a “cover” next to the book you’re about to download. Why? There’s no logical reason. It would make more sense to have a link to a short video where the author, or whoever, told you why you should buy this book. How many back cover blurbs have you read that either told you the whole story, complete with plot twists or outright lied about the contents?
The bright light on the horizon is an Amazon-alike rating system that would let people rate the e-books they’ve downloaded. No matter how reclusive the author, if they’re good someone will spill the beans and let everyone know. Ratings systems are going to be far more important than blogs, IMO.
I think this is really no different a question than the “Will offline promo hurt literature” question, which has been around for quite a while.
Some authors are comfortable doing offline promotion but are uncomfortable doing online promotion. Some authors are comfortable doing online promotion but are uncomfortable doing offline promotion. Some authors are comfortable doing any sort of promotion. Some authors are uncomfortable doing any sort of promotion, in which case their books are likely to fare badly, which I think is a shame.
The real question is: Why aren’t publishers doing the promotional work for authors that they ought to be doing?