tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11539270.post111895868461986291..comments2008-12-19T10:13:00.890-05:00sepulculturehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792028883485292551noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11539270.post-1119541554882395522005-06-23T11:45:54.883-04:002005-06-23T11:45:54.883-04:00We all now know more about the weenie book, sure, but what I also know is that I would never buy it AND that I've lost a some respect for its publisher. Not all press and hype are good for a product, despite the well-worn cliche.<BR/><BR/>Should a 500-copy seller be published? Obviously not, but hindsight is 20/20. Publishers buy many of the books they publish before they're ever written, which sometimes works out well and sometimes turns disastrous. Publishers are also (very often) hand-tied into publishing books because they've signed authors to multi-book deals. Sometimes publishers take big risks and they fail. There are lots of reasons why 500-copy books get published. My point is that it's not always the publisher's fault, nor is it always a function of being poorly promoted, under-advertised, or unsupported.<BR/><BR/>Frankly, I think the publishing industry has many problems in the way it does business, but I also will defend the industry to some extent because it's perceived problems among readers and writers are not entirely accurate.sepulculturehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792028883485292551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11539270.post-1119034742191370272005-06-17T14:59:02.193-04:002005-06-17T14:59:02.193-04:00Wow, I'm glad to have been able to kickstart things for you. You raise a good point about the differences between publisher promotion and other forms, but my original point was that fawning reviews, enthusiastic support from booksellers and other more flattering (and perhaps, organic) types of promotion obviously are more desireable than a wandering weenie, but that any method of getting word out is preferable to none. I know more about the book in question now than I would have before because of that weenie and the coverage given to it (her?) by you and others in the blogging world.<BR/><BR/>I wrote about books for a mid-sized Midwestern daily newspaper for about five years, and saw the various things publishers, authors and others were willing to do to get word out about a given title. While those things might have helped to get a book onto my radar (and the real, obvious passion some publicists felt for a title or author did help), it was the work I did to learn more about the book (often, of course, by reading it) that determined its coverage. I saw myself as a filter for the public, and chose what they heard about from my paper based on a book's merit and what I saw as the potential interest among readers.<BR/><BR/>Your point about the best use of time and money misses the point a bit, I think. Before you even get to the notion of whether a lot of promotion should be thrown after a dog of a book, shouldn't the question of whether the book should be published at all be asked? If a book is only going to sell 500 copies, why would a mainstream house publish it? You're right; no amount of help will get a bad book into very many hands, so why take on that task at all? Much as I saw myself as a filter, I also count on publishers as a filter. That's why most papers won't review self-published books, for better or worse.Johnhttp://tirbd.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.com