The Publicity Crunch

Book publicists are suffering.  There are less traditional outlets that have book review sections to solicit (newspapers, magazines, television shows).  Authors are more savvy and want the chair on Oprah or Charlie Rose.  The super-bloggers can’t be bothered with reading and reviewing a printed book.  They’re moving way too fast.

Some advice to stop the pain:

• Focus on smaller blogs with a few thousand readers. I run a blog called MBWpicks.com and have yet to receive a single solicitation from a book publicist or marketer.  It’s a very focused audience and the site gets around 4,000 visitors a week.  There are millions of blogs like this.
• Create your own platform. Why shouldn’t you have your own site?  Why shouldn’t you be a trusted authority on your topic?  It’s likely that you have more access to writers and the inside baseball stuff that people would love to sneak a peek at.
• Have a personality. Talk about your products, your job, your decisions. It’s seems simple but people will check out your site just because they like you.  I even check out the blogs of people that I know would be annoying and arrogant in real life.  Just don’t spew marketing bullet points and how you’d like to leverage your synergies.