Why LitBlogs Matter

When a major studio releases a movie, it's accompanied by a multi-million dollar advertising budget. Even titles guaranteed to be dead on arrival have major promotional bucks ushering them to their doom. This is mostly because that first release, the theater, is only the beginning of life for a movie. If the studio makes back its production, print, and advertising costs on the theatrical run, everyone is ecstatic. Huge multi-page ads appear in the trade journals. The major money comes from pay-per-view, video/DVD, pay television, network television, endless syndication, more video/DVD. Repeat in every country around the world, and you have yourself a thriving industry.

Books don't have endless windows opening for them. You have your hardback and your paperback, with the trade paperback filling gaps as necessary. The titles showered with advertising dollars are the titles needing the least help. Nora Roberts, Stephen King, and James Patterson don't need full-page ads in the New York Times; it's not even clear that such advertisements have any effect on readers. Their new titles will occupy front tables and endcaps and grocery store slots.

I've never fully understood why publishers spend money buying and producing books without following through with promotion. It is up to authors, surely the least likely of marketers, to push their works. Sure, ARCs are distributed far and wide, but if you follow Michael Cader's weekly analysis of reviews, it's pretty obvious that the majority of column inches is devoted to a minority of books.

Maybe it's because I'm blessed, but my local newspaper doesn't seem to follow the national trends. Then again, my local paper is the Los Angeles Times. I'm not sure who the reviews are targeted toward, but all my friends are readers, and not one of them relies upon the LAT for information about new books. If you've paid any attention at all to the various comments and coverage surrounding this weekend's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, you know that the review section does a serious disservice to its community.

It's interesting to me that readers are leading the charge to discover and promote new, often overlooked fiction. Tradtional avenues of literary coverage are necessarily limited in scope, even with the Internet. We're experiencing a paradigm shift in this country:

A new generation of technology-savvy young people are getting their news in ways that threaten the very viability of newspapers and other traditional news media, according to a study commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Twenty blogs talking about one book may not seem earth-shattering. Unless you realize that traditional media is just now understanding that they're playing catch-up. Earlier this week, Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that he'd misjudged the Internet. He was speaking from the perspective of a man who owns news sources, but maybe he should have expanded his vision a little -- he also publishes books.

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

"Twenty blogs talking about one book may not seem earth-shattering."

It may not seem earth-shattering, but it should create some results. Beyond the well known Home Land story, there's also Quinn Dalton's recent blog dealings.

Quinn's short story collection debuted Tuesday the 19th. At times during Tuesday and Wednesday, Bulletproof Girl had an amazon rank with double digit numbers. Was this because of a number of excellent reviews in all the major Sunday review sections? I didn't notice too many of those actually. Was it because Washington Square Press had full page advertisements in all the trade magazines and papers? Didn't notice any of those either.

What was going on with Quinn?

She had an article posted on www.beatrice.com. Her book was reviewed by Scott at Conversational Reading. She did an interview with Scott as well. I believe she was mentioned on www.maudnewton.com, as well as the Cupcake sight as well. She had another article somewhere that was linked to by a blog or two. This and some readings in NC and NY recently. And in most cases, I've found that people at readings that are interested in the author, have either already purchased the book, or buy it on the spot. I doubt either has much effect on the Amazon ratings.

Twenty blogs discussing a single book will lead to other blogs discussing this book. There are newspapers and probably magazines that will mention the Read This! title. If any tie-ins can be made with independent booksellers or any radio shows pick it up, that's just another group of people exposed to it because of this.

I think for the author, and publisher, selected, twenty blogs talking about one book will be earth-shattering news.

Enjoy,

[Richard Roche]

The Litblog Co-op is already being noticed. The April 19 issue of the Chicago Tribune ran a lengthy article on page 6 of its Tempo section. The Metro Desk blog at the Metropolitan Library System highlighted it. I am reviewing it on my blog ricklibrarian.blogspot.com.

I read the postings so far and ordered two fiction works that no library in our co-op owned for my library. That's what this is all about. Thanks for the effort.

[laura]

hello. I just found LBC, via mumpsimus, and so far I like what I've seen.

nevertheless I must point out that "summer 2005" is at worst insulting and at best ridiculous for people like me who through no fault of our own are condemned to eke out our insignificant lives in the southern hemisphere. tsk, tsk.

[Mark A. Rayner]

I also found this endeavor via Mumpsimus, and I have to commend all of you for your work. There is too much good work gettting lost between the cracks as the traditional publishing model breaks up.

And I'm not just saying this because my first novel is being published by a boutique press -- ENC Press-- and this kind of PR is exactly what we need to get the word out. I have a read of most of your blogs (and blogrolled some of them), and I've already got a new list of books I need to pick up and read.

Thanks!