[Discussion] Bribes, threats and naked readings

[Paksoy, Hb]

Bribes, threats and naked readings
In a world where more and more new books get less and less attention,
authors will do anything to promote their work.
By Christopher Dreher
Sept. 16, 2002 | It's not easy being a book critic nowadays. Sometimes you
receive daily e-mails from an author explaining for the hundredth time why
his treatise on holistic vegetarianism is the "Left/Progressive answer to
Capitalist, meat-eating excesses of Our Time!!!!!" Or you're implored to
cover a local reading where the poet will stand at the lectern clothed only
in a number of strategically pasted pages from her forthcoming chapbook.
Whenever Marie Arana -- editor in chief of the Washington Post Book World
and an author herself -- gives a talk or a reading, invariably a clutch of
authors find her afterwards, books in hand, ready to pitch themselves. 
"It happens more frequently," she says. "There's a boldness that wasn't
there before." 
In fact, authors often go to considerable lengths to promote their books.
Some fire off endless faxes or rambling e-mails to editors and critics, some
try phoning directly and the most intrepid simply show up at the newspaper
or magazine's office, much to the book editor's alarm. Less aggressive (and
perhaps more successful) are those who on their own arrange readings in
bookstores or coffeehouses, often selling copies of their books out of the
trunks of their cars. Others -- like the half-naked poet mentioned above --
try stunts and other gimmicks to draw attention to themselves. 
In the past, authors relied on their publishers' publicity departments to
get attention for their books. But increasingly, publishers are giving the
majority of their authors less and less assistance. When times are tough,
publishers prefer to invest their publicity dollars in books they're fairly
sure will sell -- big-name authors, hot topics -- rather than in promoting
lesser-known or new authors, especially fiction writers. 
Not only that, but newspapers and magazines are trimming back their review
coverage. And publishers are releasing more and more individual titles each
year, what one book editor, speaking off the record, calls "spaghetti
publishing: throw a pot of stuff at the wall and hope something sticks." The
result is a lot of desperate authors who are realizing that getting
published isn't the end of a long struggle but the beginning of an even
harder one. 
"Publicists started falling down on the job," says David Kipen, critic for
the San Francisco Chronicle, who recalls that one time an author sent him a
review copy with a $5 bill slipped inside. (He says he immediately threw
away the book without reading it and used the bill to buy donuts for the
office.) "The mid-list writers, in their defense, are having to do their own
publicity." 
Seeking publicity is not a responsibility that many authors are prepared to
take on. The ones with some money to spare hire their own publicists, a
practice that has increased dramatically over the past years. If authors
can't afford that, they may still feel compelled to do something since their
chance of publishing another book usually depends on the success of the
previous one. 
"It's harder to sustain a literary career, and the general run of authors
are less shy about publicizing themselves than they were perhaps 20 years
ago," says Thomas Mallon, an author and critic who has been on numerous book
tours and was the literary editor and books columnist for Gentlemen's
Quarterly. "Publishing houses give up on writers after a few books --
quicker than before. It's more of a profit margin now. The idea that an
author is stepping down from lofty perch of Parnassus to wallow in the
marketplace isn't a feeling authors [can afford] anymore." 
Compounding the problem are all the competing media -- the Internet, movies,
radio, television and other modern diversions. It has become more difficult
for publicity departments, let alone authors, to make an impact. 
"The biggest change in publicity now is that to reach the same number of
readers you need more publicity," says Paul Bogaards, senior vice president
and executive director of publicity at Knopf. "Before, a few central thrusts
could help launch a book. Now the question is, how much the publicist needs
to do to break through the noise of our culture." 
Which may sound like certain doom for authors who aren't well heeled or who
publish at smaller presses without publicity departments, but some writers
have managed to overcome these obstacles. 
After Neal Pollack published his "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American
Literature" with McSweeney's Press, he devoted the next two years to a
shoestring promotional tour. He sold books from a backpack and got noticed
by giving a reading in a men's room in a Philadelphia train station, at a
ticket window in front of Boston's Fenway Park, while standing in the
fountain at Washington Square Park in New York and in a deli in Ann Arbor.
He also used the Internet by keeping an amusing tour diary on the
McSweeney's Web site. His efforts eventually worked; the paperback was
published by HarperCollins last March. 
"What I did was a primer on how to pull a book tour out of your ass," he
says. "I'd do anything to get attention for the book. You have to have some
kind of gimmick, something that distinguishes you from the horde. Lots of
times the prose won't do it by itself." 
And in the end, even the most ingenious promotional efforts may backfire.
"In an ideal world, books would speak for themselves, but the problem is,
there are so many books now," says Bob Minzesheimer, who writes features and
reviews for USA Today. "My suspicion always is that a gimmick implies that
the book can't stand on its own. " 
Even an author who is sent on the road by a big publishing house often
discovers that acclaim can be elusive. Mallon characterizes his own touring
as an author as both "discouraging and comical," and he has written essays
and articles about the experience. 
"One time I had only one guy show up for a reading," he recounted. "We had
coffee for the better part of an hour, talking about writing and the book.
Then he left without even buying it." 
Yet for many authors a full-fledged tour, traditional or gimmicky, isn't
possible, either because of temperament or because of circumstance.
Pittsburgh author Jennifer Bannan, whose first story collection is being
published by the Carnegie Mellon Fiction Series this winter, is married, has
a new baby and works full-time for a technology marketing company. She hopes
to transfer her marketing skills to promoting the book, and plans to contact
book editors at newspapers and magazines and to schedule weekend readings in
cities where she has friends who'll give her a place to sleep. 
"I can't exactly drop everything to tour for years and I don't think my
husband or the baby would enjoy a reading in a bathroom," she says. "Maybe I
could change the baby on stage while reading. That might create a buzz." 
In addition to all the books put out by large and small publishers, the
proliferation of both vanity presses and print-on-demand (POD) services over
the past few years now allows anyone to bequeath his or her words unto the
world. 
Teresa Weaver, book editor of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, says that
over the past few years an "incredible volume" of self-published and POD
books have arrived at her paper's office. At the same time, she says, direct
requests from authors for reviews of their books have doubled, and "some
days it feels like it's quadrupled." E-mail in particular has made it easy
for authors to contact members of the media quickly, cheaply and repeatedly,
which, Weaver noted, "is good from their point of view, bad from mine." 
Elizabeth Taylor, book editor of the Chicago Tribune and president of the
National Book Critics Circle, says that approximately 20 percent of the
books her paper receives (out of about 100 total per day) are from vanity
presses or POD authors, and many of them are inappropriate for the paper.
"Some books look like they're mimeographed in the basement," she says. "Or
they're sweet little books about all kinds of crafts or knitting, but not
something we'd review." 
Book editors complain that authors often ignore the fact that their books
are completely inappropriate for the publications that they inundate with
requests for reviews. "Not a day goes by without an e-mail from
self-published authors," says Minzesheimer. Overall, he sympathizes with the
authors. "It must be such a frustrating thing, which books we pitch is so
arbitrary and hard to figure out." But, like most book review editors, he
says that pitches straight from a book's author tend to turn him off to the
book, no matter who publishes it. "I always think if I'm hearing directly
from the author, it's not a good sign." 
Jonathan Yardley, book critic for the Washington Post, says that a couple
years ago he'd already written the draft for a review when the book's author
contacted him in a "direct and smarmy way." He replied that had the author
contacted him before he'd written the review, he wouldn't have reviewed the
book at all. "I always reject such overtures," he says, "I really, really,
really don't like authors to contact me." 
He's not alone. "With a publicist," says one book review editor who wished
to remain anonymous, "I can be relatively frank. She's a professional who
understands that not every book is right for us. With the author, it's
trickier. How do you tell someone that his or her baby is simply terrible?
Sometimes, though, an author is so persistent that you wind up having to
telling them something pretty close to that. Ugh." 
Yardley says that the relationship between publicity and marketing
departments, and reviewers and book editors -- with whom critics like
Yardley have regular contact -- is a useful business relationship that acts
as a sort of test, or "a sieve, a filter, to the process" of selecting which
books to cover. With self-publishing, the only test the book has to pass is
whether its author's check clears. 
"It's a real problem because more books are coming at us," Yardley says.
"They haven't passed any test. And the question is, 'Do you have enough time
to filter through all these?' The answer is no ... As to receiving all these
books, it stopped being Christmas every day a long, long time ago. It's a
pain in the ass." 
Laurie Muchnick, book editor of the Long Island newspaper Newsday, says that
she has also noticed an increase in self-published books over the past two
to three years. She used to tell authors that Newsday had a policy of not
reviewing self-published books because their readers couldn't easily buy
them. Now that it's possible to get a book widely distributed through
outlets like Amazon.com and other online sources, that excuse is "no longer
valid." 
Many self-published authors consider the book editors' skepticism regarding
their work to be prejudice, a sort of conspiracy to uphold the status quo of
recognized publishers. Unfortunately, the books themselves don't do much to
support that argument. "There are enough really bad books published by major
publishers," Muchnick says. "And most self-published books are worse than
that." 
But despite the stepped-up intensity of direct promotion from authors, book
editors and critics do not foresee a climate where only the loudest and
flashiest will be reviewed or noticed. 
"I'd be a little bit surprised if work of real merit is getting lost out
there," says Yardley. "I've always said there is no such thing as a really
meritorious book that can't get published." 
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About the writer Christopher Dreher <mailto:Chris_Dreher@yahoo.com> is a
writer in Pittsburgh.  Sound Off Send us a Letter to the Editor
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