The whole ARC thing

Crime Spree editor Jon Jordan writes about what he likes and doesn’t like about Advance Readers Copies — commonly known as ARCs:

Things that help:

Information on the author; this can include bio material and interviews.

Touring information; this is handy to booksellers and it also shows how much the publisher is investing in the book.

Things that I don’t quite get:

A

lot of new books mention a “Webmarketing campaign”. What the hell is

that exactly? Is it the emails I get from the publishers people

reminding the book is coming out and asking if I’m going to review it?

Is it sending out mass emails to a list? Is it getting the book

reviewed on various websites? Maybe even paying for banner ads?

And how effective is any of that in actually helping to sell extra copies?

They

also mention national review attention. I undertand that this helps the

bookseller know that people will be aware of a book, but does it do any

more than that? I don’t think so. My knowing it is getting national

review attention isn’t going to guilt me into reviewing it.

Like Jon, I also find it entertaining to see what publishers promise to do for their writers on the back copy of ARCs, and it’s especially telling to compare/contrast what big name authors — or even those the publisher wants desperately to break out — get compared to the mere midlist.

The more specific the campaign is the earlier on, the more chance, I believe, the book will have to get attention. “National review attention” doesn’t have the same clout as “print advertising in The New York Times, The Washington Post,etc.” “Regional publicity” won’t work as well as naming specific markets. And although I think “Online marketing campaigns” are more sophisticated now than the kinds of things Jon refers to, again, specificity is important. Granted, some publishers don’t want to give away their game too early, but I think, as booksellers or industry people, they like to know what’s going on, to guage how much buzz the book is getting in advance.

But what really catches my own eye is when publishers do creative

marketing ideas. John Connolly’s THE BLACK ANGEL — just about to be

published in the US — will not only be advertised in traditional

places, but also with trailers at selected Loews chain movie theaters.

Now some might view that as a bit off putting but I think that’s rather

neat, because even this year, when moviegoing has dropped off sharply,

more people still see movies than read books. So depending on which

features the book trailers piggyback onto, more people could,

potentially, buy the book and just as importantly, buy Connolly’s

backlist.

Doubleday is really pushing the hell out of what they hope will be their next blockbuster, THE TRAVELER by John Twelve Hawks (out at the end of June.) Aside from the fact that it’s the same company (and editor) as THE DA VINCI CODE, it’s also advertising a major Internet marketing campaign — one in place for over a year with several websites allegedly created to generate buzz. Granted, I’m not sure how well this has worked yet, because I’d never heard of them independently, only when I received the galley. More intriguing to me is the identity of Twelve Hawks, billed as a debut author but almost certainly a pseudonym for…somebody. Who? I don’t know, but maybe that’s all part of the covert marketing campaign happening.

So if you get a galley, what alerts you to the fact the book might be receiving attention? What bells and whistles do you like? And does it all really fall by the wayside compared to the quality of the book?