Whoop It Up

Or The Best Way To Sell "Whoosh Boom Spat" is DIY Promotion

You write a book and find a publisher. Here's what you think the publisher is going to do for you to promote the book: take out ads, do a promotional media tour, send out free copies to a press list in hopes of garnering free publicity. That's the expectation and most publishers probably don't meet a much lower standard of promotion, especially for a niche title.

One interpretation is that publishers are failing their authors. Another is quite simply that publishers don't believe that doing all of the above makes much of a difference in sales. At best, they don't know what works.

Maybe this traditional approach once worked. Getting a PR machine behind a book might have worked when more people were paying attention to newspapers, radio stations and local TV. However, most of the people who consume traditional media are not really your target customers. The audience you want to reach are the people consuming media on the Internet. You want to go where they go, and most publishers haven't figured out how to go there.

Bill Gurstelle, a Make contributing editor and author of popular books such as Backyard Ballistics, has a new book called "Whoosh Boom Splat - the Garage Warriors Guide to Projectile Shooting." He writes on his blog:

after five books, I've figured out not to rely on my publisher for directing the promotion effort. It's got to come from the author.

For his new book, he worked with a talented friend to create his own very funny commercial for his book, which he uploaded to YouTube. This video shows the proper use of a potato cannon in a cubicle-lined office. He hopes to create a stir with a video. He has also been working the blogging circuit, personally connecting to bloggers who write about subjects relating to his book, as well as friends he knows through his work. He tells me that most people are really excited to talk to him about his book. (And Bill is fun to talk to.) More importantly, he's enjoying himself and that enthusiasm usually translates into positive reviews. (If you like the author, you'll generally like the book.)

The combination of YouTube and blogs has helped Bill's book get off to a good start on places like Amazon. He's amazed that "Whoosh Boom Splat" is doing so well without a single mention in a newspaper, radio or TV program.

No publicist could do these things as well as Bill could do them himself. More importantly, he's able to make a personal connection and talk about the book himself, not through a mouthpiece. Indeed, he's more likely to find people that are genuinely interested in his book. As Bill points out, how many widely distributed promotional copies go right into the trash unread? The traditional press is inundated with press releases and all kinds of product announcements. And there are fewer and fewer journalists to sort through them and figure out what to do with them. This is true even in technical trade publications -- there are fewer in number and they don't have the clout they once did.

Bill's conclusion is that the value of getting in front of traditional media is overrated. He's able to harness the Internet himself to become his own best publicist.

Of course, not all efforts at "self-promotion" are effective, regardless of the medium. Some people simply want your attention. They don't really want to talk.
They don't even understand why you'd have the conversation. Here's a phone conversation from yesterday with what I deemed to be a professional publicist:

Him: "Hello, this is X from Y. We'd like to set up a meeting for you to discuss with our CEO exciting new developments in the BI marketplace. "

Me: "Did you say BI?"

Him: "Yes, we've got a great new software suite for Business Intelligence."

Me: "I publish Make magazine."

Him: "What's that?"

Me: "Exactly. Goodbye."

Business intelligence, now there's something to get excited about.

Not long after that "conversation," Bill called me up and we were talking about his book and I became interested in his efforts to sell his own book, which is how this blog entry originated.